Che Guevara quotes:

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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 platitudes.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

It's not my fault if reality is Marxist

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.

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

Its tall chimneys throw up black smoke, impregnating everything with soot, and the miners' faces as they traveled the streets were also imbued with that ancient melancholy of smoke, unifying everything with its grayish monotones, a perfect coupling with the gray mountain days.

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.

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.

Given the prevailing lack of discipline, it would have been impossible to use Congolese machine-gunners to defend the base from air attack: they did not know how to handle their weapons and did not want to learn,

Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.

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

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?

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.

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

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

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

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

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

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

Better to die standing, than to live on your knees.

Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.

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

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

Be realistic, demand the impossible!

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.

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

To accomplish much you must first lose everything.

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

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.

Let the world change you and you can change the world

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words that do not match deeds are not important.

One must endure without losing tenderness.

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

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.

Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.

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.

In a revolution, one triumphs or dies.

The state sometimes makes mistakes. When one of these mistakes occurs, a decline in collective enthusiasm is reflected by a resulting quantitative decrease of the contribution of each individual, each of the elements forming the whole of the masses. Work is so paralysed that insignificant quantities are produced. It is time to make a correction.

We travel just to travel.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

Each time a country is freed, we say, it is a defeat for the world imperialist system, but we must agree that real liberation or breaking away from the imperialist system is not achieved by the mere act of proclaiming independence or winning an armed victory in a revolution. Freedom is achieved when imperialist economic domination over a people is brought to an end.

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

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

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

The best form of saying is being

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.

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.

Words without deeds are worthless.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

It is an illusion to think that the matter cannot be resolved through words.

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

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

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

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.

We must strive everyday so that love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

The monopoly capitalists - even while employing purely empirical methods - weave around art a complicated web which converts it into a willing tool. The superstructure of society ordains the type of art in which the artist has to be educated. Rebels are subdued by its machinery and only rare talents may create their own work. The rest become shameless hacks or are crushed.

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

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

Mexicans are a band of illiterate Indians.

One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.

If they attack, we shall fight to the end. If the rockets had remained, we would have used them all and directed them against the very heart of the United States, including New York, in our defense against aggression. But we haven't got them, so we shall fight with what we've got.

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

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 individualtiy 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.

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

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

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

I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I wonâ??t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.

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

And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.

The amount of poverty and suffering required for the emergence of a Rockefeller, and the amount of depravity that the accumulation of a fortune of such magnitude entails, are left out of the picture, and it is not always possible to make the people in general see this.

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.

There are no borders in this fight to the death; we cannot be indifferent to what is happening in any part of the world.

It is not just a simple game, it is a weapon of the revolution.