Che Guevara Quotes

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

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

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

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.

Be realistic, demand the impossible!

Let the world change you and you can change the world

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

The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.

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

Silence is argument carried out by other means.

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.

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

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

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.

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE

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

إن الطريق مظلم وحالك فإذا لم تحترق أنت وأنا فمن سينير الطريق

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

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

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

The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

إنني أحس على وجهي بألم كل صفعة تُوجّه إلىمظلوم في هذه الدنيا، فأينما وجد الظلم فذاك هو وطني

الثوار يملئون العالم ضجيجا كي لا ينام العالم بثقله على أجساد الفقراء

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

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.

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

One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.

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.

لن يكون لدينا ما نحيا من أجله .. إن لم نكن على استعداد أن نموت من أجله".

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.

El revolucionario vedadero es guiado por gran sentimientos de amor.

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

لا يهمني أين ومتى سأموت بقدر ما يهمني ان يبقى الوطن

هل يكفي خَلق ظروف جديدة ؟ هل يُمكننا بناء مجتمع جديد بإنسان قديم ؟ أم أننا بحاجة الى تغيير الإنسان أيضًا

سعی کردند که ما را دفن کنند، دریغ از این که ما بذر بودیم...

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

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

الثورة قوية كالفولاذ، حمراء كالجمر، باقية كالسنديان، عميقة كحبنا الوحشي للوطن

Let me say, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.

Hay que endurecerse, pero sin perder la ternura jamás!

We must eliminate all newspapers; we cannot make a revolution with free press. Newspapers are instruments of the oligarchy.

After graduation, due to special circumstances and perhaps also to my character, I began to travel throughout America, and I became acquainted with all of it. Except for Haiti and Santo Domingo, I have visited, to some extent, all the other Latin American countries. Because of the circumstances in which I traveled, first as a student and later as a doctor, I came into close contact with poverty, hunger and disease; with the inability to treat a child because of lack of money; with the stupefaction provoked by the continual hunger and punishment, to the point that a father can accept the loss of a son as an unimportant accident, as occurs often in the downtrodden classes of our American homeland. And I began to realize at that time that there were things that were almost as important to me as becoming famous for making a significant contribution to medical science: I wanted to help those people.

إذا كُنت تُريد معرفة الشعب ، ولن تتمتع بفهم الحياة - حياة البشر . ليست تلك البنايات الأثرية سوى جمال جامد .. لكن روح الشعب وصفاته تسكن في العجائز ، وفي عابر سبيل تتحدث معه

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.

Some give the impression they go on living only because it's a habit they cannot shake

The word that most perfectly describes the city of Cuzco is evocative. Intangible dust of another era settles on its streets, rising like the disturbed sediment of a muddy lake when you touch its bottom.

كان في تلك الأيام رجلا يشعر بضرورة التغيير دون أن يفكر في أن عليه هو أيضا أن يبلغ هذا التغيير. هو وعالمه

Dad always said a person must have a magnificent reason for writing out his or her Life Story and expecting anyone to read it. Unless your name is something along the lines of Mozart, Matisse, Churchill, Che Guevara or Bond - James Bond - you best spent your free time finger painting or playing shuffeboard, for no one, with the exception of your flabby-armed mother with stiff hair and a mashed potato way of looking at you, will want to hear the particulars of your pitiable existence, which doubtlessly will end as it began - with a wheeze.

For me, the sea has always been a confidant, a friend absorbing all it is told and never revealing those secrets; always giving the best advice - its meaningful noises can be interpreted any way you choose.

Don't Shoot! I'm Che. I'm worth more to you alive than dead!

هذا الإنسان الجديد يجب أن يتسم بالمبادرة ، فعليه أن يطور قدراته الفردية ، وأن يكون شخصية إبداعية ؛ ومن أجل بناء المجتمع الجديد لسنا بحاجة الى دُمى تهزّ رأسها موافقة على كل شيء ، بل على العكس من ذلك إننا بحاجة الى مُناضلين نشيطين ، لا يعملون من أجل مصالح شخصية ، إنما يُشاركون في بناء المجتمع الإشتراكي بإبداع .

Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates... Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service, should learn to think and act as a mass.

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.

Jika hati anda bergetar melihat penindasan maka lawanlah sebab diam adalah bentuk penghianatan

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.

            The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country.                   The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives.

...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.

His wife spotted the danger in our resolutely bohemian ways. "You have only one year left before you qualify as a doctor and yet you're going away? You have no idea when you'll be back? But why?" We couldn't give precise answers to her desperate questions and this horrified her...

I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I would be with the people. I know this, I see it printed in the night sky that I, eclectic dissembler of doctrine and psychoanalyst of dogma, howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades or the trenches , will take my bloodstained weapon, and consumed with fury, slaughter any enemy who falls into my hands.

