Brin-Jonathan Butler Quotes

Fidel Castro for me is like a father.

I lived in Cuba - I was there for one year in the 1950s. We built the famous nightclub, which is still there, Tropicana, and a restaurant, Montecatini, that I opened is still there. I was there when the U.S. ambassador said everyone must leave because Castro was arriving the next morning.

My parents didn't agree with what was going on, you know, with the communists coming in, Fidel Castro. I didn't see the reason why I needed to go back there and be a part of that exhibition.

Our Cuba policy didn't make much sense during the Cold War and makes even less sense now.

I never wanted to be a Cold War novelist.

If a narrow-minded FBI agent slipped into Aaron McGruder’s Los Angeles penthouse apartment, his eyes would get wide. Just inside the front door is a photograph of Fidel Castro riding into Havana Jan. 1, 1959.

Castro doesn’t need spies. All he has to do is read the newspapers.

The Catholic Church played an integral role in supporting the opening between the U.S. and Cuban governments.

The Elian events were shocking to Cubans because we were the fair-haired boys of the Cold War. The problem is, the Cold War ended.

The Bay of Pigs was an operation the United States endorsed. That was a preventive operation. We were afraid that Castro was going to subvert the hemisphere.

As I look back at the span of the Cold War in those early days, in the '50s, for example, there was a great deal of Soviet propaganda here in the United States, but it was clumsy, and it was anchored to a lot of ideological support in certain circles in America itself.

One must say bluntly that it is an unattractive sight when, with a view to smearing the Soviet people, leaders of such a country as the United States resort to what almost amounts to obscenities alternating with hypocritical preaching about morals and humanism.

At the height of the Cold War, when Ronald Reagan was president, the Soviets and their allies and satellites did not shirk human rights debates with the West. They had their arguments ready.

Fidel is really a special case. He's a personality of history.

Che came in 1963, shortly after I had come to power.

The way politics divides the world is into friend and enemy.

There's some new evidence that has just come out about the CIA planning terrorist attacks on U.S. soil in the '60s and how they were going to set up Castro for it in order to get America behind a war in Cuba.

The first thing out of Fidel Castro's mouth to me, he looked me right in the eye and said, 'You're a man of great courage.'

Few living figures could contribute as much as Castro to our understanding of the second half of the 20th century.

The greatest promotion I ever had on a newspaper was when 'The Washington Post' suddenly promoted me from city-side general assignment reporter to Latin American correspondent and sent me off to Cuba. Fidel Castro had just come to power. It was a very exciting assignment, but also very serious.

I don’t want some bearded dictator ninety miles off thumbing his nose at us.

Kennedy tried to kill Castro. Castro got Kennedy first.

President Eisenhower is a communist dupe!

The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh, but it is not a dagger in the heart.... I have no evidence that the Cuban people are able and willing at this time to assist any invasion from the outside.

[Fidel] Castro was gifted leader who engineered social improvements that benefitted most Cubans, a statesman who placed Cuba at the center of world politics, and a masterful tactician who outlasted ten hostile U. S. Presidents…