Top 100 F. Sionil Jose Quotes
#1. Conquest by force is not sanctioned by God. The Americans have no right to be here. We will defeat them because we believe that this land they usurp is ours; God created it for us. The whole history of mankind has shown how faith endures while steel rusts.
-Istak
F. Sionil Jose
#2. So honesty then and service are rewarded by banishment and people sell themselves without so much ado because they have no beliefs
only a price.
F. Sionil Jose
#3. But it really all boils down to this - we don't know them, for all our sincerity, our good intentions. We don't know, because we were never one of them.
F. Sionil Jose
#4. There is a great promise for our cultural growth, but this promise is achieved only when our artists recognize that all great art has nationality, an imprimatur achieved with the keenest remembrance of time and place.
F. Sionil Jose
#5. But when will Filipinas ever be free from its leaders who are wealthy and crooked, in whom we have put so much trust?
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#6. We must respect courage wherever we encounter it.
-Tom
F. Sionil Jose
#7. I am for poetry that is admired by peasant and aristocrat alike.
F. Sionil Jose
#8. Industrialization starts with the formation of capital - it does not matter how. It can be created by saving, by the state enforcing its will on the people, by the very rich themselves.
F. Sionil Jose
#9. A revolution does not have to eat its children. In fact, it is those who are in power who could very well initiate revolutions. Let us not be old-fashioned and think only of armed uprisings of minorities as revolutions. Any movement that seeks to overhaul established attitudes is a revolution.
F. Sionil Jose
#10. If you loved someone for many years, you become instinctively aware of his feelings, even divine his thoughts and anticipate his actions, so that it would seem that you two have really become one.
F. Sionil Jose
#11. But you must be sure of what you want the land for. And as for your tenants, if they don't own the land, don't expect them to make sacrifices. It never works, you know. Besides, the transition shouldn't create dislocations. It isn't easy to shift from agriculture to industry.
F. Sionil Jose
#12. I write to please myself - of course, that is a given. But beyond this reach for pleasure, I know that I write for my countrymen, that they may be lifted from apathy and ignorance. I write because of a compulsion to make something out of the nothing that is my own life.
F. Sionil Jose
#13. Class - or the economic status of individuals - is evident in all societies, some very well stratified by a rigid caste system determined by birth.
F. Sionil Jose
#14. Ninoy Aquino was a friend; I knew his faults, which were outweighed by his virtues.
F. Sionil Jose
#15. Of course, we are all egoists. Egoism is so much a part of our humanity.
F. Sionil Jose
#16. Always remember: the alleviation of poverty is never a political or economic issue - it is moral.
F. Sionil Jose
#17. The influence of teachers extends beyond the classroom, well into the future. It is they who shape and enrich the minds of the young, who touch their hearts and souls. It is they who shape a nation's future.
F. Sionil Jose
#18. Writers are historians, too. It is in literature that the greater truths about a people and their past are found.
F. Sionil Jose
#19. But like my father, I have not done anything. I could not, because I am me, because I died long ago.
F. Sionil Jose
#20. The importance not just of history, but of roots - that a writer must have then to nurture, to remember if he is to endure.
F. Sionil Jose
#21. It is what one really owns in the end, a name.
-Istak
F. Sionil Jose
#22. It is easy to forgive a person his faults when he is dead because in death, he atones for his sins somewhat before the eyes of people who are still living and who have yet to add more on the parchment where their sins are listed.
F. Sionil Jose
#23. This was one lesson that the war taught me - that every event in time presents opportunities that are recognizable only to those with enough sensibility to see them, that it is possible to thrive in adversity in the needs of the rulers are pandered to.
F. Sionil Jose
#24. You should live in a manner that should enable you to devote time to writing and contemplation. As is often said, the writer is at work even when he is simply looking out the window.
F. Sionil Jose
#25. Some lucky people can be funny without half trying because they actually look funny, because acting funny is in their bones - fun as funny, not funny as crude slapstick.
