Top 120 Ernesto Che Guevara Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

52. “The world must not only be interpreted, it must be transformed. Man ceases to be the slave and tool of his environment and converts himself into the architect of his own destiny.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

53. “The ultimate and most important revolutionary aspiration: to see human beings liberated from their alienation.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

54. “A new era will dawn in Africa, when the impoverished masses of a nation rise up to rescue their right to a decent life from the hands of the ruling oligarchies.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

55. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

56. “How can it be “mutually beneficial” to sell at world market prices the raw materials that cost the underdeveloped countries immeasurable sweat and suffering.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

57. “In a revolution, one triumphs or dies.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

58. “We must not return to the practice of hiding our defects so they may not be seen. That would be neither honest nor revolutionary.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

59. “The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

60. “Justice remains the tool of a few powerful interests; legal interpretations will continue to be made to suit the convenience of the oppressor powers.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

61. “If any person has a good word for the previous government that is good enough for me to have him shot.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

62. “It is not just a simple game, it is a weapon of the revolution.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

64. “Peaceful coexistence cannot be limited to the powerful countries if we want to ensure world peace.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

65. “Real revolutionaries adorn themselves on the inside, not on the surface.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

66. “We are overcome by anguish at this illogical moment of humanity.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

67. “The question is one of fighting the causes and not just being satisfied with getting rid of the effects.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

68. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

69. “It is not a matter of wishing success to the victim of aggression, but of sharing his fate; one must accompany him to his death or to victory.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

70. “I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ I fight for the things I believe in, with all the weapons at my disposal and try to leave the other man dead so that I don’t get nailed to a cross or any other place.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

71. “The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

72. “Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

73. “This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

74. “I wanted to take part in the liberation of even a small piece of enslaved Latin America.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

75. “In fact, if Christ himself stood in my way, I, like Nietzsche, would not hesitate to squish him like a worm.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

76. “Blind hate against the enemy creates a forceful impulse that cracks the boundaries of natural human limitations, transforming the soldier in an effective, selective and cold killing machine. A people without hate cannot triumph against the adversary.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

77. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

78. “Our youth must always be free, discussing and exchanging ideas concerned with what is happening throughout the entire world.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

79. “Direct aggression against Cuba would mean nuclear war. The Americans speak about such aggression as if they did not know or did not want to accept this fact. I have no doubt they would lose such a war.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

81. “Revolution cleanses men, improving them as the experimental farmer corrects the defects of his plants.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

82. “Arms cannot be regarded as merchandise in our world. They should be delivered to the peoples asking for them for use against the common enemy without any charge at all, and in quantities determined by the need and their availability.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

83. “The myth of the self-made man, has to be profoundly hypocritical: it is the self-serving demonstration that a lie is the truth.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

84. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

85. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

86. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

87. “The life of a single human being is worth a million times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

88. “Once again I feel beneath my heels the ribs of Rocinante. Once more, I’m on the road with my shield on my arm.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

89. “Bisogna essere duri senza mai perdere la tenerezza.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

90. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

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

— Ernesto Che Guevara

92. “It is a revolution that came to power with its own army and on the ruins of the army of oppression.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

93. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

94. “War is always a struggle in which each contender tries to annihilate the other. Besides using force, they will have recourse to all possible tricks and stratagems to achieve the goal.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

95. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

96. “The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire power.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

97. “Americans are given the sole option of electing their jailer for four years and sometimes do him the honour of re-electing him.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

98. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

99. “I am not Christ or a philanthropist, old lady, I am all the contrary of a Christ...”

— Ernesto Che Guevara

100. “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.”

— Ernesto Che Guevara