The Motorcycle Diaries Quotes

“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: A Journey Around South America

“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel...”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“I finally felt myself lifted definitively away on the winds of adventure toward worlds I envisaged would be stranger than they were, into situations I imagined would be much more normal than they turned out to be.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“This is not a story of heroic feats, or merely the narrative of a cynic; at least I do not mean it to be. It is a glimpse of two lives running parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“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 in his own aircraft to the stratospheric regions of our 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 ever faintly - not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“It is there, in the final moments, for people whose farthest horizon has always been tomorrow, that one comprehends the profound tragedy circumscribing the life of the proletariat the world over.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Hay que luchar por cada bocanada de aire y enviar la muerte al carajo.”
― Ernesto Che Guevarra, Diarios de motorcicleta

“All night, after the exhausting games of canasta, we would look 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 in 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 ever faintly--not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things the outer limits would suffice.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“            The future belongs to the people, and gradually, or in one strike, they will take power, here and in every country.                   The terrible thing is the people need to be educated, and this they cannot do before taking power, only after. They can only learn at the cost of their own mistakes, which will be very serious and will cost many innocent lives.”
― Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Perhaps one day tired of circling the world I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“I began to come into close contact with poverty, with hunger, with disease, with the inability to cure a child because of a lack of resources… And I began to see there was something that, at that time, seemed to me almost as important as being a famous researcher or making some substantial contribution to medical science, and this was helping those people.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“His wife spotted the danger in our resolutely bohemian ways.

"You have only one year left before you qualify as a doctor and yet you're going away? You have no idea when you'll be back? But why?"

We couldn't give precise answers to her desperate questions and this horrified her...”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Some give the impression they go on living only because it's a habit they cannot shake”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“:او در میان هق هق گریه هاش به ما گفت
زندگی من صلیبی است که مرا بر آن میخکوب کرده اند

”
― ارنستو چگوارا, خاطرات سفر با موتور سیکلت

“you will die with a clenched fist and a tense jaw, the epitome of hatred and struggle, because you are not a symbol but a genuine member of the society to be destroyed. You are useful as I am, but you are not aware of how useful your contribution is to the society that sacrifices you”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“The psychological effects of the sun are strange: it had not yet appeared over the horizon and we already felt comforted, just imagining the heat it would bring.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“In these circumstances people in poor families who can't pay their way are 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, by extension, 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 Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“the sea has always been a confidant, a friend absorbing all it is told and never revealing those secrets; always giving the best advice — its meaningful noises can be interpreted any way you choose.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of tht invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“I now know, by an almost fatalistic conformity with the facts, that my destiny is to travel, or perhaps it’s better to say that traveling is our destiny, because Alberto feels the same. Still, there are moments when I think with profound longing of those wonderful areas in our south. Perhaps one day, tired of circling the world, I’ll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes, if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.”
― Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Revolution is impersonal; it will take their lives, even utilizing their memory as an example or as an instrument for domesticating the youth who follow them.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Realmente apena que tomen medidas de represión para las personas como estas. Dejando de lado el peligro que puede ser o no para la vida sana de una colectividad, "el gusano comunista", que había hecho eclosión en él, no era nada más que un natural anhelo de algo mejor, una protesta contra el hambre inveterada traducida en el amor a esa doctrina extraña cuya esencia no podría nunca comprender, pero cuya traducción: "pan para el pobre" eran palabras que estaba a su alcance, más aún, que llenaban su existencia.”
― Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“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 ever faintly — not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice. As all the sentimental themes the sea inspires passed through our conversation, the lights of Antofagasta began to shine in the distance, to the northeast. It was the end of our adventure as stowaways, or at least the end of this adventure now that our boat was returning to Valparaíso. ESTA VEZ, FRACASO this time, disaster I can see him now clearly, the drunk captain, like all his officers and the owner of the vessel alongside with his great big mustache, their crude gestures the results of bad wine. And the wild laughter as they recounted our odyssey. “Hey listen, they’re tigers, they’re on your boat now for sure, you’ll find out when you’re out to sea.” The captain must have let slip to his friend and colleague this or some similar phrase. We”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Durante o transcorrer de nove meses, um homem pode pensar em muitas coisas, desde o mais alto conceito filosófico até o desejo mais abjeto por um prato de sopa – tudo de acordo com o estado de seu estômago. E se, ao mesmo tempo, esse homem for do tipo aventureiro, ele poderá viver experiências que talvez interessem às demais pessoas e seu relato casual se parecerá com este diário.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, De moto pela América do Sul: Diários de viagem

“The bike struggled showing signs it was feeling the strain especially in the bodywork which we constantly had to fix with Alberto's favored spare part - wire.”
― Ernesto Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“This edition of The Motorcycle Diaries, the notes describing a journey made without hesitation, aboard the noisy motorcycle La Poderosa II (which gave out halfway, but only after transmitting to the adventure a joyous impulse we, too, receive), free as the wind, with the sole purpose of getting to know the world, is dedicated to people whose youth is not merely sequential, but wholehearted and spiritual.”
― Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Apart from whether collectivism, the “communist vermin,” is a danger to decent life, the communism gnawing at his entrails was no more than a natural longing for something better, a protest against persistent hunger transformed into a love for this strange doctrine, whose essence he could never grasp but whose translation, “bread for the poor,” was something which he understood and, more importantly, filled him with hope.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“علمت أنه حين تشق الروح الهادية العظيمة الإنسانية إلى شطرين متصارعين، سأكون الى جانب الشعب”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Individualism as such, as the isolated action of a person alone in a social environment, must disappear in Cuba. Individualism tomorrow should be the proper utilization of the whole individual, to the absolute benefit of the community.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey