José Rizal quotes - page 2

José Rizal was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and revolutionary who became a key figure in the Philippine struggle for independence from Spanish rule. His novels and writings inspired a movement that ignited Filipino pride and the quest for freedom. He is remembered as a national hero and a symbol of peaceful reform and intellectual courage. Here are 70 of his quotes:

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

José Rizal

Oh how beautiful to fall to give you flight, To die to give you life, to rest under your sky; And in your enchanted land forever sleep.

José Rizal

Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?

José Rizal

Friar! What a strange name. I don't remember having created such a thing!

José Rizal

Today is Christmas Eve. Whether or not Christ was born exactly on this date is not important. But chronological accuracy has nothing to do with tonight's event. A grand genius had been born who preached truth and love; who suffered because of his mission; and on account of his sufferings the world has become better, if not saved. Only it gives me nausea to see how some people abuse his name to commit numerous crimes. If he is in heaven, he will certainly protest!

José Rizal

Dying people don't need medicine, the ones who remain do.

José Rizal

He who knows the surface of the earth and the topography of a country only through the examination of maps.. is like a man who learns the opera of Meyerbeer or Rossini by reading only reviews in the newspapers. The brush of landscape artists Lorrain, Ruysdael, or Calame can reproduce on canvas the sun's ray, the coolness of the heavens, the green of the fields, the majesty of the mountains...but what can never be stolen from Nature is that vivid impression that she alone can and knows how to impart--the music of the birds, the movement of the trees, the aroma peculiar to the place--the inexplicable something the traveller feels that cannot be defined and which seems to awaken in him distant memories of happy days, sorrows and joys gone by, never to return.

José Rizal

De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur! After all this, you still speak ill of us!

José Rizal

The Philippines should be grateful to you if you would write a complete history of our country from an impartial point of view.. But don't expect thanks and laurels--crowns of flowers and laurels are the inventions of free people. But perhaps your children may gather the fruit of what the father planted.

José Rizal

Pure and spotless must the victim be if the sacrifice is to be acceptable.

José Rizal

I have to believe much in God because I have lost my faith in man.

José Rizal

To be happy does not mean to indulge in foolishness!

José Rizal

The people do not complain because they have no voice; do not move because they are lethargic, and you say that they do not suffer because you have not seen their hearts bleed.

José Rizal

The example could encourage others who only fear to start.

José Rizal

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up what Spain has been unable to hold.

José Rizal

Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.

José Rizal

Believing in accidents is like believing in miracles--both presuppose that God does not know the future.

José Rizal

It was a world which granted privileges to some and imposed prohibitions on others...Endowed with strength and eager to learn, one had to drag himself in a narrow prison cell when he could see an open field, a vast horizon in the distance; when he could feel the beatings of a heart; and when he believed himself entitled to enjoy the beauty of a dream.

José Rizal

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

José Rizal

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.

José Rizal

I die without seeing the dawn brighten over my native land. You who have it to see, welcome it--and forget not those who have fallen during the night!

José Rizal

It is not the criminals who arouse the hatred of others, but the men who are honest.

José Rizal