“I don’t think that the contradictions between capitalism and socialism can be resolved by war. This is no longer the age of the bow and arrow. It’s the nuclear age, and war can annihilate us all. The only way to achieve solutions seems to be for the different social systems to coexist.”

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.

North Americans don’t understand that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

The revolution has no time for elections. There is no more democratic government in Latin America than the revolutionary government.

There is not Communism or Marxism, but representative democracy and social justice in a well-planned economy.

Warfare is a means and not an end. Warfare is a tool of revolutionaries. The important thing is the revolution. The important thing is the revolutionary cause, revolutionary ideas, revolutionary objectives, revolutionary sentiments, revolutionary virtues!

Democracy’s my idea. I do not agree with communists, my acts prove. Free press in Cuba – free ideas, freedom religion belief.

I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country. This is not a personal matter. We are not people driven by a wish to be in the government since it is for us the least attractive work, even though we are politicians.

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.

The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.

No government can sell its nation on the backs of its people.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history.

We need a Nuremberg to put on trial the economic order that they have imposed on us, that every three years kills more men, women and children by hunger and preventable or curable diseases than the death toll in six years of the second world war.

We do not deny the possibility of peaceful political transition, but we are still awaiting the first case.