Jose Rizal Quotes & Sayings

There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves. — Jose Rizal

In the Middle Ages, everything bad was the work of the devil, everything good, the work of God. Today, the French see everything in reverse and blame the Germans for it. — Jose Rizal

One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again. — Jose Rizal

Each one writes history according to his convenience. — Jose Rizal

The whys and wherefores didn't need to be said. If you are reading this have ever loved someone, you will understand. Putting it into words is useless. The uninitiated cannot understand the mysterious. — Jose Rizal

Ah, is this thing that you call tinola a variety of lotus which makes people - er - forgetful? — Jose Rizal

He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination. — Jose Rizal

To be happy does not mean to indulge in foolishness! — Jose Rizal

The people believe that those who do not think as they do are fools. For that reason, they take me for such, and I am grateful, because woe is me! The day the would wish to give me back my sanity, that day they'll deprive me of the little liberty that I have bought at the cost of my reputation as a rational being. And who knows if they are right? I neither think nor live according to their laws; my principles, my ideals are different. — Jose Rizal

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

The righteous man pays the sinner's bill. — Jose Rizal

The government that governs from afar absolutely requires that the truth and the facts reach its knowledge by every possible channel, so that it may weigh and estimate them better, and this need increases when a country like the Philippines is concerned, where the inhabitants speak and complain in a language unknown to the authorities. — Jose Rizal

What is death to me? I have sown the seeds others will reap. — Jose Rizal

A revolution, woven in the dim light of mystery, has kept me from you. Another revolution will return me to your arms, bring me back to life. — Jose Rizal

Ignorance is servitude, because as a man thinks, so he is; a man who does not think for himself and allows himself to be guided by the thought of another is like the beast led by a halter. — Jose Rizal

A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it, and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty ... who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us - a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul. — Jose Rizal

When a people is denied light, home, freedom, justice, all the good things without which life is not possible, and which constitute man's patrimony, a person has the right to deal with the people who despoil him, like a thief who assaults us in the roadway. No qualifications, no exceptions. — Jose Rizal

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

Experience has everywhere shown us, and especially in the Philippines, that the classes which are better off have always been addicted to peace and order because they live comparatively better and may be the losers in civil disturbances. — Jose Rizal

I have observed that the prosperity or misery of each people is in direct proportion to its liberties or its prejudices and, accordingly, to the sacrifices or the selfishness of its forefathers. -Juan Crisostomo Ibarra — Jose Rizal

Tomorrow at 7, I shall be shot; but I am innocent of the crime of rebellion. I am going to die with a tranquil conscience. — Jose Rizal

Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age. — Jose Rizal

Since it is necessary to grant six million Filipinos their rights, so that they may be in fact Spaniards, let the government grant these rights freely and spontaneously, without damaging reservations, without irritating mistrust. — Jose Rizal

But because their ancestors were men of righteousness, shall we consent to the abuses of their degenerate descendants? Because they did us a great good, would we be guilty if we prevented them from doing us evil? — Jose Rizal

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. — Jose Rizal

Of what use are all the codes in the world, if by means of confidential reports, if for trifling reasons, if through anonymous traitors any honest citizen may be exiled or banished without a hearing, without a trial? — Jose Rizal

I have recommended in my writings the study of civic virtues, without which there is no redemption. I have written likewise (and repeat my words) that reforms, to be beneficial, must come from above, that those which come from below are irregularly gained and uncertain. — Jose 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. — Jose Rizal

Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds. — Jose Rizal

I believe in revelation, but not in revelation which each religion claims to possess ... but in the living revelation which surrounds us on every side - mighty, eternal, unceasing, incorruptible, clear, distinct, universal as is the being from whom it proceeds, in that revelation which speaks to us and penetrates us from the moment we are born until we die. — Jose Rizal

In the Philippines you are not considered to be honorable unless you have been to jail. — Jose Rizal

We must win when we deserve it, by elevating reason and the dignity of the individual, loving justice and the good and the great, even dying for it. — Jose Rizal

I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: 'Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents.' — Jose Rizal

I die without seeing dawn's light shining on my country ... You, who will see it, welcome it for me ... don't forget those who fell during the nighttime. — Jose 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! — Jose Rizal

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

Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks. — Jose Rizal

Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows, and necessity is the resultant of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces. — Jose Rizal

