Top 10 Quotes by Fidel Castro About Himself, the World and Ideas

This combo of three file photos shows Fidel Castro (from left to right): smoking a cigar in Havana, Cuba, April 29, 1961; speaking to the media while on a mission to collect Elian Gonzales in Washington, D.C., April 6, 2000; and at his Havana home on February 13, 2016

"Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me," Castro famously declared at his trial in 1953 for the Moncada Barracks attack.

Above: Nikita Khrushchev (third from the left) and Fidel Castro visiting the Duripsh collective farm.

Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro (R) sees off the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev, at Jose Marti International Airport after Brezhnev's visit to the Republic of Cuba.

"I am not a dictator, and I do not think I will become one. I will not maintain power with a machine gun," Castro said during an interview with Ruth Lloyd in January 1959 (I Won't Be a Dictator).

Above: Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev (left) meeting with his Cuban counterpart Fidel Castro during his official visit to Cuba.

Cuban Prime Secretary of the Cuban Communist party and President of the State Council Fidel Castro addresses delegates of the General Assembly of the United Nations in New York. September 26, 1960.

"I have a heart of steel," Castro responded to media reports on alleged diagnosis of a heart condition in 1972.

Above: Cuban president Fidel Castro addresses Cuban youths as a dove rests on his shoulder during the celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the cuban revolution. Havana, January 8, 1989.

"A revolution is not a trail of roses... A revolution is a fight to the death between the future and the past," Castro said on January 2, 1961 during the second anniversary of the triumph of the revolution.

Above: Fidel Castro meets Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

Prime Minister of the Revolutionary Government of the Republic of Cuba Fidel Castro and soloist of the Bolshoi Theater ballet Maya Plisetskaya after the ballet "Swan Lake" in Moscow. January 1, 1963.

"Russia and China know the world’s problems much better than the US because they were obliged to endure the terrible wars imposed on them by fascism’s blind egoism. I have no doubt that they, given their historical traditions and revolutionary experience, will make the greatest effort to avoid war and contribute to the peaceful development of Venezuela, Latin America, Asia and Africa," Castro wrote to Venezuelan leader Nicholas Maduro in 2015.

Above: Fidel Castro (C) converses with Russia's President Vladimir Putin (R) in Havana, Cuba. July 11, 2014.

Cuban President Fidel Castro (L) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez joke during a batting session where Chavez pitched to Castro after taking part in a friendly baseball game between their two countries at the Barquisimeto baseball stadium. October 29, 2000.

"When I was a young boy, my father taught me that to be a good Catholic, I had to confess at church if I ever had impure thoughts about a girl. That very evening, I had to rush to confess my sin. And the next night, and the next. After a week, I decided religion wasn't for me," Castro once said, as quoted in The Atheist's Bible (2007).

Above: Pope Benedict XVI meets former Cuban leader Fidel Castro in Havana. March 28, 2012.

Cuban president Fidel Castro tries on a pair of sunglasses as he talks to the media in Havana during the IX Iberoamerican Summit. November 16, 1999.

"With what morality can the [US] leaders talk of human rights in a country where there are millionaires and beggars, where blacks face discrimination, women are prostituted, and great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans are deprecated, exploited and humiliated?" Castro inquired at the World Communist Youth Conference in 1978.

Above: Cuban First Secretary of the Cuban Communist party and President of the State Council Fidel Castro is seen wearing a chapka, in January 1964, near Moscow, during his official visit to USSR.

"This country … abounds in that Cuba is a heaven in the spiritual sense of the word, and we prefer to die in heaven than serve in hell," Castro said at the First World Congress on Literacy on February 2, 2005.

Above: Fidel Castro Ruz, Cuban revolutionary leader, President of the Council of State and Council of Ministers of the Republic of Cuba, meets with Young Pioneers in Uzbekistan.

Fidel Castro, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba, President of the State Council and the Council of Ministers of Cuba, head of delegation of Cuban communists at XXVII convention of CPSU making a record in the distinguished visitors' book at the main architectural and design department of Moscow.

Cuban First Secretary of the Cuban Communist party and President of the State Council Fidel Castro (C) poses with Ta Thi Kieu, hero of Liberation army of South Vietnam, during his visit in South Vietnam in September 1973.

"Men do not shape destiny. Destiny produces the man for the hour," Castro said during an interview with Ruth Lloyd in January 1959 (I Won't Be a Dictator).

Above: Cuban leader Fidel Castro Ruz cuts sugar cane in a Cuban field. October 10, 1962.

Fidel Castro, the young anti-Batista guerrilla leader (C) is seen with his brother Raul Castro (L) and Camilo Cienfuegos (R) while operating in the Mountains of Eastern Cuba. March 14, 1957.

"I am nearing 90. I will soon pass away like everyone else. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of Cuban communists are an evidence that, in case if we work with pathos and dignity, we can produce material and cultural values people need," Castro said at a congress of the Cuban Communist Party in 2016.

Above: Cuba's President Fidel Castro pauses as addresses a crowd of Latin American students gathered in Pedernales, in Holguin province, Cuba, for the anniversary of the attack on the Moncada barracks. July 26, 2006