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Che Guevara

232 quotes

“Our enemy, and the enemy of all America, is the monopolistic government of the United States of America.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist or a biologist when asked if he is a "Newtonian," or if he is a "Pasteurian". There are truths so evident, so much a part of people's knowledge, that it is now useless to discuss them.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One ought to be "Marxist' with the same naturalness with which one is "Newtonian" in physics, or "Pasteurian" in biology, considering that if facts determine new concepts, these new concepts will never divest themselves of that portion of truth possessed by the older concepts they have outdated.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Cuban Revolution takes up Marx at the point where he himself left science to shoulder his revolutionary rifle. And it takes him up at that point, not in a revisionist spirit, of struggling against that which follows Marx, of reviving "pure" Marx, but simply because up to that point Marx, the scientist, placed himself outside of the history he studied and predicted. From then on Marx, the revolutionary, could fight within history.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We, practical revolutionaries, initiating our own struggle, simply fulfill laws foreseen by Marx, the scientist. We are simply adjusting ourselves to the predictions of the scientific Marx as we travel this road of rebellion, struggling against the old structure of power, supporting ourselves in the people for the destruction of this structure, and having the happiness of this people as the basis of our struggle.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We consider that the Cuban Revolution contributed three fundamental lessons to the conduct of revolutionary movements in America. They are: (1) Popular forces can win a war against the army. (2) It is not necessary to wait until all conditions for making revolution exist; the insurrection can create them. (3) In underdeveloped America the countryside is the basic area for armed fighting.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When the forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law; peace is considered already broken.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As translated in Guerrilla Warfare : Authorized Edition (2006), p. 14
“Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guerrilla fighter, who is general of himself, need not die in every battle. He is ready to give his life, but the positive quality of this guerrilla warfare is precisely that each one of the guerrilla fighters is ready to die, not to defend an ideal, but rather to convert it into reality.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems in order to achieve the goal.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A fundamental part of guerrilla tactics is the treatment accorded the people of the zone. Even the treatment accorded the enemy is important; the norm to be followed should be an absolute inflexibility at the time of attack, an absolute inflexibility toward all the despicable elements that resort to informing and assassination, and clemency as absolute as possible toward the enemy soldiers who go into the fight performing or believing that they perform a military duty.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a good policy, so long as there are no considerable bases of operations and invulnerable places, to take no prisoners. Survivors ought to be set free. The wounded should be cared for with all possible resources at the time of the action. Conduct toward the civil population ought to be regulated by a large respect for all the rules and traditions of the people of the zone, in order to demonstrate effectively, with deeds, the moral superiority of the guerrilla fighter over the oppressing soldier.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Favorable conditions for establishing a permanent camp in guerrilla warfare are inverse to the degree of productive development of a place... because everything that is favorable to human life, communications, urban and semi-urban concentrations of large numbers of people, land easily worked by machine, all these place the guerrilla fighter in a disadvantageous situation.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“From the very beginning of the struggle he has the intention of destroying an unjust order and therefore an intention, more or less hidden, to replace the old with something new.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guerrilla fighter, as a person conscious of a role in the vanguard of the people, must have a moral conduct that shows him to be a true priest of the reform to which he aspires. To the stoicism imposed by the difficult conditions of warfare should be added an austerity born of rigid self-control that will prevent a single excess, a single slip, whatever the circumstances. The guerrilla soldier should be an ascetic.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally, and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Striking like a tornado, destroying all, giving no quarter unless the tactical circumstances call for it, judging those who must be judged, sowing panic among the enemy combatants, he nevertheless treats defenseless prisoners benevolently and shows respect for the dead. A wounded enemy should be treated with care and respect unless his former life has made him liable to a death penalty, in which case he will be treated in accordance with his deserts.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The best age for a guerrilla fighter varies between 25 and 35 years, a stage in which the life of most persons has assumed definite shape. Whoever sets out at that age, abandoning his home, his children, and his entire world must have thought well of his responsibility and reached a firm decision not to retreat a step.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The education of the guerrilla fighter is important from the very beginning of the struggle. This should explain to them the social purpose of the fight and their duties, clarify their understanding, and give them lessons in morale that serve to forge their characters.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Assaults and terrorism in indiscriminate form should not be employed.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The part that the woman can play in the development of a revolutionary process is of extraordinary importance. It is well to emphasize this, since in all our countries, with their colonial mentality, there is a certain underestimation of the woman which becomes a real discrimination against her. The woman is capable of performing the most difficult tasks, of fighting beside the men; and despite current belief, she does not create conflicts of a sexual type in the troops.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Know yourself and your adversary and you will be able to fight a hundred battles without a single disaster." This Chinese aphorism is as valuable for guerrilla warfare as a biblical psalm.