Top 101 Cuban Quotes

From time to time, the irresponsible acts of the Cuban government remind us that this is far more than about the freedom of one country, but it really is about the stability and security of the region and the national security interests of the United States.

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface.

Socially, the Cuban revolution created an education system and health service that remain the envy of much of the neo-liberal world.

I’m a Hemingway fan, so in a manner of speaking, I’ve been fishing with him already. But man, would I love to board Pilar in Key West and head south until we have a day-long battle with a tarpon, haul that bad boy up, then celebrate by telling lies over rum on a Cuban terrace.

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.

Dominicans, Nicaraguans, and even the already highly skilled Cubans greatly improved their baseball skills when occupied by U.S. troops. The only acceptable resistance to a hated American presence was to try to beat them in baseball games.

I remember very vividly, as a child growing up in England, living through the Cuban Missile Crisis. For a few days, the entire biosphere seemed to be on the verge of destruction. And the same weapons are still here, and they’re still armed. If we avoid that trap, others are waiting for us.

The actions taken by the Cuban government with its new trade zone open up the potential of strategic investments from Mexico. Mexican companies are very excited.

I already had three strikes against me. One, I have light skin. Two, I’m from Miami, which wasn’t getting looked at at the time. Three, I’m Cuban. But now, I’ve made everything that stacked against me into a virtue.

It’s ridiculous how the United States practically every week sanctions Cuba and then uses manipulative language to say this is ‘helping’ the Cuban people.

I remember my parents taking me to see ‘The Exorcist’ in theaters when I was really young. They’re Cuban and didn’t really speak English, so I don’t think they got that it was a movie about a girl possessed by the devil.

I believe in the promise of America. Being a Cuban refugee, having come here when I was eight, I know that this is a shining city on the hill.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.

Today, everybody is more or less conscious of the total failure of the Cuban revolution to produce wealth, to produce a better standard of living for the Cubans. With the exception of small radical parties, Latin Americans know that it’s a brutal dictatorship and the longest in Latin American history.

What I’ll say is that Cuban-Americans don’t have to deal with the same immigration issues as other nationalities because of the ‘wet feet, dry feet’ policy. For Cubans, one year after you touch United States territory, you can become a legal resident.

If the United States has normalized relations with Cuba, why would we treat illegal immigrants from that nation any different than those from other countries? It is time we level the playing field and end the outdated, preferential treatment for Cubans.

I have the Cuban gene of speaking very loudly.

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.

I’m Cuban. My parents are immigrants.

In 1995, the Clinton Administration reached an agreement with Cuban government that any refugee caught at sea would be sent back to Cuba while any refugee who reaches the United States shores would be allowed to begin the process to citizenship after one year.

Jose Marti, known as ‘the Apostle of Cuban Independence,’ was an influential poet, journalist, and political theorist who became a symbol for the Cuban people’s bid for independence. The concepts of freedom, liberty, and self-determination feature prominently in his work.

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.

I definitely see myself as an international musician. When I play, I respect the source of the music, whether it’s Cuban, Brazilian or Israeli. I try to bring that to all of the music I play. Music has no borders and no flags.

The revenues of Cuban state-run companies are used exclusively for the benefit of the people, to whom they belong.

I was raised poor, in a tenement building in Union City, New Jersey, the son of Cuban immigrants.

To our brothers in Latin America and the world, we must convey that the Cuban people will overcome.

You have to understand your own personal DNA. Don’t do things because I do them or Steve Jobs or Mark Cuban tried it. You need to know your personal brand and stay true to it.

Millions of Millennials and Gen Zers were never exposed to the threats of the Soviet Union; they did not live through the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev; they do not remember the Mariel boatlift or the SALT treaties or the Cuban missile crisis.

My parents were founders of the Cuban Communist Party, and I grew up extremely poor.

Cuba is a nation stuck in time, and the regime’s complete control of businesses, the press and the Internet has kept the Cuban people from advancing and achieving their dreams.

Whether you hear me come out with another album or whether you hear any one of the Clan members, we’re always going to involve everybody. When I look at ‘Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, Part II,’ I look at that as a Wu album. You feel me? Even though it was my brand and my thing that I done, I had my dudes on it.

Ry Cooder for me is a master, a great master that has a wonderful feel for Cuban music. He’s also paid tribute my talent a bit, even though I don’t know half of what he knows.

Danzon is my favorite Cuban music, played by a traditional string orchestra with flute and piano. It’s very formally structured but romantic music, which derives from the French-Haitian contradance.

Growing up in Miami, being Cuban is integrated into our culture. When we greet anyone, we give them a kiss on the cheek.

