Here are some of my favorite lines from the book:
"Guerrillas of no matter what label will continue to be born as long as there are Somozas, as long as there are injustices and crimes engendered by such regimes, and as long as there are, fortunately, men unwilling to put up with them."
"Above all, I had chosen him (Che Guevara) because he was becoming a myth and I have always been more beguiled by myths than by ideas."
"Though Americans were not bringing new ideas, they were contaminating the peoples of the world with a certain way of life that was rapidly gaining ground everywhere and threatening to win this race with revolution."
"The US is unlike the rest of the American hemisphere, where vagabonds always have some chance of darting between visas and frontiers. It's a serious, efficient world in which fantasy, contempt for laws and conventions, everything that Che loved, is not tolerated. Che was never to like the United States, or Switzerland. These countries were much too orderly for him, and order and organization frightened him. He felt that they destroyed man and lulled his sense of rebellion."
"He (Che) was more convinced than anyone that the physical life of men is not the most important thing, but that it is their conduct that is uppermost."
"Revolution is not a synonym for armed struggle. Its essential feature is the passage of the power of property and the principal means of essential production from one class to another."
"Oligarchy is a word constantly used in Latin America. Everybody either wants to get into it, comes from it, or has just left it. The real oligarchs are the large landowners, the terratenientes, who in a time where their peones can tune in on Radio Habana on their transistors, still want to go on living as though in the Middle ages. To this group also belong the politicians, the businessmen, the allies of American big business, and the generals and colonels who in return for serving them are permitted to sweep up the crumbs from their tables."
"Rarely in history has a man like Che, a man who was not known to be either living or dead, had such influence on the destiny of a continent. But this influence is by no means over. The myth survives the man and already has no need of him."
"He was thought of as an uneducated man - in other words, lacking in hypocrisy."
"Oil is a poisoned gift, dependent upon chance and geology. It's not something you deserve, and it's not something men can do anything about. Both the best and the worst can come from it, and generally it's the worst."
"Once, all the musicians of the Bogota Conservatory traveling in a bus were decapitated by Liberal bandoleros. Since they belonged to the conservatory, they were obviously conservatives."
"The guerrilla forces are above all a political, economic, and social problem - a problem the army cannot resolve."
"The leaders and most of the members of the guerrilla forces, of course, all belong to the country's best families, those who had both power and money. Everything took place between people of the same social world, and whether they wanted to or not, the parents had to come to the aid of their sons. Slowly but surely, everybody was involved."
"Because he tried to assume the mantle
of Bolivar in a bad time with faulty methods, Che is now dead. Others
will try and others will fail. Only one need succeed…"