Spain, must we some day tell Filipinas that thou hast no ear for her woes and that if she wishes to be saved she must redeem herself? — Jose Rizal

The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin. — Jose Rizal

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

When there is in nature no fixed condition, how much less must there be in the life of a people, beings endowed with mobility and movement! — Jose Rizal

She was white, perhaps too white. Her eyes, which were almost always cast down, when she raised them testified to the purest of souls, and when she smiled, revealing her small, white teeth, one might be tempted to say that a rose is merely a plant, and ivory just an elephant's tusk. — Jose Rizal

I can concede that the government has no knowledge of the people, but I believe the people know less of the government. There are useless officials, evil, if you like, but there are also good ones, and these are not able to accomplish anything because they encounter an inert mass, the population that takes little part in matters that concern them. — Jose Rizal

One should remember that where nobody flees, there is no pursuer: that where there are no little fish, there can be no big ones. Why does the girl not require her lover a noble and honoured name, a manly heart to protect her weakness, and a resolute spirit which will not be satisfied with engendering slaves? Let her discard all fear, behave nobly and yield not her youth to the weak and faint-hearted. — Jose 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. — Jose Rizal

The batteries are gradually becoming charged, and if the prudence of the government does not provide an outlet for the currents that are accumulating, some day the spark will be generated. — Jose Rizal

O, in the solitude of those mountains I feel free, free as the air, like a light blasting unharnessed through space. A thousand cities, a thousand palaces I would give just for a corner of the Philippines where far away from man I could feel truly free! — Jose Rizal

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

For myself I think that one wrong does not right the other, and forgiveness cannot be won with useless tears or alms to the Church. — Jose 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. — Jose Rizal

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

In every instance I noted that a people's prosperity or misery lay in direct proportion to its freedom or its inhibitions and, along the same lines, of the sacrifice or selfishness of its ancestors. — Jose Rizal

He who would love much has also much to suffer. — Jose Rizal

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! — Jose Rizal

I honor the father in his son, not the son in his father. Each one receives a reward or punishment for his deeds, but not for the acts of others. — Jose Rizal

The appetite is sharpened by the first bites. — Jose Rizal

Religion, in refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime imputed to you; the government, in surrounding your case with mystery and shadow, gives reason for belief in some error, committed in fatal moments; and all the Philippines, in venerating your memory and calling you martyrs, in no way acknowledges your guilt. — Jose Rizal

Genius knows no country, genius sprouts anywhere, genius is like light, air. the patrimony of everybody, cosmopolitan like space, like life, like God. — Jose Rizal

Truth does not need to borrow garments from falsehood. — Jose Rizal

China will consider herself fortunate if she succeeds in keeping herself intact and is not dismembered or partitioned among the European powers that are colonizing the continent of Asia. — Jose Rizal

Man understood in the end what man is. He renounces the analysis of God, penetrating the impalpable, in which he has not seen, to give laws to the phantasms of his brain. Man understands that his inheritance is the greater world whose dominion is within his grasp. Tired of useless and presumptuous labor he bows his head and looks about him, and now he sees how our poets are born. Little by little nature's muses open their treasures and start to smile upon us, and lead us far from such labors. — Jose Rizal

We young Filipinos are trying to make over a nation and must not halt in our march, but from time to time turn our gaze upon our elders. We shall wish to read in their countenances approval of our actions. — Jose Rizal

No one blames a pilot who takes refuge in port when the storm begins to blow. It is not cowardice to duck under a bullet; what is wrong is to defy it only to fall and never rise again. — Jose Rizal

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. — Jose Rizal

It is enough for the evil people to succeed, for the good people to do nothing. — Jose Rizal

To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for? — Jose Rizal

Night favors belief, and the imagination peoples the air with specters. — Jose Rizal

The divine flame of thought is inextinguishable in the Filipino people, and somehow or other it will shine forth and compel recognition. It is impossible to brutalize the inhabitants of the Philippines! — Jose Rizal

Law has no skin, reason has no nostrils. — Jose Rizal

My mother is not a woman of ordinary culture. She knows literature and speaks Spanish better than I do. She even corrected my poems and gave me advice when I was studying rhetoric. — Jose Rizal

As God has not made anything useless in this world, as all beings fulfill obligations or a role in the sublime drama of Creation, I cannot exempt from this duty, and small though it be, I too have a mission to fill, as for example: alleviating the sufferings of my fellowmen. — Jose Rizal

