Quotes About Rizal

Hold high the brow serene, O youth, where now you stand; Let the bright sheen Of your grace be seen, Fair hope of my fatherland!

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

Perhaps the great American Republic, whose interests lie in the Pacific and who has no hand in the spoliation of Africa, may someday dream of foreign possession.

Filipinos are not a reading people, and despite the compulsory course on the life and works of Rizal today, from the elementary to the university levels, it is accepted that the 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo' are highly regarded but seldom read (if not totally ignored). Therefore one asks, how can unread novels exert any influence?

Rizal learned the right ideas at the wrong time, and for this he was shot.

Rizal is a compulsory course in school, but few teachers make Rizal's novels interesting. If students are taught to enjoy Rizal's works as literature instead of as a lodemine of 'patriotic' allusions I am sure they would not mind reading and rereading the 'Noli me Tangere'.

Rizal's greatest misfortune is being national hero of the Philippines.

Even a quick reading of Rizal's trial will prove that those who take Constantino's works uncritically are likewise guilty of Veneration Without Understanding. Since there is so much fiction and faction in history it is always essential to return to the sources.

I was to discover that like the overcoat that snugly wraps Rizal in all his statues and photographs, Rizal is obscured by countless myths and preconceived ideas... Without his overcoat, Rizal was human, like you and me.

The glory of saving a country doesn't mean having to use the measures that contributed to its ruin!

Sisa shut up the cabin and covered the few embers with ash so they wouldn't go out, as people do with their deepest feelings: cover them with life's ashes, which they call "indifference," so they don't go out completely as a result of day-to-day interaction with our peers.