Bay of Pigs Invasion Quotes

Politically speaking, Miami-Dade was once a Republican stronghold, thanks in large part to older Cuban voters who became more politically influential following the Bay of Pigs invasion. In contrast, Democrats used to rely on votes in North Florida and the Space Coast in an era of much softer partisanship.

It was an experience of a lifetime to sit only a few feet away from him [Castro] and watch him relive an experience he lived as a very young man.

Fidel Castro claimed that history would absolve him, but it can also condemn him.

If you're setting a game during the Cuban Missile Crisis, look through a library. find out what people were wearing, what other issues were in the news, how houses were furnished, what cars were being driven. Especially include things which now seem foreign.

For a man who likes to talk, Fidel Castro does very few interviews.

[Describing John F. Kennedy:] He is sort of an Indian snake charmer.

Particularly during the late 1960s, a large number of American skyjackers earnestly believed that Fidel Castro's Cuba was an egalitarian, post-racial utopia.

For the last 60 years, dictator Fidel Castro was America's most persistent adversary. Although Castro formally handed off to his brother, Raul, eight years ago, the communist leader was a symbolic force in Cuba and around the world.

From the moment he took office in January of 1961, Kennedy had been eager to settle the Cuban problem without overt military action by the United States.

This story going around about the CIA … sending in folks to get Castro, It’s incredible. They have a man that was involved that was brought into the CIA, with a number of others, and instructed by the CIA and the Attorney General [then Robert F. Kennedy] to assassinate Castro after the Bay of Pigs.

JFK is a role I've always dreamt of playing.

You know, I am not a particular Kennedy apologist or an awed fan - I was 12 when he was murdered - but I have discussed Kennedy with historians. For his incredibly short tenure, he was a very important president. Many put him in the second tier, below the big three and surrounded by Truman and Eisenhower. Kennedy moved our soul. Changed our thinking about service and governance. And won big in the greatest nuclear crisis of the Cold War.

I've been very fortunate to be able to jump around. I just did this really wonderful film called Map of the World. That was a real, amazing, dramatic story. Then I did a movie called Company Men, a little comedy about the Bay of Pigs.

If the CIA did find out what we were doing this would have trickled down to the lower echelon of activists, and Cuban exiles, and the more gung-ho CIA people who had been involved since the Bay of Pigs….I can understand why they would have reacted so violently. This was the end of their dreams of returning to Cuba, and they might have been impelled to take violent action. Such as assassinating the President.

In the 1960s, after the Cuban Revolution, CIA and FBI agents often coordinated their activities with anti-Castro Cuban exiles.

Comandante Fidel Castro is a gifted communicator. He is a brilliant, brilliant mind. But the thing that struck me most about him was he was not a "nationalist."

The Cuban Revolutionary Government has been generous and very considerate to me and my family. I lived in Santa Clara for a few months because I wanted to work in the countryside and get to know the country better.