Top 205 Cuba Quotes

I acted when I was a real little kid. My mother was an actress in a Miami theater company comprised of actors from Cuba like her and I was the default kid.

When I was 13, I auditioned for the theater school, and I was there for four years. In the meantime, I did my first three movies, all in Cuba.

The truth is that the driver in policy is not the relationship between the United States and Cuba, but the relationship between Cubans, and that is far stronger than 50 years of intragovernment hostility.

What’s certain is that a totalitarian enclave like Cuba’s can’t continue to exist, so change will definitely come there, eventually.

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.

It didn’t get any more glamorous than Havana, Cuba, in the 1950s. I used to go there when I was a waiter on a cruise ship.

When I was a little boy, my dream was to play baseball and leave Cuba.

Trejo is one of the oldest boxing gyms in Cuba; it’s outdoor, and every great champion the country has produced has passed through and was forged in the open air.

One of the most depressing things about President Donald Trump’s decision to roll back elements of the Cuba opening is how predictable it was.

My eyes were bad. I stuttered. I had hepatitis, double pneumonia, even anemia. When I was 7, my family took me on a trip to Cuba, and all my ailments disappeared. Cuba gave me health, so I’ve been deeply attached to Cubans ever since.

My mother told me many stories about her childhood in Cuba. Living there had a profound impact on her and how she regards herself.

People in Cuba are victims.

I am Fidel Castro and we have come to liberate Cuba.

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.

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.

Then I received support from the Government to compete for my country, and to represent Cuba in competition.

In 1958, I was shooting a movie in Florida, and I decided to go to Havana, Cuba, to see what it was like.

My grandparents and my parents came over from Cuba with nothing to their name just for a chance of freedom and opportunity.

I wanted a name I could shape the music towards. I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba – ‘Lana Del Rey’ reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue.

There is a disturbing reincarnation of socialist and nationalist dictatorships raising their heads around the world and even in our own back yard. You see it in places like Venezuela and Bolivia, stoked in no small part by Cuba, and also in Central Asia, and troubling trends in Russia and China.

For more than fifty years, the United States pursued a policy of isolating and pressuring Cuba. While the policy was rooted in the context of the Cold War, our efforts continued long after the rest of the world had changed.

When Cuba Gooding Jr. and I were doing ‘The Trip to Bountiful,’ we would always go to BXL, a Belgian restaurant/bar. It was across the street from the theater, and they have amazing mussels.

Sending $300 to your grandma in Cuba doesn’t change the dynamic with Castro.

Fifty years of isolating Cuba had failed to promote democracy, setting us back in Latin America. That’s why we restored diplomatic relations, opened the door to travel and commerce, and positioned ourselves to improve the lives of the Cuban people.

You get told a lot in school to tell what you know, write what you know. But what excites me about filmmaking, about being a storyteller, is being able to learn about other people, putting myself in somebody else’s shoes, whether that be someone from the Dominican Republic or someone from Cuba or inner-city Brooklyn.

People in America think of it as a sad and downtrodden place, and I guess it could be, but it’s not because that’s not who Cubans are. In Cuba, you get a good story every day you go out walking. People are so funny.

My dad left when I was a little boy and I grew up with my mother’s family. There were foundations in the U.S. where Jewish people got together and sent money to Cuba, so we got some of that. We were a poor family, but I was always a happy kid.

I’d never seen Rigondeaux’s face without it being obscured by headgear or a photograph of Fidel he was holding up after winning a tournament. Finally I saw him, only to recognize the saddest face I’d ever seen in Cuba.

I had always wanted to include images in a novel, and with my first book, ‘Telex From Cuba,’ I made an elaborate website that is basically all images.

As the son of a Cuban refugee and cousin and nephew to many Cubans on the island, I cringe when Americans visit Cuba for a fun island vacation.

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.

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.

Because he’ll take me to Cuba and I don’t want to go to Cuba.

The United States is paradise compared to China, Russia, Ecuador and Cuba, with regard to the press. And with regard to secrecy and transparency.

Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.

Due to a big bust in Cuba, my father’s business suffered badly, so I was free to choose my own career. I became a professional dancer, and I went on the road and started making real money.

My family is very creative. My grandfather played the guitar in Cuba. My sisters, my mom and two aunts would do harmonies, so I would see them and think, ‘I want the attention.’

In Cuba we use our champions to promote the sport.

In socialism, everything is supposed to be equal. And yet, it’s always fascinating how the elite government bureaucrats (in socialist places like Venezuela, Cuba and Argentina) are the ones that wind up with all the money.

I realized that it’s all really one, that John Lennon was correct. We utilize the music to bring down the walls of Berlin, to bring up the force of compassion and forgiveness and kindness between Palestines, Hebrews. Bring down the walls here in San Diego, Tijuana, Cuba.

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.

Look what we did with Cuba. You isolate a country, and all you do is impoverish that country.

I don’t think of investing in Cuba after all the hardships of the people there as a profit-making thing for us. I have thought of it as revitalizing the island.

Many things shall change in Cuba, but they shall change because of our efforts and despite the United States. Perhaps that empire shall crumble first.

Both of my parents were born into poor families on the island of Cuba. They came to America because it was the only place where people like them could have a chance.

Kennedy had made a mess in Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. He had to do something to look good. The Apollo program of going to the Moon was quite a goal.

I used to run a night club in Fort Myers, Florida called Norma Jean’s Dance Club. That was the hottest spot from Sarasota to Cuba.

To the developing world, Cuba has been a symbol of sovereignty and resistance and a supporter of revolution – for good or bad. From the Missile Crisis to the anti-apartheid movement, from the Kennedys to Obama era, this small island has put itself at the center of world events.

That’s what I considered Cuba to be… the most loving place I’ve ever been in my life. And the fact that there’s no crime. You walk in the street at any time, and you feel like nothing is going to happen.

I don’t want anything from Cuba. I want them to be free and enjoy the things I enjoy.

If the two economies can figure out how to waltz… I think there is benefit for Colorado colleges and universities, and I think there are benefits for Cuba as well.

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 well-stuffed slave masters currently gorging themselves in Cuba’s halls of power need to be held accountable.

Cuba is only 90 miles from Florida, but for a long time, the distance between our two countries seemed a lot greater.

My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That’s the world in which I grew up, and that’s a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.