Selected Quotes by Che Guevara
Che Guevara- Ernesto "Che" Guevara (June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, guerilla leader, diplomat, military theorist, author and physician. He was a major figure of the Cuban Revolution. His stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and a global insignia in popular culture
His political ideology and involvements were formed by what he perceived as the capitalist exploitation of Latin America. He eventually joined Raúl and Fidel Castro's resistance movement. After the Cuban Revolution, Guevara played key roles in the new government including being a diplomat which enabled him to travel the world.
In 1965, he left Cuba to foment continental revolutions across both Africa and South America, first unsuccessfully in Congo-Kinshasa and later in Bolivia, where he was captured by CIA-assisted Bolivian forces and summarily executed.
He remains both a revered and reviled historical figure. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, he has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. In contrast, his critics on the political right accuse him of promoting authoritarianism and endorsing violence against his political opponents.
Selected Quotes by Che Guevara:
“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I would be with the people. I know this, I see it printed in the night sky that I, eclectic dissembler of doctrine and psychoanalyst of dogma, howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades or the trenches , will take my bloodstained weapon, and consumed with fury, slaughter any enemy who falls into my hands.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Che Guevara, Goals
“I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel...”
Che Guevara, Goals
“There are no boundaries in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, for a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory; just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“The revolution is not an apple that falls when ripe. You have to make it fall.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“I will fight with all the weapons within my reach rather than let myself be nailed to a cross or whatever.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America
Che Guevara, Goals
“Be realistic, demand the impossible!”
Che Guevara, Goals
“Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?”
Che Guevara, Goals
“We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.”
Che Guevara, Goals
“Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.”
Che Guevara, Goals, Justice
“If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.”
Che Guevara, Goals, Justice
“After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.”
Che Guevara, Goals, Life
“I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.”
Che Guevara, Goals, Life
“The stars drew light across the night sky in that little mountain village, and the silence and the cold made the darkness vanish away. It was - I don't know how to explain it - as if everything solid melted away into the ether, eliminating all individuality and absorbing us, rigid, into the immense darkness. Not a single cloud to lend perspective to the space blocked any portion of the starry sky.”
Che Guevara, Nature
“At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that the true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
Che Guevara, Love
“It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over.” ― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Che Guevara, Society
“Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.”
Che Guevara, Life
“...I also know - and this won't alter the course of history or your personal view of me - that you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol (some inanimate example) but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and motivates your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you are not aware of how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you.”
Che Guevara, Life
“It’s a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.”
Che Guevara, Life
“This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Che Guevara, Life
“What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two: melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.”
Che Guevara, Life
“The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Che Guevara, Life
“I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey
Che Guevara, Life
“The best form of saying is being.”
Che Guevara, Life
“I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”
Che Guevara, Life
“Let the world change you and you can change the world.”
Che Guevara, Life
“And then many things became very clear... we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”
Che Guevara, Life, Wealth
“Wrapped in a police blanket, I watched the rain and smoked one black cigarette after another...”
Che Guevara, Happiness
“Every person has the truth in his heart. No matter how complicated his circumstances, no matter how others look at him from the outside, and no matter how deep or shallow the truth dwells in his heart, once his heart is pieced with a crystal needle, the truth will gush forth like a geyser.”
Che Guevara, Truth
“Many will call me an adventurer, and that I am...only one of a different sort: one who risks his skin to prove his truths.”
Che Guevara, Truth
“A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.”
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.”
― Che Guevara, Che Guevara Talks to Young People
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”
Che Guevara, Intelligence/Wisdom
“Silence is argument carried out by other means.”
Che Guevara, Anger and Fighting
“I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.”