When I first asked my boxing coach, two-time Olympic champion Hector Vinent, what made the Cuban style of fighting distinct from the rest of the world, he smiled and told me to sit on a bench in Prado and watch the Cuban women walk.

I hunt and fish, and I don’t fly on Lear jets, and I don’t smoke Cuban cigars.

Cuban athletes represent the most expensive human cargo on earth. They are sitting on over a billion dollars of human capital if these boxers and baseball players would come over to any other field or ring in the world and begin to ply their trade.

Castro branded Rigondeaux a ‘traitor’ and ‘Judas’ to the Cuban people.

The Cuban people have an amazingly strong and unbroken spirit.

With President Obama restoring diplomatic relations with Cuba, the immigration preferential treatment given to Cubans… no longer makes sense.

Those of my generation who grew up in the midst of the Cold War had a very, very strong awareness and very much were sort of influenced by the demonization of the Soviet Union, whether that was through the Cuban Missile Crisis or duck-and-cover, or any of those things that so affected us then.

My dad would call me his Cuban princess because I had really dark olive skin because I was always in the sun; but I don’t really go in the sun anymore, so that is why I am so white.

For more than fifty years, Americans and Cubans have been isolated from one another even though Cuba is only 90 miles away from Florida.

I’m not Cuban and therefore don’t have any family members who were oppressed by Castro’s regime. But I do have a number of friends whose families were.

Don’t blame America for the thousands of Cubans who have been arrested, detained, and imprisoned by Castro for peacefully protesting the regime.

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 grow up in the States, in Miami, but I was born in Guatemala, and my father’s Cuban, and in ‘Body of Lies,’ I played an Iraqi.

Politically speaking, Miami-Dade was once a Republican stronghold, thanks in large part to older Cuban voters who became more politically influential following the Bay of Pigs invasion. In contrast, Democrats used to rely on votes in North Florida and the Space Coast in an era of much softer partisanship.

My family is Jamaican and Cuban, but we would go to see our Jamaican side every summer for three months and every Christmas. One of the things I used to love was climbing trees and picking ackee fruit for breakfast.

I’m black and Cuban, Australian and Irish, and like most people in America, I’m someone whose roots come from somewhere else. I’m a mixed race, first-generation American.

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.

We want to open up more opportunities for U.S. businesses and travelers to engage with Cuba, and we want the Cuban government to open up more opportunities for its people to benefit from that engagement.

Violet speaks Spanish and understands it. She loves Cuban food! My mom is very good at teaching her about our culture, whether it be the food or Spanish or explaining to her that she’s Cuban.

I think there’ll be a little more Cuban coffee in the governor’s office once I’m up there.

I’m Cuban and Puerto Rican and Miami is very Cuban oriented. Growing up around the music – all of the salsa and meringue influenced me as an artist. I find myself gravitating to latin influences, sounds.

We Cubans are voting for our new constitution, we’re voting for Latin America and the Caribbean. We’re also voting for Venezuela, we’re defending Venezuela because in Venezuela the continent’s dignity is in play.

Let’s be honest: The trade embargo with Cuba hasn’t secured our interests or helped the Cuban people. Because the way to promote positive change and better human rights in Cuba is through engagement, not isolation.

I might be a Cuban American, but I’m also an Afro-Cuban American.

So many people in this country have a dual loyalty. They have loyalty to America, but they also are determined to have their parade up Fifth Avenue once a year… a Cuban parade or a Puerto Rican parade – many other countries. So they really don’t forget.

The unyielding resistance of the Cuban patriots is symbolized by our 5 Heroes. They shall never back down! They shall never surrender!

Cubans are frantic when it comes to appreciating music.

Some call me a Cuban hyphen American. I reject that. I don’t believe in hyphenated Americans.

In 1962, President Kennedy expanded an earlier trade embargo put in place by a predecessor, President Eisenhower, to a total economic blockade, which pushed the Cubans further in Moscow’s direction.

Rebuilding our relationship with Cuba would be a win for American business and a win for the Cuban people.

I have been obsessed with seamed stockings my whole life, and I would collect vintage ones that were made in the ’40s and ’50s with the authentic styling of the keyhole, the welt, the reinforced toe and heels, French or Cuban heels, and hand-stitched seams.

I love my heritage. I’m very proud of being Cuban. But I clearly understand that I am an American first.

Thousands of people perish in the Straits of Florida every year. We understand it within the context of the Cuban reality.

Everyone has a black guy inside them. Mine is a Cuban sonero who is 80-something years old and sings better than I do. His name is Medoro Madera. Medoro has been recording since 1997.

We had no clue that Cuba was not Marco Rubio. You get there, and everyone is Afro Cuban. And you start to realize, ‘Where are the blonde, blue-eyed Cubans? Oh, they’re all in Miami.’

