"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."

"Never have we stolen the intelligences of other peoples. On the contrary, in Cuba we have trained tens of thousands of doctors and other top-level professionals, for free, in order to send them back to their own countries."

"Experience acquired in the heroic battle against Batista's tyranny showed that the enemy, no matter what his strength, could not defeat the Cuban people."

"I see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations."

"I see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations."

"Although we resolutely supported the armed struggle against Batista's tyranny, we were, on principle, opposed to any terrorist action that could cause the death of innocent people."

"The traditional stand adopted by the Cuban Revolution, which was always opposed to any action that could jeopardize the life of civilians, is well known."

"The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left."

"Oil has become the principal wealth in the hands of the great Yankee transnationals; through this energy source, they had an instrument that considerably expanded their political power in the world."

"Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters."

"The United States is supplying the most modern and sophisticated weaponry to Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year."

"Mubarak was oppressing and pillaging his own people. He was an enemy to the Palestinians and an accomplice of Israel, the sixth nuclear power on the planet, associated with the war-mongering NATO group."

"The United States never stopped conspiring against the Arab world, which holds the largest oil reserves on the planet."

"The death of Abdel Nasser on September 28, 1970, was an irreversible setback for Egypt."

"As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn't be admissible."

"Our Revolution emerged where it was least expected by the empire, in a hemisphere where it was used to acting like an all-powerful master."

"We do not need the empire to give us anything."

"Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony."

"The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs."

"A revolution is not a bed of roses."

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

"I am a Marxist Leninist and I will be one until the last day of my life."

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

"Someday, the capitalist system will disappear in the United States, because no social class system has been eternal. One day, class societies will disappear."

"I have always fought for concrete facts, for justice."

"I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ."