“If you calculate 15 minutes a day to shave, that is 5,000 minutes a year spent shaving.”
- August 13, 1926 – November 25, 2016
- Cuban
- Revolutionary, Prime Minister and President of Cuba, Communist Leader
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Quote
“If you calculate 15 minutes a day to shave, that is 5,000 minutes a year spent shaving.”
Explanation
This quote offers a moment of humor and practicality from Fidel Castro, highlighting his personal reasoning for maintaining his famously unshaven appearance. By calculating the time spent shaving—15 minutes a day adding up to 5,000 minutes a year—Castro cleverly frames a personal grooming choice as an efficient, even revolutionary act. His point is not just about saving time, but about rejecting unnecessary rituals in favor of more purposeful activities.
Historically, Castro’s beard became a symbol of the guerrilla lifestyle adopted during the Cuban Revolution and remained part of his public image as a revolutionary. He later explained that keeping the beard was not only practical in the mountains but also became a symbol of resistance and identity, differentiating revolutionaries from bourgeois norms and appearances.
In today’s context, the quote is both a humorous anecdote and a reflection on how personal choices can embody larger values. It invites reflection on how much time and energy is spent on convention and appearance, versus substance and action. Castro’s beard—and his reasoning for it—thus becomes a small but potent reminder that efficiency, purpose, and symbolism can exist even in the everyday.
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