Che Guevara Quotes Proverbs, and Aphorisms
- June 14, 1928 – October 9, 1967
- Born in Argentina
- Revolutionary, doctor, writer, politician
Che Guevara was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, and guerrilla leader who played a key role in the Cuban Revolution alongside Fidel Castro. He became an international symbol of rebellion and anti-imperialism, advocating for armed struggle to liberate oppressed peoples. After helping establish communist rule in Cuba, Guevara attempted to spark similar uprisings in Africa and Latin America, ultimately being captured and executed in Bolivia in 1967. While admired by many as a hero of social justice and revolutionary idealism, others criticize his authoritarian methods and use of violence. His image endures as a powerful, though polarizing, icon of resistance and radical change.
- “The true revolutionary is guided by a great feeling of love. It is impossible to think of a genuine revolutionary lacking this quality.”
- “I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.”
- “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.”
- “Study hard so that you can master technology, which allows us to master nature.”
- “It is unnecessary to say that Fidel Castro possesses the high qualities of a fighter and statesman: our path, our struggle, and our triumph we owed to his vision.”
- “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”
- “The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.”
- “We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.”
- “Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.”
- “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.”
- “It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.”
- “The guerrilla fighters should be required to go to bed and get up at fixed hours. Games that have no social function and that hurt the morale of the troops and the consumption of alcoholic drinks should both be prohibited.”
- “Passion is needed for any great work, and for the revolution, passion and audacity are required in big doses.”
- “I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.”
- “How easy it is to govern when one follows a system of consulting the will of the people and one holds as the only norm all the actions which contribute to the well-being of the people.”
- “I have a wish. It as a fear as well – that in my end will be my beginning.”
- “The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.”
- “I could become very rich in Guatemala but by the low method of ratifying my title, opening a clinic, and specialising in allergies. To do that would be the most horrible betrayal of the two ‘I’s’ struggling inside me: the socialist and the traveller.”
- “Remember that the revolution is what is important, and each one of us, alone, is worth nothing.”
- “Silence is argument carried out by other means.”
- “A political event was that I met Fidel Castro, the Cuban revolutionary. He is a young, intelligent guy, very sure of himself and extraordinarily audacious; I think we hit it off well.”
- “I would probably have more in common with a whale than with a bourgeois married couple employed at worthy institutions that I would wipe from the face of the earth if it was given to me to do so.”
- “I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.”
- “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.”