The revolution lives on not in words to live for it, but in one's heart to die for it.

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... We must strive every day so that this love of living humanity will be 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.

A revolution is not a bed of roses. A revolution is a struggle between the future and the past.

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable. Address to Latin American diplomats at the White House (12 March 1962)

In a revolution, one triumphs or dies (if it is a true revolution). Letter to Fidel Castro, 1 April 1965

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

The difficult thing for someone not living the experience of the revolution to understand is this close dialectical unity between the individual and the mass, in which the mass, as an aggregate of individuals, is interconnected with its leaders. Some phenomena of this kind can be seen under capitalism, when politicians capable of mobilising popular opinion appear, but these phenomena are not really genuine social movements. (If they were, it would not be entirely correct to call them capitalist.) These movements only live as long as the persons who inspire them do, or until the harshness of capitalist society puts an end to the popular illusions which made them possible.

The revolution is a dictatorship of the exploited against the exploiters.

I have been ever of opinion that revolutions are not to be evaded.