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Reading should be encouraged at all times, with an effort to promote books that are worthwhile and that enlarge the recruit's facility to encounter the world of letters and great national problems”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have to remind ourselves of this at every moment: that we are in a war, a cold war as they call it; a war where there is no front line, no continuous bombardment, but where the two adversaries — this tiny champion of the Caribbean and the immense imperialist hyena — are face to face and aware that one of them is going to end up dead in the fight.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The victory of the Cuban Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On various occasions emissaries of the U.S. State Department came, disguised as reporters, to investigate our rustic revolution, yet they never found any trace of imminent danger. By the time the imperialists wanted to react — when they discovered that the group of inexperienced young men marching in triumph through the streets of Havana had a clear awareness of their political duty and an iron determination to carry out that duty — it was already too late.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The first liberating revolutions never destroyed the large landholding powers that always constituted a reactionary force and upheld the principle of servitude on the land.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In most countries the large landholders realized they couldn't survive alone and promptly entered into alliances with the monopolies — the strongest and most ruthless oppressors of the Latin American peoples. U.S. capital arrived on the scene to exploit the virgin lands and later carried off, unnoticed, all the funds so “generously” given, plus several times the amount originally invested in the "beneficiary" country.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They call our miserably exploited Indians, persecuted and reduced to utter wretchedness, "little Indians" and they call blacks and mulattos, disinherited and discriminated against, "colored" — all this as a means of dividing the working masses in their struggle for a better economic future. For all of us, the peoples of the Americas, they have a polite and refined term: "underdeveloped.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The people are weary of being oppressed, persecuted, exploited to the maximum. They are weary of the wretched selling of their labor-power day after day — faced with the fear of joining the enormous mass of unemployed — so that the greatest profit can be wrung from each human body, profit later squandered in the orgies of the masters of capital.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The United States hastens the delivery of arms to the puppet governments they see as being increasingly threatened; it makes them sign pacts of dependence to legally facilitate the shipment of instruments of repression and death and of troops to use them.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cuba hopes that her children will see a better future, and that victory will not have to be won at the cost of millions of human lives destroyed by the atomic bomb.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan, or with the persecution that drove scientists like Oppenheimer from their posts, deprived the world for years of the marvelous voice of Paul Robeson, held prisoner in his own country, and sent the Rosenberg's to their deaths against the protests of a shocked world, including the appeals of many governments and of Pope Pius XII.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Thanks for Playa Girón. Before the invasion, the (Cuban) revolution was weak. Now it's stronger than ever.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Power is the sine qua non strategic objective of the revolutionary forces, and everything must be subordinated to this basic endeavor. But the taking of power, in this world polarized by two forces of extreme disparity and absolutely incompatible in interests, cannot be limited to the boundaries of a single geographic or social unit. The seizure of power is a worldwide objective of the revolutionary forces. To conquer the future is the strategic element of revolution; freezing the present is the counterstrategy motivating the forces of world reaction today, for they are on the defensive.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cuba, for example, is a vanguard outpost, an outpost which overlooks the extremely broad stretches of the economically distorted world of Latin America. Cuba's example is a beacon, a guiding light for all the peoples of America.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Moral missiles are such a devastatingly effective weapon that they have become the most important element in determining Cuba's value.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is it possible or not, given the present conditions in our continent, to achieve it (socialist power, that is) by peaceful means? We emphatically answer that, in the great majority of cases, this is not possible. The most that could be achieved would be the formal takeover of the bourgeois superstructure of power and the transition to socialism of that government which, under the established bourgeois legal system, having achieved formal power will still have to wage a very violent struggle against all who attempt, in one way or another, to check its progress toward new social structures.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Cuba and Algeria are the most recent examples of the effects of armed struggle on the development of social transformation. If we conclude that the possibility of the peaceful road is almost nonexistent in the Americas, we can point out that it is very probable that the outcome of victorious revolutions in this area of the world will produce regimes of a socialist structure. Rivers of blood will flow before this is achieved... The blood of the people is our most sacred treasure, but it must be used in order to save more blood in the future.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We do assert, however, that we must follow the road of liberation even though it may cost millions of nuclear war victims. In the struggle to death between two systems we cannot think of anything but the final victory of socialism or its relapse as a consequence of the nuclear victory of imperialist aggression.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Guerrilla warfare is a people's warfare; an attempt to carry out this type of war without the population's support is a prelude to inevitable disaster.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guerrilla is the combat vanguard of the people, situated in a specified place in a certain region, armed and willing to carry out a series of warlike actions for the one possible strategic end — the seizure of power.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The guerrilla is supported by the peasant and worker masses of the region and of the whole territory in which it acts. Without these prerequisites, guerrilla warfare is not possible.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Revolution, in history, is like the doctor assisting at the birth of a new life, who will not use forceps unless necessary, but who will use them unhesitatingly every time labor requires them. It is a labor bringing the hope of a better life to the enslaved and exploited masses.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should not allow the word "democracy" to be utilized apologetically to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.”
Che Guevara (1928–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source