Cuban Society Quotes

The world's longest-serving dictator has just stepped down and handed over power. The national project of Cuba, which was Fidel's vision, is now finished. It's something - a small something, but still something.

The Cuban model doesn't even work for us anymore.

With all of the people in Cuba who I met - many of them hugely heroic figures - I found learning about their complexity and richness and contradictions just really fascinating, and it was fulfilling to be able to offer a different side to them, to be able to have some kind of unique takeaway from the official narrative.

My main point in this regard was to compete for my country and my people and to receive the support of the entire Cuban society, to carry my flag in whatever competition I was in, the Olympic Games, Pan-American Games.

I think there [on Cuba] is going to be an extraordinary reception.Cubans are - they want to hold onto their culture, their heritage, but they also want to embrace this opportunity, perhaps, for new economic freedoms.

I would like to say that racial attitude and prejudice are probably here...It is very difficult to act this out - discrimination - discrimination is an act. After you have the prejudices, the disciminations come out, if there is an institution for it but the Cubans have attempted to create institutions free of discrimination.

'What comes next?' is the constant question I'm asked by outsiders eager to travel to the island. During the eleven years I traveled to Havana, very few Cubans I met on the island ever bothered to verbalize this question.

As the United States begins a new chapter in our relationship with Cuba, we hope it will create an environment that improves the lives of the Cuban people, not because it is imposed by us, the United States, but through the talent and ingenuity and aspirations, and the conversations among Cubans from all walks of life so they can decide what the best course is for their prosperity.

Fidel Castro takes up so much space in the Cuban mind. It's hard for us to imagine as Americans - isn't it? - how much of everyday conversation he's dominated for 50 years.

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.

My hope is that the Pope Francis visit to Cuba will remind all the Cuban citizens that they possess dignity and fundamental rights that come from God and that the Castro regime has no claim on changing what is 100% God-given.

Well, guess what, I’m Cuban! And no self-respecting Cuban man of the era would let his wife work.