Quotes from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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...”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“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 Che Guevara, quote from 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 Guevara, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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

”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“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 Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from 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.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from 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 Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from 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, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Người viết những dòng nhật ký này đã không còn là con người của ngày xưa nữa khi đặt chân trở lại mảnh đất Argentina. Cuộc hành trình xuyên châu Mỹ - châu Mỹ (America) với chữ A viết hoa – đã làm thay đổi con người trong tôi nhiều hơn tôi tưởng. Tôi biết tôi không thể sống một cuộc sống bó hẹp, chật chội trong những khuôn khổ được nữa. Điều đó dường như đã tiềm ẩn từ lâu trong tôi dù chưa rõ ràng, và chuyến hành trình này đã khơi dậy tất cả.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Constituimos una sola raza mestiza que desde México hasta el estrecho de Magallanes presenta notables similitudes etnográficas.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“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, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“An accordion player who had no fingers on his right hand used little sticks tied to his wrist; the singer was blind; and almost all the others were horribly deformed, due to the nervous form of the disease very common in this area. With light from the lamps and the lanterns reflected in the river, it was like a scene from a horror movie. The place is lovely,”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“Veremos si algun día, algún minero tome un pico con placer y vaya a envenenar sus pulmones con consciente alegría. Dicen que allá, donde viene la llamarada roja que deslumbra hoy al mundo, es así. Yo no sé.”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from 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, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

“أرى نفسي قربانا في الثورة الحقيقية، المعادل العظيم لإرادة الأفراد، المقّر بإقتراف أفدح الأخطاء سابقا”
― Ernesto Che Guevara, quote from The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey

About the author

Popular quotes

“El amor nos da una especia de religión para nosotros mismos, respetamos en nosotros otra vida; se hace entonces el más horrible de los males, el mal con una esperanza, una esperanza que nos hace aceptar los tormentos.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from The Wild Ass's Skin

“It had ever, as I told the reader, been one of the singular blessings of my life, to be almost every hour of it miserably in love with some one....”
― Laurence Sterne, quote from A Sentimental Journey

“ROSE: You can't be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn't nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that's all you got to make life with. That's all you got to measure yourself against that world out there. Your daddy wanted you to everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm. He wasn't always right. Sometimes when he touched he bruised. And sometimes when he took me in his arms he cut.”
― August Wilson, quote from Fences

“All the beasts of Hell knew they couldn't stop me. I was the archangel Gabriel, the Preliator, and they knew that no matter how many times they killed, I always came back to kill them. No matter how much they frightened me, I remembered what Cadan had told me about the stories of me he had grown up hearing. Even demons feared something. The demonic reapers had nightmares of their own, stories they told one another to terrify, a legend that haunted them in their sleep. That was me. I was Hell's nightmare.”
― Courtney Allison Moulton, quote from Shadows in the Silence

“He preferred the familiar world of sex and more sex. That was his comfort zone.”
― C.C. Gibbs, quote from All He Needs

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.