The Revolution did not assume a socialist nature because of support from the U.S.S.R.; it was the other way around: support from the U.S.S.R. was produced by the socialist nature of the Cuban Revolution. To such a degree, that when the U.S.S.R. disappears, Cuba keeps on being socialist.
— Fidel Castro
When the Revolution triumphed in 1959, our island was a true Yankee colony. The United States had duped and disarmed our Liberation Army. One couldn't speak of developed agriculture, but of immense plantations exploited on the base of manual and animal labour that in general used neither fertilizers nor machinery.
Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.
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.
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 squandering of oil and gas is associated with one of the greatest tragedies, not in the least resolved, which is suffered by humankind: climate change.
The United States is supplying the most modern and sophisticated weaponry to Israel to the tune of billions of dollars every year.
The United States never stopped conspiring against the Arab world, which holds the largest oil reserves on the planet.
As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn't be admissible.
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.
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.
The United States tyrannizes and pillages the globalized world with its political, economic, technological, and military might.
What prevails in every corner of this globalized world is the real struggle of our species for its own survival.
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.
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.
The Soviet Union, the socialist camp, the People's Republic of China, and North Korea helped us resist, with essential supplies and weapons, the implacable blockade of the United States, the most powerful empire ever to exist.
The human being is a strange mixture of blind instinct, on one hand, and conscience, on the other.
The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.
Even Gaddafi's adversaries assure us that he stood out for his intelligence as a student; he was expelled from high-school for his anti-monarchic activities. He managed to enroll in another high-school and later graduated in law at the University of Benghazi at the age of 21.
I see Libya as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a sovereign State of the nearly 200 members of the United Nations.
Obama has no way to conceal that Osama was executed in front of his children and wives, who are now under the custody of the authorities of Pakistan, a Muslim country of almost 200 million inhabitants, whose laws have been violated, its national dignity offended, and its religious traditions desecrated.
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.
The Arab population of Palestine are victims of genocidal actions; their lands are confiscated or deprived of water supplies in the semi-desert areas, and their homes are destroyed with heavy wrecking equipment.
The death of Abdel Nasser on September 28, 1970, was an irreversible setback for Egypt.
The lies of the empire and the treason of the quislings shall be defeated.
The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!
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.
During the second half of the twentieth century, I had the privilege of living through years of intensive erudition, and I realized that Canadians, located in the northernmost region of this hemisphere, were always respectful towards our country.
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.
For revolutionary Cubans, to cooperate with other poor and exploited peoples has always been a political principle and a duty towards humanity.
No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.
Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China - the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.
Xi Jinping is one of the strongest and most capable revolutionary leaders I have met in my life.
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.
The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty.
The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.
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.
When at just 27 years old, Qaddafi, colonel in the Libyan army, inspired by his Egyptian colleague Abdel Nasser, overthrew King Idris I in 1969, he applied important revolutionary measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of oil.
Peoples do not defy repression and death, nor do they remain for nights on end protesting energetically, just because of merely formal matters.
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 people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.
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.
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.
NATO's brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.
I barely need to reiterate what you already know: the close links that exist between our people and the people of Venezuela and Hugo Chavez, the promoter of the Bolivarian Revolution and the United Socialist Party he founded.
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.
Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.
No political event can be judged outside of the era and the circumstances in which it took place.
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.
