Che guevara quotes

Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible.

I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.

Hatred as an element of the struggle; a relentless hatred of the enemy, impelling us over and beyond the natural limitations that man is heir to and transforming him into an effective, violent, selective and cold killing machine. Our soldiers must be thus; a people without hatred cannot vanquish a brutal enemy.

We are not the ones who create revolutions. It is the imperialist system and its allies, internal allies, the ones who create revolution.

We travel just to travel.

Americans are given the sole option of electing their jailer for four years and sometimes do him the honour of re-electing him.

To accomplish much you must first lose everything.

I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel.

The negro is indolent and a dreamer; spending his meager wage on frivolity or drink; the European has a tradition of work and saving, which has pursued him as far as this corner of America and drives him to advance himself, even independently of his own individual aspirations.

The ***** is indolent and lazy, and spends his money on frivolities, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.

Our youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world.

Perhaps one day tired of circling the world I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.

In a revolution one wins or dies, if it is a real one

The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!

The Revolution is made by man, but man must forge his revolutionary spirit from day to day.

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.

Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.

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.

In industry, we are now concentrating our best effort in trying to make plants work at a maximum capacity, trying to replace the equipment which is in bad conditions due to lack of spare parts from the U.S.., that we cannot get from the U.S.; to extend our industry later on the basis of our primary resources. And to lessen our dependence on external markets and dedicate our efforts in 1965 to the aspect of security and hygiene of work, to make our plants better for the worker: that the worker may feel really a man there.

The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese. the black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead.

One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.

The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination.

Be realistic, demand the impossible!

In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.

We must bear in mind that imperialism is a world system, the last stage of capitalism-and it must be defeated in a world confrontation. The strategic end of this struggle should be the destruction of imperialism. Our share, the responsibility of the exploited and underdeveloped of the world, is to eliminate the foundations of imperialism: our oppressed nations, from where they extract capital, raw materials, technicians, and cheap labor, and to which they export new capital-instruments of domination-arms and all kinds of articles, thus submerging us in an absolute dependence.

Revolution cleanses men, improving them as the experimental farmer corrects the defects of his plants.

Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.

It's a sad thing not to have friends, but it is even sadder not to have enemies.

Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.

Let's be realistic. Let's do the impossible!

Let the world change you and you can change the world

As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.

The merit of Marx is that he suddenly produces a qualitative change in the history of social thought. He interprets history, understands its dynamic, predicts the future, but in addition to predicting it (which would satisfy his scientific obligation), he expresses a revolutionary concept: the world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

You know, comrade Pachman, I don't enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela.

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.

Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.

If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades.

We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.

Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his truths.

My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood… Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!

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.

Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?

War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal.

The state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, one notes a decline in collective enthusiasm due to the effect of a quantitative diminution in each of the elements that make up the mass. Work is paralyzed until it is reduced to an insignificant level. It is time to make a correction.

To execute a man we don't need proof of his guilt. We only need proof that it's necessary to execute him. It's that simple.

How can it be "mutually beneficial" to sell at world market prices the raw materials that cost the underdeveloped countries immeasurable sweat and suffering.

The university should color itself black and color itself mulatto — not just as regards students but also professors. Today the people stand at the door of the university, and it is the university that must be flexible. It must color itself black, mulatto, worker, peasant, or else be left without doors. And then the people will tear it apart and paint it with the colors they see fit.

One must endure without losing tenderness.

A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.

We have no right to believe that freedom can be won without struggle.

A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.

I will fight with all the weapons within my reach rather than let myself be nailed to a cross or whatever.

Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.

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.

I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.

The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.

If we had to kneel in order to live in peace, [ U.S. government] will have to kill us before.

The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.

We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.

There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.

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.

How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.

Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.

The world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.

A smoke in times of rest is a great companion to the solitary soldier.

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.

The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day

Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think as individuals!

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

The question is one of fighting the causes and not just being satisfied with getting rid of the effects.

The fundamental principle is that no battle, combat, or skirmish is to be fought unless it will be won.

Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].

One must have a large dose of humanity, a large dose of a sense of justice and truth in order to avoid dogmatic extremes, cold scholasticism, or an isolation from the masses. We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity is transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don't get nailed to a cross or any other place.

Do not shoot! I am Che Guevara and worth more to you alive than dead.

When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.

Peaceful coexistence cannot be limited to the powerful countries if we want to ensure world peace.

I would rather die standing up to live life on my knees.

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.

If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.

Socialism is young and has made errors. Many times revolutionaries lack the knowledge and intellectual courage needed to meet the task of developing the new man with methods different from the conventional ones - and the conventional methods suffer from the influences of the society, which created them.

Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.

The amount of poverty and suffering required for a Rockefeller to emerge, and the amount of depravity entailed in the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible for the popular forces to expose this clearly.

Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface.

I have never considered myself an economist.

Words that do not match deeds are not important.

One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.

I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves.

Everyday you have to fight so that love for humanity can be transformed into concrete deeds, into acts that set an example, that mobilize.

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

I have come to communism because of daddy Stalin and nobody must come and tell me that I mustn’t read Stalin. I read him when it was very bad to read him. That was another time. And because I’m not very bright, and a hard-headed person, I keep on reading him. Especially in this new period, now that it is worse to read him. Then, as well as now, I still find a Seri of things that are very good.

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear.

The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth

We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.

We should not go to the [poor countries] and say: 'We come to ... teach you our science, to show you your errors.' ... We should go instead with an inquiring mind and a humble spirit to learn [from] these people.

Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men - how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?

The problem of peaceful transition to socialism, we do not discuss it as a theoretical question. But in America it is very difficult, and it is nearly impossible. That is why specifically in America we say that the road to the liberation of peoples, which will be the road of socialism will go through bullets in almost all countries.

The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see human beings liberated from their alienation

Wrapped in a police blanket, I watched the rain and smoked one black cigarette after another.

I don't care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.

If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.

The best form of saying is doing.

I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ.

The negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths

Words without deeds are worthless.

If it is an element of liberation for Latin America, I believe that it should have demonstrated that. Until now, I have not been aware of any such demonstration. The IMF performs an entirely different function: precisely that of ensuring that capital based outside of Latin America controls all of Latin America.

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy, with discrimination against Blacks and outrages by the Ku Klux Klan.

It is an illusion to think that the matter can be resolved through words.

I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.

Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.

Whenever death may surprise us, let it be welcome if our battle cry has reached even one receptive ear and another hand reaches out to take up our arms.

...because it is the very nature of Imperialism to turn humans into beasts.

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.

The interests of the IMF represent the big international interests that today seem to be established and concentrated in Wall Street.

...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.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.

We said that each time a country is liberated it is a defeat for the world imperialist system. But we must agree that the break is not achieved by the mere act of proclaiming independence or winning an armed victory in a revolution. It is achieved when imperialist economic domination over a people is brought to an end.

If you ask me the image of Latin America, there are sorne countries which oppress their peoples much more, and among the less - least oppressive, among those with which we could have perfectly normal relations without any difficulties - we could have Uruguay, Chile, maybe Costa Rica. But the U.S.. do not permit us.