I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun.

If there ever was in the history of humanity an enemy who was truly universal, an enemy whose acts and moves trouble the entire world, threaten the entire world, attack the entire world in any way or another, that real and really universal enemy is precisely Yankee imperialism.

I can assure you that my first and foremost interest is my country. This is not a personal matter. We are not people driven by a wish to be in the government since [it] is for us the least attractive work, even though we are politicians.

You Americans keep saying that Cuba is ninety miles from the United States. I say that the United States is ninety miles from Cuba and for us, that is worse.

Sorry, I'm still a dialectical materialist.

It would have been the easiest thing in the world for us to build those emplacements under the guise of something totally different and they would have never been discovered. The amazing thing was that they weren't discovered earlier. It was a question of carelessness, lack of foresight.

I neither will aspire to nor will I accept, the position of president of the council of state and commander in chief.