F. Sionil Jose
#26. Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)
F. Sionil Jose
#27. You will find that our enemies are our own kin. It is they who betray us. So learn this most important lesson-in the end, our worst enemy is ourselves
F. Sionil Jose
#28. All through history, a nation or a civilization's enduring glory is articulated by its mega constructions - the pyramids, the lofty cathedrals of the Christian world.
F. Sionil Jose
#29. Professional societies are sooner or later fractured by the ego of their leaders. Everyone wants to be president, chairman, CEO; no one wants to be a mere follower.
F. Sionil Jose
#30. While violence is necessary, it is not the only instrument for change. There are others just as good. But you must accept violence- you cannot begin to build until you have destroyed. You don't know love until you have hated.
F. Sionil Jose
#32. I can't understand Urdu, Bahasa or Russian, but when the Pakistani Faiz, the Indonesian Rendra and the Russian Rosdentvensky declaim, I can feel the living throb of rhythm and music, the warmth and passion of their poetry, as do the hundreds, not a mere roomful, of poetry lovers in the audience.
F. Sionil Jose
#33. I find it always pleasurable talking with young people, particularly those aspiring to be writers, out of nostalgia, and because I've always felt that we oldies can learn so much from them and draw from them inspiration in our flagging and rickety years.
F. Sionil Jose
#34. Writing is a solitary profession; you are really alone when you write. Then the emotions become well shaped and distinct. But their transition into words must be done deliberately and with rigid artistry.
F. Sionil Jose
#35. The past could liberate or imprison - it creates a nation's character, provides the nourishment or the poison a people imbibe in their very marrow.
F. Sionil Jose
#36. Our appreciation of folk art will strengthen our identities, our pride in belonging to a community. People trained in the creative use of their hands soon acquire skills, excellent craftsmanship which will be the most important measure of how well we can industrialize.
F. Sionil Jose
#37. Language as a communication tool is the primary element from which literature is created. Even in pre-literate societies, it exists as songs, riddles, or epics that are chanted.
F. Sionil Jose
#38. The bravest are usually those whom we do not know or hear about, those anonymous men who dig the trenches, who produce the food.
F. Sionil Jose
#39. But a nation which has people who can think, the nation already has strength. It is the mind which rules, not instinct or habit.
F. Sionil Jose
#40. Cultural values are, in themselves, neutral as well as universal, and so much depends on how individuals or ethnic groups use them. Values are influenced by so many factors such as geography, climate, religion, the economy and technology.
F. Sionil Jose
#41. If we could only learn to trust one another
Tagalogs trusting Ilokanos, Pampangos trusting Tagalogs.
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#42. Sometimes we have to lie so that we do not needlessly hurt others. The important thing is that we are honest with ourselves. That we know how to bend without breaking ourselves. -Crepusculo Lepidoptera
F. Sionil Jose
#43. I was born in an Ilokano village called Cabugawan. Most of the houses in it were roofed with thatch, pan-aw, a species of wild grass.
F. Sionil Jose
#44. I wish I could be honest and true, but truth as I see it is not something abstract, a pious generality
It is justice at work, righteous, demanding, disciplined, sincere and unswerving; otherwise, it is not, it cannot be truth at all.
F. Sionil Jose
#45. What most readers do not realize is that it takes a particular genius to write funny, to satirize.
F. Sionil Jose
#46. I can imagine the writers of China, England and France, crippled and unsure of themselves when they feel that the ghosts of Confucius, Mencius, Chaucer and Shakespeare and Victor Hugo are looking over their shoulders.
F. Sionil Jose
#47. Indeed time has that ultimate capacity to render the passions of the past when recalled in the present as no more than grandiloquent gestures.
F. Sionil Jose
#48. The mind can also be kind and does blot out those episodes of our existence that we can't erase in our consciousness.
