Top 120 Ernesto Che Guevara Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Fighting Quotes, Struggle Quotes, History Quotes

2. “Better to die standing, than to live on your knees.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

3. “Be realistic, demand the impossible!”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes, Impossible Quotes

4. “The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

5. “If you have the capacity to tremble with indignation every time that an injustice is committed in the world, then we are comrades.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Hard Hitting Quotes, Changing the World Quotes, Resistance Quotes, Justice Quotes

6. “Let the world change you and you can change the world.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Changing the World Quotes

7. “The true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Changing the World Quotes

8. “To accomplish much you must first lose everything.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

9. “Live your life not celebrating victories, but overcoming defeats.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

10. “Every day, people straighten up their hair. Why not the heart?”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

11. “It’s not my fault if reality is Marxist.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Resistance Quotes

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

14. “Above all, try always to be able to feel deeply any injustice committed against any person in any part of the world. It is the most beautiful quality of a revolutionary.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Empathy Quotes, Quality Quotes, Conscience Quotes

15. “We travel just to travel.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

16. “Silence is argument carried out by other means.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

17. “It is an illusion to think that the matter cannot be resolved through words.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

18. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

19. “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

20. “One has to grow hard but without ever losing tenderness.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

21. “I don’t care if I fall as long as someone else picks up my gun and keeps on shooting.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

22. “The best form of saying is being.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

23. “Words that do not match deeds are not important.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

24. “To execute a man we don’t need proof of his guilt. We only need proof that it’s necessary to execute him. It’s that simple.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

25. “We must strive everyday so that love of living humanity will be transformed into actual deeds, into acts that serve as examples, as a moving force.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

26. “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

27. “Democracy cannot consist solely of elections that are nearly always fictitious and managed by rich landowners and professional politicians.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

28. “How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

30. “We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

31. “Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think as individuals!”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

32. “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

33. “Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

35. “The desire to sacrifice an entire lifetime to the noblest of ideals serves no purpose if one works alone.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

36. “As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Country Quotes

37. “Democracy is not compatible with financial oligarchy.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

38. “There are no borders in this fight to the death; we cannot be indifferent to what is happening in any part of the world.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

39. “We have no right to believe that freedom can be won without struggle.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

40. “When forces of oppression come to maintain themselves in power against established law, peace is considered already broken.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

41. “You know, comrade Pachman, I don’t enjoy being a Minister, I would rather play chess like you, or make a revolution in Venezuela.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

42. “Chess is an effective means to educate and train the human intellect.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

43. “One does not necessarily have to wait for a revolutionary situation: it can be created.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

44. “A smoke in times of rest is a great companion to the solitary soldier.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

45. “I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

Featured in: Country Quotes

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

48. “A revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the The Wall!”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

49. “I knew that the moment the great governing spirit strikes the blow to divide all humanity into just two opposing factions, I would be on the side of the common people.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

50. “Guerrilla warfare is used by the side which is supported by a majority but which possesses a much smaller number of arms for use in defense against oppression.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara