Fidel Castro

Fidel Alejandro Castro Rúz (born August 13, 1927) has ruled Cuba since 1959, when, leading the 26th of July Movement, he helped overthrow the government of Fulgencio Batista and turn Cuba into the first socialist state in the Western Hemisphere. He held the title of premier until 1976, when he became president of the Council of State and the Council of Ministers. He has been the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba since its inception in 1965.

Quotes

• "Condemn me, it does not matter: history will absolve me."
  • Closing words of the speech delivered at the end of trial against Moncada Barracks attack.
• Speech made by Castro at the Closing session of the 5th Meeting on Globalization and Development held in Havana, Cuba, on February 14, 2003
• "This country is heaven, in the spiritual sense of the word. And I say, we prefer to die in heaven than survive in hell."
  • Speech made by Castro on February 2, 2005
• "I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action."
• "I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ."
• "If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism."
• "In the Third World, there are 1.3 billion poor people. In other words, one out of every three inhabitants lives in poverty."
• "More than 820 million people in the world suffer from hunger; and 790 million of them live in the Third World."
• "The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters."
• "A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past."
• "As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry, but they cannot kill ignorance, illness, poverty or hunger"
• "I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened."
• "Capitalism is using its money; we socialists throw it away."

About Fidel Castro

• "the most honest, courageous politician I have ever met." -- Jesse Jackson during a 1984 visit to Havana
• "Long live the Cuban Revolution. Long live comrade Fidel Castro... Cuban internationalists have done so much for African independence, freedom, and justice. We admire the sacrifices of the Cuban people in maintaining their independence and sovereignty in the face of a vicious imperialist campaign designed to destroy the advances of the Cuban revolution. We too want to control our destiny... There can be no surrender. It is a case of freedom or death. The Cuban revolution has been a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people." -- Nelson Mandela