“Racism, racial discrimination and xenophobia are not naturally instinctive reactions of the human beings but rather a social, cultural and political phenomenon born directly of wars, military conquests, slavery and the individual or collective exploitation of the weakest by the most powerful all along the history of human societies.”
“A people are nothing without honour, without decorum, without independence and without dignity, never mind the life of a people!”
“Those virtues with which our people can resolutely face up any situation, that patriotic feeling, that civic awareness, that political maturity, that revolutionary intelligence which opens up the minds of all of our citizens to the great truths and unites the people, is the path we will never steer away from.”
“There is no other force capable of mobilizing peoples like ideas. By the time when the revolutionary ideas have materialized and it is no longer necessary to keep on fighting, when the aspirations of the Cuban people are satisfied, then these demonstrations will no longer be necessary […]”
“That is man’s marvellous virtue, that he is capable of giving it all, of giving his life, of giving all for an idea, for a cause, for a noble sentiment, for a spirit of solidarity.”
“If gold were able to do more than ideals, our homeland would be lost, because gold is what our enemies have a lot of, to buy conscience. But nevertheless, all our enemies’ gold is not enough to buy the conscience of a revolutionary!”
“It is ideas that light up the world, it is ideas, and when I say ideas, I mean ideas that are just, ideas that can bring peace to the world, and put an end to the grave danger of war, or put an end to violence. That is why we talk about the battle of ideas.”
“[…]down through history really humane ideas of justice have been shown to be much more powerful than force; force leaves in its wake only dusty, contemptible ruins; humane ideas leave a luminous trail that no one will ever be able to extinguish."
“[…]They should know by now that, as far as the Cuban people is concerned, the ideals that inspire freedom, dignity, love of one’s homeland, its identity, its culture and the strictest sense of justice that human beings can conceive of are more valuable than anything on Earth..”
“Our Revolution has four things and they precisely constitute reasons to be admired by the Cubans: this is, in the first place, a revolution that has people; it is a revolution where the government of the republic can say that it has an army; it is a revolution that makes laws that are truly revolutionary.”