“We are not politicians. We made our revolution to get the politicians out.”

Ideas do not need weapons.

This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell.

Revolutionaries must proclaim their ideas courageously … and express their intentions so that no one is deceived.

Nowhere in the world, in no act of genocide, in no war, are so many people killed per minute, per hour and per day as those who are killed by hunger and poverty on our planet.

Nothing in the world is irreversible, not even capitalism.

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.

I have not seen the Himalayas. But I have seen Sheikh Mujib. In personality and in courage, this man is the Himalayas. I have thus had the experience of witnessing the Himalayas.

I have reached the conclusion, a bit late perhaps, that speeches should be short.

On birthdays I avoid taking hasty or impulsive measures.

A smart policy should be one that tends to receive the capitals, pays the price for that capital – which is the interest – returns the capital and in the end the factories, the industries, are left to remain in the country.

More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World.

Yoga does things with the human body that defy the imagination.

I was a man who was lucky enough to have discovered a political theory, a man who was caught up in the whirlpool of Cuba’s political crisis…; discovering Marxism…was like finding a map in the forest.

Today, the entire country is an immense University.

No thieves, no traitors, no interventionists! This time the revolution is for real!

One of the greatest benefits of the revolution is that even our prostitutes are college graduates.

For unhappy is the People, and their Constitution will be ever precarious, whose Welfare must depend upon the Virtues and Consciences of Ministers and Politicians.

Frankly, the gay movement on the ground has been one of the great propulsive things that has made politicians do what they do.

People appreciate a politician with the courage to say, I oppose this war.

I think I’m one of five people in the Senate who’s never been a politician before. And now that I am a politician, what I find weird about it is that I respect myself less.

Politicians are like ships: noisiest when lost in a fog.

I’m not a politician, I’m a comedian. I know my limitations.

My function in life is not to be a politician in Parliament: it is to get something done.

When words come out of politician’s mouth that are linguistically incorrect, people see it reflecting their intelligence. Sarah Palin was called out for “refudiate,” which seemed to combine refute and repudiate. One favourite Bushism was “misunderestimate.”