Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Fidel Castro represents the dignity of the South American continent against empires. He's a living legend: an icon of independence and freedom across the continent.
If I am elected President, the Castro regime will have no reason to doubt our unwavering commitment to your cause. The regime will feel the full weight of American resolve.
I'm actually Cuban-born, born in 1956, the year Fidel Castro came into power, and my father moved my family to Miami a few years later when things were starting to look bad.
Unlike the Vietnam boat people or Cuban refugees after Castro came to power, the U.S. has no moral responsibility for the chaos in Syria. In fact, just the opposite is the case.
I played for Almendares in Cuba. Guess who was trying out for the team? Castro. Fidel Castro, as a pitcher. He could throw pretty hard, but he was wild. He didn't have any control.
I won't perform in Cuba until there's no more Castro and there's a free Cuba. To me, Cuba's the biggest prison in the world, and I would be very hypocritical were I to perform there.
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.
Exploring Castro's pawns in Cuba and exposing anything negative also makes you a pawn to all his enemies 90 miles away. Both sides don't have much of a track record for nuance of opinion.
Our focus needs to be on freeing dissidents and continuing to support the opposition movement within Cuba - not rewarding Castro and subsidizing and strengthening his totalitarian regime.
The Obama administration benefited the Castro regime. The Trump administration plans to benefit the Cuban people by taking away power from the government and directly emboldening citizens.
When Castro was put on trial in 1953 by Batista's government and asked who was intellectually responsible for his first attempt at insurrection, he dropped the name of the poet Jose Marti.
My parents didn't agree with what was going on, you know, with the communists coming in, Fidel Castro. I didn't see the reason why I needed to go back there and be a part of that exhibition.
Was Castro sincere when, during his guerrilla war, he swore that he was not a Communist? If so, when did he change, and why? Looking back, does he believe he might have chosen a better course?
Here in Florida, we know plenty about the Castro brothers, and we hear stories of their ruthless and violent rule far too often. It is shameful that we would grant them any shred of legitimacy.
Londoners deserve a great, free music festival with excellent bands from around the world. They don't need to be hectored about why racism is bad or accosted by activists explaining why Castro is a hero.
There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba.
If you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, if you believe in people's rights, if you believe in the harmony of all humankind - then you have no choice but to back Fidel Castro as long as it takes!
Castro was always using his athletes as a way of symbolically defeating the United States in the ring, and after these Cubans defeated Americans in the ring, they were turning down exorbitant sums to leave the island.
While Fidel Castro used to deliver his marathon seven-hour speeches in Havana, Cubans used to joke that if Spanish lacked a future tense, their leader would be speechless. He was only fluent in broken promises, they lamented.
I've had meetings with Fidel Castro. I've had meetings with Kim Il-Sung. I've had meetings with other dictators. I've met with the Butcher of Beijing. You know, I think it's important to hear, you know, each other's perspective.
Ali vs. Stevenson would have served as a symbolic battle between the United States and Cuba, capitalism and communism: Castro's values instilled in his boxers pitted against the values of 'merchandise' boxers from the rest of the world.
In August 1961, I visited President Kennedy at Hyannis Port. The Berlin Wall was going up, and he was about to begin a huge military buildup - reluctantly, or so he said, as he puffed on a cigar liberated by a friend from Castro's Cuba.
My grandfather left Cuba when Castro came into power and literally left everything. He had two suitcases and two kids and showed up in New Jersey and waited for my uncle to meet up with him. Imagine - there were no cell phones back then!
Since Castro took power, the Cuban people have been denied basic human freedoms. No freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no political freedom. And the regime uses brutality and violence to suppress these freedoms and impose its will.
In recent years, we have seen the United States back away from pressuring the Castro regime, under the misguided view that placating them with an open hand would yield progress. That naivete has invited only more cruelty and oppression in return.
I have covered wars, before the epidemic began and since. They are all ugly and painful and unjust, but for me, nothing has matched the dread I felt while walking through the Castro, the Village, or Dupont Circle at the height of the AIDS epidemic.
I grew up in Cuba under a strong, military, oppressive dictatorship. So as a teenager, I found myself involved in a revolution. I remember during that time, a young, charismatic leader rose up, talking about hope and change. His name was Fidel Castro.
Stalin, Lenin, Marx, Mao, Pol Pot, Antifa, Castro, Che Guevara and the like use power to reduce the sanctity of the individual for the common good of the collective. It is a kind of enslavement that degrades the human spirit and makes us poorer over time.
Since he took power over half a century ago, Fidel Castro proved to be a brutal dictator who must always be remembered by his gross abuses of human rights, systemic exploitation of Cubans, unrelenting repression, and stifling censorship upon his own people.
It seems disrespectful to my parents who left... to hear their story over and over again which always ends with... 'and I'll never go back as long as anyone in the Castro family is in power.' Well, what happens if you can go back? Would you want to see things?
My documentary 'Split Decision' examines Cuban-American relations, and the economic and cultural paradoxes that have shaped them since Castro's revolution, through the lens of elite Cuban boxers forced to choose between remaining in Cuba or defecting to America.
Fidel Castro's most scandalous show trial was not mounted against a political figure but against a writer: Heberto Padilla. In 1971, after 38 days of detention, Mr. Padilla was forced to 'confess' at the Cuban writers' union to the charges of 'subversive activities.'
I don't think I win most interviews. For instance, with Fidel Castro, I only spoke with him one minute and three seconds. But I think he won because I couldn't get anything from him. With the former president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, it happened exactly the same thing.
I lived in Cuba - I was there for one year in the 1950s. We built the famous nightclub, which is still there, Tropicana, and a restaurant, Montecatini, that I opened is still there. I was there when the U.S. ambassador said everyone must leave because Castro was arriving the next morning.
I think a lot of people saw 'Fight Club' and thought, 'Right, here's our next Che Guevara, here's our next Fidel Castro, here's someone who's going to wave the flag.' And I was like, 'No, it's just a book. And if I beat that drum, if I play that song one more time, I won't have a career.'
The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.
Fidel is a Marxist-Leninist. I am not. Fidel is an atheist. I am not. One day, we discussed God and Christ. I told Castro, I am a Christian. I believe in the Social Gospels of Christ. He doesn't. Just doesn't. More than once, Castro told me that Venezuela is not Cuba, and we are not in the 1960s.
I remembered staffing a volunteer table for ACT UP in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood in 1991, on the corner of Castro and 18th Street, and on my table were posters, stickers, and t-shirts that bore the same slogan in all caps - ACT UP slogan house style. I wore one of those shirts to model for passers-by.
I have very liberal parents. People forget that Fidel Castro was on the cover of 'Time' magazine, and the one that I remember the most - it's not necessarily my favorite - was when they dressed me as Castro when I was eight years old. I was in fatigues, camouflage hat, beard and cigar. I don't think I did that well with candy that year.