It is probable that England will look favorably upon the independence of the Philippines, for it will open their ports to her and afford greater freedom to her commerce. — Jose Rizal

To foretell the destiny of a nation, it is necessary to open a book that tells of her past. — Jose Rizal

Maria Clara did not faint, simply because the Filipinos do not know how to faint. — Jose Rizal

The Philippine races, like all the Malays, do not succumb before the foreigner, like the Australians, the Polynesians and the Indians of the New World. — Jose Rizal

Your enemies hate you more than they hate your ideas. Should you want a project to be undone propose it. Even if it were as useful as a bishop's mire it would be rejected. Once you are defeated let the humblest-looking among you sponsor it and your enemies to humble you will approve it. — Jose Rizal

Treat your old parents as you would like to be treated by your children later. — Jose Rizal

Would that I could die, reduce myself to nothing, leave a glorious name to my country, die in the cause of defending it against a foreign invasion and afterwards the sun will shine on my body like a permanent sentinel in these ocean rocks! — Jose Rizal

Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous. — Jose Rizal

There now exists a factor which was formerly lacking - the spirit of the nation has been aroused, and a common misfortune, a common debasement, has united all the inhabitants of the Islands. — Jose Rizal

Death has always been the first sign of European civilization when introduced in the Pacific. — Jose Rizal

How long have you been away from the country?" Laruja asked Ibarra.
"Almost seven years."
"Then you have probably forgotten all about it."
"Quite the contrary. Even if my country does seem to have forgotten me, I have always thought about it. — Jose Rizal

History does not record in its annals any lasting domination exercised by one people over another, of different race, of diverse usages and customs, of opposite and divergent ideals. One of the two had to yield and succumb. — Jose Rizal

If the Philippines must remain under the control of Spain, they will necessarily have to be transformed in a political sense, for the course of their history and the needs of their inhabitants so require. — Jose Rizal

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. — Jose Rizal

The Filipino embraces civilization and lives and thrives in every clime, in contact with every people. — Jose Rizal

The tyranny of some is possible only through the cowardice of others. — Jose Rizal

The world laughs at another man's pain. — Jose Rizal

Our young people think about nothing more than love affairs and pleasure. They spend more time attempting to seduce and dishonor young women than in thinking about their country's welfare. Our women, in order to take care of the house and family of God, forget their own. Our men limit their activities to vice and their heroics to shameful acts. Children wake up in a fog of routine, adolescents live out their best years without ideals, and their elders are sterile, and only serve to corrupt our young people by their example. — Jose Rizal

What was exchanged in the language of their eyes, more perfect than their lips, the language afforded the soul so that no sound disturbs an ecstasy of feeling? In those moments, when the thought of the two happy beings meld through their pupils, words move slowly, coarsely, like the raspy, awkward noise of thunder from dazzling light that appears after the quickness of the flash. It expresses feelings previously known, ideas yet understood, and in the end, if one must use words, it is because the heart's ambitions - which dominates one's whole being and overflows with happiness - wishes with the whole human organism, with all its physical and psychical faculties, to embody the poem of joy that the spirit has intoned. Language has no answer to the questions of love that either shimmer or hide within a glance. The smile must respond; the kiss, the sigh. — Jose 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! — Jose Rizal

He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish. — Jose Rizal

The people no longer has confidence in its former protectors, now its exploiters and executioners. The masks have fallen. — Jose Rizal

Vice pays for its own freedom. — Jose Rizal

On this battlefield man has no better weapon than his intelligence, no other force but his heart. — Jose Rizal

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. — Jose Rizal

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

What said those two souls communicating through the language of the eyes, more perfect than that of the lips, the language given to the soul in order that sound may not mar the ecstasy of feeling? In such moments, when the thoughts of two happy beings penetrate into each other's souls through the eyes, the spoken word is halting, rude, and weak - it is as the harsh, slow roar of the thunder compared with the rapidity of the dazzling lightning flash, expressing feelings already recognized, ideas already understood, and if words are made use of it is only because the heart's desire, dominating all the being and flooding it with happiness, wills that the whole human organism with all its physical and psychical powers give expression to the song of joy that rolls through the soul. To the questioning glance of love, as it flashes out and then conceals itself, speech has no reply; the smile, the kiss, the sigh answer. — Jose Rizal