“I never perceived a contradiction in the political revolutionary field between the ideas I maintained and the idea of that symbol, that extraordinary figure who had been so familiar to me since I began to reason.”

How can we help President Obama?

U.S. leaders should think that if they are aiding terrorist plans to eliminate Cuban leaders, they themselves will not be safe.

Good athletes do not know what tiredness is. They do not know what discouragement is. Good athletes only know what victory is.

Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me.

Ideas do not need weapons, to the extent that they can convince the great masses.

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews. I would say much more than the Muslims. They have been slandered much more than the Muslims because they are blamed and slandered for everything. No one blames the Muslims for anything.

I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.

The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.

I promise all Cuban mothers that I will never will make them weep.

There is no more democratic government than a revolutionary government.

It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and a plan of action.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.

We must establish a new world order based on justice, on equity, and on peace.

However far back I go into my childhood, nothing seems to me more characteristic of, or more familiar in, my interior economy than the appetite or irresistible demand for some ‘Unique all-sufficing and necessary reality.’

The wind can be quite extreme in England. We are not familiar with that in Germany, and you have to keep things simple.

Women are about the best lovers of nature, after all; at least of nature in her milder and more familiar forms.

Things are changing at such a rate that you really can’t get too familiar with anything that you own in relation to what sort of functionality it has in your life.

Your body must become familiar with its death – in all its possible forms and degrees – as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

This seems quite good, a bit familiar.’ Then I realise … It’s one of my movies. It’s a pretty odd feeling.

When you completely extract yourself from anything familiar.

We will have to take risks, to chance failure, to be willing to walk away from the familiar paths that have brought us to this point.