The Motorcycle Diaries Quotes

Ernesto Ché Guevara The deeper we go into the Andes the more indigenous people we encounter, who are homeless in their own land. All across our own land.

Book It is at times like this, when a doctor is conscious of his complete powerlessness, that he longs for change: a change to prevent the injustice of a system in which only a month ago this poor woman was still earning her living as a waitress, wheezing and panting but facing life with dignity. In circumstances like this, individuals in poor families who can’t pay their way become surrounded by an atmosphere of barely disguised acrimony; they stop being father, mother, sister or brother and become a purely negative factor in the struggle for life and, consequently, a source of bitterness for the healthy members of the community who resent their illness as if it were a personal insult to those who have to support them. ~ Ernesto Ché Guevara

Book he black is indolent and fanciful, he spends his money on frivolity and drink; the European comes from a tradition of working and saving which follows him to this corner of America and drives him to get ahead, even independently of his own individual aspirations.

Ernesto Ché Guevara Me, I'm not the same me, at least not the same spiritual me.

Ernesto Ché Guevara A revolution without guns? It would never work.

Ernesto Ché Guevara This isn’t a tale of heroics, nor is it merely some kind of ‘cynical account’; it isn’t meant to be, at least. It’s simply two lives running parallel for a while, with common aspirations and similar dreams.

Ernesto Ché Guevara Wandering around our America has changed me more than I thought. I am not me any more. At least I'm not the same me I was.

Ernesto Ché Guevara Even though we are too insignificant to be spokesmen for such a noble cause, we believe, and this journey has only confirmed this belief, that the division of American into unstable and illusory nations is a complete fiction. We are one single mestizo race from Mexico to the Magellan Straits. And so, in an attempt to free ourselves from narrow minded provincialism, I propose a toast to Peru and to a united America.

Book I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people ~ Ernesto Ché Guevara

Book *The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, trans. Ann Wright, Verso, London and New York, (1995) p. 148

Book What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land" ~ Ernesto Ché Guevara

Book All of them, all those who can’t adapt – you and I, for instance – will die cursing the power which they helped bring about with often enormous sacrifices. Revolution is impersonal, so it will take their lives and even use their memory as an example or as an instrument to control the young people coming after them…you will die with your fist clenched and your jaw tense, the perfect manifestation of hatred and struggle, because you aren’t a symbol (some inanimate example), you are an authentic member of the society to be destroyed; the spirit of the beehive speaks through your mouth and moves through your actions. You are as useful as I am, but you don’t realize how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you. ~ Ernesto Ché Guevara

Book *The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey around South America, trans. Ann Wright, Verso, London and New York, (1995) pp. 148-149

Ernesto Ché Guevara (To Alberto): Are you talking to the motorcycle again?

Ernesto Ché Guevara What we had in common – our restlessness, our impassioned spirits, and a love for the open road.

Ernesto Ché Guevara You gotta fight for every breath and tell death to go to hell.

Ernesto Ché Guevara How is it possible to feel nostalgia for a world I never knew?

Book At night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look out over the immense sea, full of white-flecked and green reflections, the two of us leaning side by side on the railing, each of us far away, flying his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of his own dreams. There we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only very faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. ~ Ernesto Ché Guevara

Ernesto Ché Guevara What do we leave behind when we cross each frontier? Each moment seems split in two; melancholy for what was left behind and the excitement of entering a new land.

Ernesto Ché Guevara We look like outlaws inspiring admiration everywhere we go. We’ve left civilization behind and we are much closer to the land.

Book The blacks, those magnificent examples of the African race who have conserved their racial purity by a lack of affinity with washing, have seen their patch invaded by a different kind of slave: The Portuguese.