Top 22 Jose Rizal Quotes

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

I may be what my enemies desire me to be, yet never an accusation are they able to hurl against me which makes me blush or lower my forehead; and I hope that God will be merciful enough with me, to prevent me from committing one of those faults which would involve my family.

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.

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

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.

Orientals, and the Malays in particular, are a sensitive people: delicacy of sentiment is predominant with them.

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

The youth is the hope of our future.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

There can be no tyrants where there are no slaves.

It is a useless life that is not consecrated to a great ideal. It is like a stone wasted on the field without becoming a part of any edifice.

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?

The Spaniard is gallant and patriotic, and sacrifices everything, in favorable moments, for his country‘s good. He has the intrepidity of his bull.

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!

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.

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