«Se tremes diante de qualquer injustiça, estejas onde for, então somos companheiros»

We must take time to weep for our fallen compañeros while we sharpen our machetes

The psychological effects of the sun are strange: it had not yet appeared over the horizon and we already felt comforted, just imagining the heat it would bring.

At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.

عندما يتآمر العسكريون في الظروف البالغة الصعوبة التي يجتازها الحكام الظالمون ، ثم يخلعون الدكتاتور الذي يكون منهزما في الواقع ، يجب أن نؤمن بأنهم انما خلعوه لأنه كان عاجزا عن المحافظة على امتيازاتعم الطبقية دون ارتكاب اقصى العنف ، مما يلائم كثيرا على وجه العموم مصالحهم

Pido lo imposible, lo más inmerecido, lo que me atreví a hacer una vez cuando él vivía: pido que sea su voz la que asome aquí, que sea su mano la que escriba estas líneas. Sé que es absurdo y es imposible, y por eso mismo creo que él escribe esto conmigo, porque nadie supo mejor hasta qué punto lo absurdo y lo imposible serán un día la realidad de los hombres, el futuro por cuya conquista dio su joven, su maravillosa vida.

ان من يشن حربا يمكن تجنبها في بلد من البلدان هو مجرم ، ولكن مجرم ايضا من لا يشن حربا لا يمكن تجنبها خوسيه مارتي

Adherence to principles, and adherence to the individual, combine to make the Rebel Army an indivisible fist.

Hay que ser duro pero jamas perder la ternura. [It is necessary to be hard but never to lose the tenderness]

سەروازەکان لە کوشتنی من شەرم دەکەن. بەڵام مردنی من شتێکی پاوەجێیە. زیندووی ئازادی‌خوازێک بەردەوام مەترسیدارە. هەر ژ بۆ ئەوەیە زیندووی منیان ناوێ. وابزانم هەموو دنیا زانیویەتی، کە نرخی ئازادی چییە!. هەر شتێ نرخێکی هەیە. من نرخی ئازادی بە مردنم دەدەم.

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. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].

This is the Cuzco asking you to pull on your armor and, mounted on the ample back of a powerful horse, cleave a path through the defenseless flesh of a naked Indian flock whose human wall collapses and disappears beneath the four hooves of the galloping beast.

you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed. You are useful as I am, but you are not aware of how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you

I began to come into close contact with poverty, with hunger, with disease, with the inability to cure a child because of a lack of resources… And I began to see there was something that, at that time, seemed to me almost as important as being a famous researcher or making some substantial contribution to medical science, and this was helping those people.

When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist, when asked if he is a “Newtonian” or of a biologist when asked if he is a “Pasteurian.

Allow me to say, at the risk of appearing ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is motivated by great feelings of love.

I have sworn before a portrait of the late lamented comrade Stalin that I will not rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.

Revolution is impersonal; it will take their lives, even utilizing their memory as an example or as an instrument for domesticating the youth who follow them.

کوژی ڕاستەقینە کەسێکە خەونەکانت بکوژێت، نەک ئەو کەسەی فیشەکێک دەنێت بە گیانتەوە

To die with dignity does not require company

There are different versions, but according to legend, Che’s last words, when Terán came through the door to shoot him, were: “I know you’ve come to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

We executed many people by firing squad without knowing if they were fully guilty. At times, the Revolution cannot stop to conduct much investigation; it has the obligation to triumph.

The spectacular landscape circling the fortress supplies an essential backdrop, inspiring dreamers to wander its ruins for the sake of it; North American tourists, bound down by their practical world view, are able to place those members of the disintegrating tribes they may have seen in their travels among these once-living walls, unaware of the moral distance separating them, since only the semi-indigenous spirit of the South American can grasp the subtle differences.

All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only ever faintly--not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice.

the sea has always been a confidant, a friend absorbing all it is told and never revealing those secrets; always giving the best advice — its meaningful noises can be interpreted any way you choose.

Bir çiçeği öldürebilirsiniz ama baharı asla öldüremezsiniz.

When asked whether or not we are Marxists, our position is the same as that of a physicist, when asked if he is a “Newtonian” or of a biologist when asked if he is a “Pasteurian.” There are truths so evident, so much a part of the peoples’ knowledge, that it is now useless to debate them. One should be a “Marxist” with the same naturalness with which one is a “Newtonian” in physics or a “Pasteurian.” If new facts bring about new concepts, the latter will never take away that portion of truth possessed by those that have come before. Such is the case, for example, of “Einsteinian” relativity or of Planck’s quantum theory in relation to Newton’s discoveries. They take absolutely nothing away from the greatness of the learned Englishman. Thanks to Newton, physics was able to advance until it achieved new concepts of space. The learned Englishman was the necessary stepping-stone for that. Obviously, one can point to certain mistakes of Marx, as a thinker and as an investigator of the social doctrines and of the capitalist system in which he lived. We Latin Americans, for example, cannot agree with his interpretation of Bolivar, or with his and Engels’ analysis of the Mexicans, which accepted as fact certain theories of race or nationality that are unacceptable today. But the great men who discover brilliant truths live on despite their small faults and these faults serve only to show us they were human. That is to say, they were human beings who could make mistakes, even given the high level of consciousness achieved by these giants of human thought. This is why we recognize the essential truths of Marxism as part of humanity’s body of cultural and scientific knowledge. We accept it with the naturalness of something that requires no further argument.