A profoundly disturbing thing you discover very quickly traveling in Cuba is that the most dangerous person for Cubans isn’t the police or even the secret police; it’s their neighbor. Anyone can report you for anything ‘outside’ the revolution – even if you haven’t done it yet.

You have to eat right. That does not mean that I don’t drink Cuban coffee. That does not mean that I do not have two cigarettes a day – that’s what I’m down to. I drink wine – you know, I’m normal. But I do eat well.

My dad is such a Cuban man – he’s as stubborn as me.

I love meat – I’m Cuban; I grew up eating meat, platanos, and arroz con pollo. I don’t believe in starving yourself, but sometimes I do cleanses and diets to prepare for a role.

I really admire Ana Mendieta. She was a Cuban American artist who died the year I was born and whose work examines violence, feminism, and belonging. Her art is always brave and visually arresting and vibrates with meaning.

The U.S. has long characterized Haitian immigrants as criminals. This tradition began in 1963 when the first boat of Haitians seeking political asylum was summarily rejected by U.S. immigration officials, while at the same time the U.S. admitted thousands of Cubans as refugees and political asylees.

If you are playing a Hispanic character who has to speak in dialect or in an accent, nail that dialect or accent. When I hear a character that’s supposed to be Cuban speaking with a Mexican accent or vice versa, it grates on me and immediately pulls me out of the story.

The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

I want all Hispanics in the Republican Party, in the Democratic Party, whether Latin Americans, Central Americans, Cubans, Mexicans, I want us to unite.

My mom can cook really good Cuban food, so we go eat there on the regular. And the Cuban coffee – you know how you drink coffee at a really young age.

One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.

I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.

America is the greatest country in the world, but the Cuban people are great… They’re beautiful, warm people.

I gladly accepted the commission but was uncertain about what the end result would be. On the one hand, Cuban music was conquering the world; being heard everywhere, and our small island was already producing one of the popular musical genres of the 20th century.

I do eat what I want. I love meat – I’m Cuban: I grew up eating meat, platanos, and arroz con pollo. I don’t believe in starving yourself, but sometimes I do cleanses and diets to prepare for a role. I choose a lot of greens, proteins, and fats, and I like to be really active.

For more than fifty years, our policy towards Cuba was not making life better for Cubans. In many ways, it was making it worse.

The most terrifying moment in my life was October 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. I did not know all the facts – we have learned only recently how close we were to war – but I knew enough to make me tremble.

Mentors don’t have to be the Daymond Johns or the Mark Cubans. A person running a successful bodega or a tax firm in your community for the last 20 years, that person is working just as much as the individual who’s running General Mills.

Rock stars love Cuban heels because a lot of them tend to be diminutive. And I’ve never met a man who doesn’t mind having an extra inch or two anywhere on his body.

Culture is a fluid, ongoing process. People tend to look at culture in a fixed time but it’s constantly moving and evolving, as is the conversation between Americans and Cubans.

For tech, I like the ‘DailySearchCast’, ‘TWiT’ and anything Veronica Belmont does on CNET. I think Perez Hilton is a riot, and the rest of my consumption is by people: Folks like Dave Winer, Fred Wilson, Mark Cuban, Brian Alvey, Jeff Jarvis, Xeni Jardin, etc.

The embargo doesn’t affect the United States, not even minimally; all of Cuba’s economy is smaller than that of Miami-Dade County, and the ones who suffer the most are Cubans. If you talk to them in the street, they’re the ones most interested in the opening of a free market in their country.

I’m Cuban, so I know for a fact that we are the largest minority group in this country.

When it comes to wrestling, judo and boxing they are at a good level. They can compete in an international level. On the amateur level it is extremely high. Transitioning to MMA for them would be easy. I think we will see a lot more Cubans in MMA as it gets easier for them to complete.

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

President John F. Kennedy demonstrated the value of presidential credibility at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, when he sent emissaries to America’s allies in October 1962 to secure support for the quarantine of Cuba.

The lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis is plain: Strength prevents war; weakness invites it. We need a commander-in-chief who understands that – and who won’t leave us facing a foe who thinks he doesn’t.

Experience acquired in the heroic battle against Batista’s tyranny showed that the enemy, no matter what his strength, could not defeat the Cuban people.

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.’

Miami is one of these places where diversity is in our blood, where, you know, if you want to go have a Nicaraguan breakfast, a Cuban lunch, and an American diner dinner, you do.

Where the ‘Bay of Pigs’ invasion failed, undoubtedly the tourist invasion will succeed in forever changing the landscape of island. What comes next in Cuba? The answer is that many Cubans aren’t waiting around to find out.