Quotes from Dr. Jose P. Rizal

Believing in accidents is like believing in miracles--both presuppose that God does not know the future. (Noli Me Tángere)

Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds.

Crowns of flowers and laurels are the inventions of free people.

Each one writes history according to his convenience.

Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of the land that will guard our ashes. Fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its heat the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive! (Noli Me Tangere)

Fate presented itself to some like a chinese fan--one side black, the other side gilded with flowers. (Noli Me Tangere)

Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all!

God has made man a cosmopolite. He created seas for ships to glide on, the wind to push them, and the stars to guide them even in darkest night.

He who would love much has also much to suffer.

Justice is the foremost virtue of the civilizing races. It subdues the barbarous nations, while injustice arouses the weakest.

Law has no skin, reason has no nostrils.

Little learning is dangerous.

Man is multiplied by the "number of languages" he possesses and speaks. (Los Viajes!)

Man works for an object. Remove that object and you reduce him into inaction.

Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces.

No good water comes from a muddy spring. No sweet fruit comes from a bitter seed.

No one has a monopoly of the true God, nor is there a nation or religion that can claim, or at any rate prove, that it has been given the exclusive right to the Creator or sole knowledge of His Being.

No, let us not make God in our image, poor inhabitants that we are of a distant planet lost in infinite space. However brilliant and sublime our intelligence may be, it is scarcely more than a small spark which shines and in an instant is extinguished, and it alone can give us no idea of that blaze, that conflagration, that ocean of light!

Not all were asleep during the night of our forefathers! (Noli Me Tangere)

People don't realize that victory is the child of struggle, that joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of sacrifice.

The Filipino loves his country no less than the Spaniard does his, and although he is quieter, more peaceful and with more difficulty stirred up, once aroused he does not hesitate and for him the struggle means death to the finish. He has both the meekness and ferocity of the carabao. Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds.

The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin. (El Filibusterismo)

The heart of success, the painter of mind.You are the great masterpiece. Practice it high.

The school of suffering tempers the spirit, the arena of combat strengthens the soul. (El Filibusterismo)