"We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights."

"The fact is, when men carry the same ideals in their hearts, nothing can isolate them - neither prison walls nor the sod of cemeteries. For a single memory, a single spirit, a single idea, a single conscience, a single dignity will sustain them all."

"Every citizen has the real right to receive general education and professional training at no cost, something that the United States has not been able to ensure for all its inhabitants."

"Marx and Engels never talked about murdering the bourgeois. According to the old bourgeois concept, the judges were the ones who judged, and the executioners were the ones who executed."

"You may agree or not with Gaddafi's political ideas, but no one has the right to question the existence of Libya as an independent state and member of the United Nations."

"It constitutes a superhuman effort to lead any people in times of crisis. Without them, the changes would be impossible."

"We are political animals, as, not without reason, affirmed Aristotle, who perhaps influenced humanity's thinking more than any other ancient philosopher through his almost 200 treatises, according to reports, of which only 31 have been preserved."

"Venezuela, given its extraordinary educational, cultural, and social developments, and its vast energy and natural resources, is called on to become a revolutionary model for the world."

"The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!"

"I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief."

"I don't think it is so difficult to solve the problems between Cuba and the United States; it all depends on whether there is a dialogue, a discussion, or if the prejudices and hatred of people like the extremists and terrorists from the Cuban community, who try to impose their policies, prevail."

"Christ didn't choose the rich to preach the doctrine; he choose 12 poor ignorant workers - that is, he chose the proletariat of the times."

"The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore."

"I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount."

"Our position is that we do not accept conditions of any kind which may affect the independence and sovereignty of our country just with the view to solve economic problems existing between the United States and Cuba."

"Soon, I'll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain."

"Homeland or death! Socialism or death! We shall overcome!"

"I am a just man."

"...quality of life lies in knowledge, in culture. Values are what constitute true quality of life, the supreme quality of life, even above food, shelter and clothing."

"It is a fundamental principle of criminal law that an imputed offense must correspond exactly to the type of crime described by law. If no law applies exactly to the point in question, then there is no offense."

"The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises."

"I’m not attached to anything. I’m attached to what it feels it's my duty, to do my duty. I think that I will die with the boots on."

"On one occasion, I accompanied my father to Pinares de Mayari. I was eight or nine years old. How he enjoyed talking when he left the house in Biran! There he was the proprietor of the land where sugar cane, pasture, and other agricultural crops were planted."

"I almost laughed about the Machiavellian plans of the presidents of the United States."

"At the age of 6, a teacher full of ambitions, who taught in the small public school of Biran, convinced my family that I should travel to Santiago de Cuba to accompany my older sister who would enter a highly prestigious convent school. Including me was a skill of that very teacher from the little school in Biran."

"Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union."

"To our brothers in Latin America and the world, we must convey that the Cuban people will overcome."

"None of us is designed for the role we must assume in a revolutionary society, although Cubans had the privilege of Jose Marti's example."

"Defending peace is the duty of all."

"Cuba never had advisors in Vietnam. The military there knew very well how to conduct their war."

"Today, the entire country is an immense University."

"General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible."

"Twenty-six million Russians died in the defense of their homeland against the Nazis."

"Chinese combatants, men and women, inheritors of a millennial culture, are people of uncommon intelligence and an invincible spirit of struggle."

"Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life."

"No political event can be judged outside of the era and the circumstances in which it took place."

"Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage."

"For revolutionary Cubans, to cooperate with other poor and exploited peoples has always been a political principle and a duty towards humanity."

"Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life."

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

"Even in the United States, the enslavement of African descendants continued until the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. That brutal form of slavery was abolished there hardly thirty years before it was abolished in Cuba."

"The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might."

"Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist."

"NATO's brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind."

"If people call me Christian, not from the standpoint of religion but from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian."

"Chavez, who came out of the ranks of the Venezuelan Army, is methodical and tireless. I have observed him over the course of 17 years, since his first visit to Cuba. He is an extremely humanitarian and law-abiding person; he has never taken revenge on anybody."

"Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first."

"Every country must be absolutely free to adopt the type of economic, political and social system that it considers convenient."

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

"I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country."