F. Sionil Jose
#49. As artists, we must not go down to the level of the masa; we should bring them up, intellectualize our languages, create classics out of our folk arts. We can do this if we are true to our roots and strive for excellence.
F. Sionil Jose
#50. The Philippines just need 100 youth to stand up for their country
F. Sionil Jose
#51. We cannot be rooted in the past forever. We must not be sentimental.
F. Sionil Jose
#52. Who then lives? Who then triumphs when all others have succumbed?
F. Sionil Jose
#53. Poetry is emotion, passion, love, grief - everything that is human. It is not for zombies by zombies.
F. Sionil Jose
#54. But all men die
as anonymously as they had lived, no matter what their achievements.
-Istak
F. Sionil Jose
#55. I was a senior high school student at the Far Eastern University when the war with Japan broke out in 1941.
F. Sionil Jose
#56. To THOSE who want to lift this nation from the dungheap of history, the past does not matter - only the present, the awareness of the deadening rot which surrounds and suffocates us, and what we must do to vanquish it.
F. Sionil Jose
#57. The Japanese bureaucracy is unique. It is also very powerful, although it is now the object of so much criticism. Many of Japan's brightest made it a pillar of strength and continuity.
F. Sionil Jose
#58. Japan is very cosmopolitan - it values its origins, but a world view hovers above this narrow perspective. The interest of the Japanese in their folk culture is transcendental.
F. Sionil Jose
#59. When I wake up every morning, I thank God for the new day.
F. Sionil Jose
#60. The literary depiction of life and its moral dilemmas compel us to use our conscience, to make those infallible distinctions between right and wrong.
F. Sionil Jose
#61. Poetry, fiction as novels or short stories - these are autonomous as created by their authors. They should stand on their own, like pieces of furniture that should be judged as to their usefulness, elegance.
F. Sionil Jose
#62. How can we build trust among our own people? How can we make them confident of themselves and their countrymen so that they will not sell their souls for a few silver dollars?
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#63. We must know our own roles. We should also know the roles that others play, and the rules such roles follow. In this manner, social harmony is maintained. It is when we overstep our roles, or act without knowing them, that social anarchy ensues.
F. Sionil Jose
#64. I tell young people who ask me about a future in writing not to go into it unless they get married to someone rich.
F. Sionil Jose
#65. A weak people and its equally debilitated leaders are bludgeoned by history. It maims them into the cripples that they are meant to be.
F. Sionil Jose
#66. I envy those Hindus and Buddhists who have in their religion philosophy and ancestor worship which build in the believer a continuity with the past, and that most important ingredient in the building of a nation - memory.
F. Sionil Jose
#67. [Of the Bagos:] Like the Moros in the south, they are our brothers. We must recognize their belongingness to Filipinas, their willingness to fight for her.
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#68. Art, whatever form it takes, requires hard work, craftsmanship and creativity. As a writer, I know my grammar, cadence, the music of prose, and the art of the narrative.
F. Sionil Jose
#69. To fund major cultural efforts, we must not rely alone on government and foundation patronage; if the farmer can spend for beer, he can pay for good entertainment which he can understand, which he can identify with and which will fortify his spirit.
F. Sionil Jose
#70. Life is worth living really but only if we believe it is, if we believe further that life is eternal not because the tissues last forever, but because the imagination never dies
F. Sionil Jose
#71. For decades, as literary editor, I have followed the growth of our creative writing in English. In my Solidaridad Bookshop, half of my stock consists of Filipino books written in English and in the native languages.
F. Sionil Jose
#72. All I can look after is my own farm, serve those who seek when they are sick. I have children to look after so that they will not know what hunger is.
-Istak
F. Sionil Jose
#73. Time will come that all that we love, we will eventually lose, and all that we hate we will eventually face.
F. Sionil Jose
#74. No stranger can come battering down my door and say he brings me light. This I have within me.
-Istak
F. Sionil Jose
#75. What do we do with mountains? For us who have lived most of our lives on monotonous level ground, mountains give indelible character to the landscape. They evoke wonder, awe, a multitude of questions as to their purpose, their grandeur and the mystery of creation.
