Subcomandante Marcos Quotes

A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

Yet would we die as some have done, beating a way for the rising sun.

Despair and frustration will not shake our belief that the resistance is the only way of liberation.

Freedom has cost too much blood and agony to be relinquished at the cheap price of rhetoric.

We shall not fight for the preservation of the enemy, which has laid waste with death and desolation the fields and hills of Ireland for 700 years.

Freedom is not a gift nor does it simply exist for us to have, but rather it is a sacred duty, and its blessed yield of hope is born from none other than the blood of the innocent.

Movements begin when oppressed people make - and keep remaking - a deeply inward decision to stop consenting to external demands that contradict a critical inner truth, the truth that they are worthy of respect.

My fellow revolutionaries, liberation is a noble cause. We must fight to obtain it.

The great appear great to us only because we are on our knees;, LET US RISE!

Liberty has its roots in blood.

Better to starve fighting than to starve working.

If it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and mingle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments, I say, let it be done. [He was executed.]

The people's flag is deepest red; It shrouded oft our martyred dead .... Then raise the scarlet standard high. Within its shade we'll live or die. Tho' cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here.

The road to freedom has always been stalked by death.

Neither God, nor angels, or just men, command you to suffer for a single moment. Therefore it is your solemn and imperative duty to use every means, both moral, intellectual, and physical, that promise success .... Brethren, arise, arise! Strike for your lives and liberties.... Let your motto be resistance, resistance, resistance!

The tree of liberty could not grow were it not watered with the blood of tyrants

The tyrant dies and his rule is over; the martyr dies and his rule begins.

It is better to die fighting than to live begging.

When people rise, they must have a goal worthy of them. Must paltry goods be of concern to them?... The people must rise up not to collect sugar, but to bring down the tyrants.

The main fight of Frelimo is against human exploitation.

At the moment of greatest love, there is greatest fear, and at the moment of enormous repression, there is resistance, and therefore a chance at revolutionary change.

A revolution is not a painless march to the gates of freedom and justice. It is a struggle between rage and hope, between the temptation to destroy and the desire to build.