The guerrilla band is not to be considered inferior to the army against which it fights simply because it is inferior in fire power.
Che GuevaraRead
It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Guerrilla warfare relies on the support and participation of the general populace to succeed.
Che Guevara highlights the essence of guerrilla warfare as a movement rooted in the collective will and strength of the people. Rather than being a conventional battlefield strategy, it represents a grassroots uprising where the guerrilla fighters act as the spearhead, rallying the masses around a common cause to challenge oppressors and fight for liberation.
Themes
Guerrilla WarfarePeopleWar Of The MassesResistanceRevolution
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about social justice, one might quote Guevara to emphasize community-driven movements.
More from Che Guevara
All quotes →Every day People straighten up the hair, why not the heart?
Che GuevaraRead
It is a revolution that came to power with its own army and on the ruins of the army of oppression.
Che GuevaraRead
The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination.
Che GuevaraRead
We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear.
Che GuevaraRead
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.
Che GuevaraRead
Similar quotes
Desert Storm created the pattern for the American way of war that eventually prevailed in Kosovo. America learned from Vietnam that unilateral use of force eventually forfeits international legitimacy and domestic support. Desert Storm demonstrated the political necessity of coalition warfare.
Michael IgnatieffRead
We come across thirty or so hurried graves with makeshift wooden markers. 'Private Edwards, E.', a number, and that was all. Fourteen days ago he was alive, thinking feeling, hoping... If war was a game of cards, I'd say someone was cheating.
Spike MilliganRead
Smell that? You smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
Robert DuvallRead
Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.
Nancy GibbsRead
War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.
Kathryn BigelowRead
You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.
Dwight D. EisenhowerRead