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

Hasta la Victoria Siempre. [Until Victory, Always]
Ernesto Che Guevara’s complimentary closing for his letters and speeches

If you tremble indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Words that do not match deeds are unimportant.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel!
Ernesto Che Guevara

I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you’re only going to kill a man.
Ernesto Che Guevara (just before he was shot and murdered)

 

Revolutionary

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people’s unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear, that another hand may be extended to wield our weapons, and that other men be ready to intone our funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine guns and new battle cries of war and victory.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

The guerrilla fighter needs full help from the people of the area. This is an indispensable condition.
Ernesto Che Guevara

 

Philosophical

I am not interested in dry economic socialism. We are fighting against misery, but we are also fighting against alienation. One of the fundamental objectives of Marxism is to remove interest, the factor of individual interest, and gain, from people’s psychological motivations. Marx was preoccupied both with economic factors and with their repercussions on the spirit. If communism isn’t interested in this too, it may be a method of distributing goods, but it will never be a revolutionary way of life.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

We are doing everything possible to give labor this new status of social duty and to link it on the one side with the development of a technology which will create the conditions for greater freedom, and on the other side with voluntary work based on a Marxist appreciation of the fact that man truly reaches a full human condition when he produces without being driven by the physical need to sell his labor as a commodity. Man still needs to undergo a complete spiritual rebirth in his attitude towards his work, freed from the direct pressure of his social environment, though linked to it by his new habits. That will be communism.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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

 

Internationalism

To die under the flag of Vietnam, of Venezuela, of Guatemala, of Laos, of Guinea, of Colombia, of Bolivia, of Brazil-to name only a few scenes of today’s armed struggle-would be equally glorious and desirable for an American, an Asian, an African, even a European.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Each spilt drop of blood, in any country under whose flag one has not been born, is an experience passed on to those who survive, to be added later to the liberation struggle of his own country. And each nation liberated is a phase won in the battle for the liberation of one’s own country.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

The socialist countries have the moral duty of liquidating their tacit complicity with the exploiting countries of the West.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Arms cannot be regarded as merchandise in our world. They should be delivered to the peoples asking for them for use against the common enemy without any charge at all, and in quantities determined by the need and their availability.
Ernesto Che Guevara

 

United Nations

We should like to see this Assembly (UN) shake itself out of complacency and move forward. We should like to see the committees begin their work and not stop at the first confrontation. Imperialism wishes to convert this meeting into a pointless oratorical tournament, instead of solving the grave problems of the world. We must prevent their doing so. This Assembly should not be remembered in the future only by the number 19, which identifies it. Our efforts are directed to prevent that.
Ernesto Che Guevara

Under the discredited flag of the United Nations, dozens of countries under the military leadership of the United States participated in this war with the massive intervention of U.S. soldiers and the use, as cannon fodder, of the South Korean population that was enrolled.
Ernesto Che Guevara

 

Imperialism and Neo-colonialism

Imperialism has been defeated in many partial battles. But it remains a considerable force in the world, and we cannot expect its final defeat save through effort and sacrifice on the part of all of us.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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

The slogan “We will not allow another Cuba” hides the possibility of perpetrating aggressions without fear of reprisal, such as the one carried out against the Dominican Republic or before that the massacre in Panama-and the clear warning stating that Yankee troops are ready to intervene anywhere in America where the ruling regime may be altered, thus endangering their interests.
Ernesto Che Guevara

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.
Ernesto Che Guevara

While envisaging the destruction of imperialism, it is necessary to identify its head, which is no other than the United States of America.
Ernesto Che Guevara