F. Sionil Jose
#76. I would like to see all this as a big joke that is being played upon us, but I have seen what was wrought in the past
the men who were destroyed without their being lifted from the dungheap of poverty, without recourse to justice.
F. Sionil Jose
#77. Why do people betray their brothers and eventually themselves?
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#78. Contemplation is a luxury of the middle class, the very rich.
F. Sionil Jose
#79. I wish I were not the me that I know, that I be some unfeeling hunk of plastic, designed to take all punishment but also durable and almost indestructible.
F. Sionil Jose
#80. There is nothing like the land you belong to claiming you back. But everywhere the earth is the same.
-Old David
F. Sionil Jose
#81. In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.
F. Sionil Jose
#82. All dictators, the rich and famous, to the lowest security guard who holds a gun, easily forget that power is transitory.
F. Sionil Jose
#83. In the end, the satisfaction which all of us seek, it seems, can come only from our discovering that we really have molded our life into whatever we want it to be.
F. Sionil Jose
#84. In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art.
F. Sionil Jose
#85. Perhaps, this is what love has always been, whether it is for a woman of for a cause
the readiness to give and not ask for anything in return, the unquestioning willingness to lose everything, even if that loss is as something as precious as life itself.
F. Sionil Jose
#86. Self-respect, the value of 'face,' is universal but is most pronounced in China, then in Japan where the Confucian ethic is most influential.
F. Sionil Jose
#87. Only with steadfast memories can we now be strong so as to undo the mistakes of the past, to begin anew and build from the rubble of their betrayal ...
F. Sionil Jose
#88. There is so much that the past can teach us.
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#89. It was in the sugar hacienda in Negros, Panay and in Central Luzon where I saw the injustices heaped upon the sugar workers, particularly the sacadas, or seasonal workers.
F. Sionil Jose
#90. Like so many poor Ilokanos, my grandparents left their village, for it could no longer sustain them. The Ilocos is a narrow coastal plain where, so often, the mountain drops to the sea. Land hunger had always afflicted the Ilokanos and made them migratory.
F. Sionil Jose
#91. Virtue and wealth seldom go together. The greatest criminals are also the wealthiest men."
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#92. In the Western tradition, the first writers were teachers and historians, vastly traveled, who spiced their reports with fantasies. They were also poets who sang and entertained prince and pauper.
F. Sionil Jose
#93. Colonialism subdues in many dulcet guises. It conquered under the pretext of spreading Christianity, civilization, law and order, to make the world safe for democracy.
F. Sionil Jose
#94. Life is always sad. That's what makes suicide so tempting because life is all that we really have and haven't. Death makes us equals, too, because the foul and the good all die. The past, the present, and the future-what escape is there from these? None-and yet sometimes we are life's happy victims.
F. Sionil Jose
#95. You perhaps know me as a novelist. Literature is one of the arts - in fact, the noblest of the arts. That is not my opinion; it was first expressed by the ancients. As art, literature has many similarities with the other art forms.
F. Sionil Jose
#96. We are shallow because our media are so horribly shallow. Every morning, I peruse the papers, and there is so little to read in them. It is the same with radio - all that noise, that artifice.
F. Sionil Jose
#97. It is more difficult for the poor to be virtuous.
-The Cripple
F. Sionil Jose
#98. I do not want to be bored listening to music that is muffled and known only to the poet himself.
F. Sionil Jose
#99. We recognize the distinctness of Asian art when we turn to its traditional forms, recognize it as Japanese, Chinese and Indian, even Balinese or Thai.
F. Sionil Jose
#100. From antiquity, Latin died but is still studied in seminaries and elite universities. So did Sanskrit in Asia. iI was replaced by Pali, but even Pali died, too. Linguists say the only ancient language which was resuscitated from the grave was Hebrew of Israel.
F. Sionil Jose
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