“If we had paused to tell the people that we were Marxist-Leninists while we were on Pico Turquino and not yet strong, it is possible that we would never have been able to descend to the plains.”

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.

Forgive me for using the term ‘fat little brother’. It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don’t you think? I’m doing this for the gentleman’s health.

The first thing dictators do is finish free press, to establish censorship. There is no doubt that a free press is the first enemy of dictatorship.

Art doesn’t transform. It just plain forms.

Works of imagination should be written in very plain language; the more purely imaginative they are the more necessary it is to be plain.

They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American.

I tell everyone very plainly that I take bribes, but what kind of bribes? Why, greyhound puppies. That’s a totally different matter.

Now the answer … is plain, but it is so unpalatable that most men will not face it. There is no reason for life and life has no meaning.

It’s one of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.

Even as a kid, I wore J.C. Penney plain-pocket jeans because they were plain pockets.

I’m a plain soap kind of guy.