Charles Darwin, who had witnessed the atrocities perpetrated against Argentina’s native Indians by Juan Manuel de Rosas, had predicted that “the country will be in the hands of white Gaucho savages instead of copper-coloured Indians. The former being a little superior in education, as they are inferior in every moral virtue.

Es importante elegir correctamente el instrumento de movilización de las masas. Este instrumento debe ser de índole moral, fundamentalmente, sin olvidar una correcta utilización del estímulo material, sobre todo de naturaleza social.

If you are curious and open to the life around you, if you are disturbed as to how, by, and against whom wealth and political power is held and used, if you sense there must be good reasons for your unease, if your curiosity and openness drive you toward wanting to act with others, to "do something," you have much in common with the writers of the three essays in Manifesto.

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.

In these circumstances people in poor families who can't pay their way are surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, by extension, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them.

ان ثورتنا قد صنعها أمثال دافيد الذين لم يكونوا يفهمون كثيرا ، وأمثال بانديراس الذين سقطوا صرعى قبل أن يروا انبثاق الفجر ، كما صنعتها التضحيات العمياء ، التضحيات المغفلة التي لم تنل جزاء ولا شكورا . ونحن الذين نستطيع اليوم أن نتأمل في انجازات الثورة ، علينا أن نذكر اولئك الذين سقطوا على الطريق ونبذل كل الجهد لكي يقل عددهم في المستقبل

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.

[W]e understood 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] demands they understand that pride in serving our fellow man is much more important than a good income; that the people's gratitude is much more permanent, much more lasting than all the gold one can accumulate.

In the early 1960s, during the chaos after the end of Belgian colonial rule, the Congo was the world’s epicentre for mercenary activity. Soldiers of fortune came here to fight, at different times, for the government, against the government, against the United Nations, alongside the United Nations. Some of the mercenaries liked fighting so much they fought among themselves. There were those, like Che Guevara, who dressed up their involvement in ideological terms, arguing that it was part of an effort to spread socialist revolution, but many others (mostly, but not exclusively, white) had more venal motives – a passion for violence and loyalty that was transferable to whoever paid most.

ذلك هو طراز الرجال الذين كانت تجري بهم الثورة. فهم في البدء ثوار على كل ظلم ، ثوار منفردون ينتهي بهم الأمر الى أن يعتادوا الانشغال بشؤونهم الشخصية الصغيرة دون الاهتمام بقلب النظام الاجتماعي. ولا تكاد الثورة ترخي لحظة قبضة مراقبتها بعض الشيء حتى يقعوا في الأخطاء التي تقودهم الى الجريمة بسهولة مذهلة كان الظرف يقتضي قبضة حديدية. لقد كان يجب انزال عقوبة تكون عبرة لوضع حد لكل محاولة خروج على النظام وتصفية بؤر الفوضوية في تلك المناطق المحرومة من حكومة مستقرة

This edition of The Motorcycle Diaries, the notes describing a journey made without hesitation, aboard the noisy motorcycle La Poderosa II (which gave out halfway, but only after transmitting to the adventure a joyous impulse we, too, receive), free as the wind, with the sole purpose of getting to know the world, is dedicated to people whose youth is not merely sequential, but wholehearted and spiritual.

I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel, or perhaps it’s better to say that traveling is our destiny, because Alberto feels the same. Still, there are moments when I think with profound longing of those wonderful areas in our south. 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.

[1965] To my children Dear Hildita, Aleidita, Camilo, Celia, And Ernesto, If you ever have to read this letter, it will be because I am no longer with you. You practically will not remember me, and the smaller ones will not remember me at all. Your father has been a man who acted on his beliefs and has certainly been loyal to his convictions. Grow up as good revolutionaries. Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature. Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone is worth nothing. Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world. This is the most beautiful quality in a revolutionary. Until forever, my children. I still hope to see you. A great big kiss and a big hug from, Papa

Realmente apena que tomen medidas de represión para las personas como estas. Dejando de lado el peligro que puede ser o no para la vida sana de una colectividad, "el gusano comunista", que había hecho eclosión en él, no era nada más que un natural anhelo de algo mejor, una protesta contra el hambre inveterada traducida en el amor a esa doctrina extraña cuya esencia no podría nunca comprender, pero cuya traducción: "pan para el pobre" eran palabras que estaba a su alcance, más aún, que llenaban su existencia.