Top 100 Jose Rizal Quotes
#1. 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
#2. 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
#4. Dying people don't need medicine, the ones who remain do.
Jose Rizal
#5. The Filipino embraces civilization and lives and thrives in every clime, in contact with every people.
Jose Rizal
#7. 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
#8. The sword must yield to the toga, Cicero had told the Roman Senate, and the friars in the Philippines thought a cassock was as good as a toga. But
Jose Rizal
#9. 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
#11. Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age.
Jose Rizal
#12. The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.
Jose Rizal
#13. A faith pure and simple distinguishes itself from superstition as a flame from the smoke and music from noise.
Jose Rizal
#14. Routine is a declivity down which many governments slide, and routine says that freedom of the press is dangerous.
Jose Rizal
#15. 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
#16. Death has always been the first sign of European civilization when introduced in the Pacific.
Jose Rizal
#17. What is death to me? I have sown the seeds others will reap.
Jose Rizal
#18. While a people preserves its language; it preserves the marks of liberty.
Jose Rizal
#19. When a people holds onto its language, it holds onto a semblance of freedom, like a man who holds onto his independence when he retains his own way of thinking. Language is the thought of a people.
Jose Rizal
#20. 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
#21. Filipinos don't realize that victory is the child of struggle, that joy blossoms from suffering, and redemption is a product of sacrifice.
Jose Rizal
#22. 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
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. Pure intuitive faith differs as much from fanaticism as fire from smoke, or music from mere noise; those who confuse the two are like the deaf.
Jose Rizal
#26. There are no tyrants if there are no slaves
Jose Rizal
#27. The appetite is sharpened by the first bites.
Jose Rizal
#28. It is enough for the evil people to succeed, for the good people to do nothing.
Jose Rizal
#29. 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
#30. 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
#31. Treat your old parents as you would like to be treated by your children later.
Jose Rizal
#32. We want the happiness of the Philippines, but we want to obtain it through noble and just means. If I have to commit villainy to make her happy, I would refuse to do so, because I am sure that what is built on sand sooner or later would tumble down.
Jose Rizal
#33. 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
#34. what is the meaning of that.. can anyone help me.
Jose Rizal
#35. He who does not know how to look back at where he came from will never get to his destination.
Jose Rizal
#36. No good water comes from a muddy spring. No sweet fruit comes from a bitter seed.
Jose Rizal
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. To be happy does not mean to indulge in foolishness!
Jose Rizal
#40. 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
#41. 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
#42. It is not the criminals who arouse the hatred of others, but the men who are honest.
Jose Rizal
#43. He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and smelly fish.
Jose Rizal
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. One only dies once, and if one does not die well, a good opportunity is lost and will not present itself again.
Jose Rizal
#47. 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.
Jose Rizal
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. Orientals, and the Malays in particular, are a sensitive people: delicacy of sentiment is predominant with them.
Jose Rizal
#51. 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
#52. The Spaniard is gallant and patriotic, and sacrifices everything, in favorable moments, for his country's good. He has the intrepidity of his bull.
Jose Rizal
#53. Maria Clara did not faint, simply because the Filipinos do not know how to faint.
Jose Rizal
#54. 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
#55. On this battlefield man has no better weapon than his intelligence, no other force but his heart.
Jose Rizal
#56. To foretell the destiny of a nation, it is necessary to open a book that tells of her past.
Jose Rizal
#57. Friar! What a strange name. I don't remember having created such a thing!
Jose Rizal
#58. 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
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. To live is to be among men, and to be among men is to struggle, a struggle not only with them but with oneself; with their passions, but also with one's own.
Jose Rizal
#62. 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
#63. The God they preach about is pure invention, a trick. They're the first ones to not believe in Him!
Jose Rizal
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. I go where there are no slaves, hangmen or oppressors; where faith does not kill; where the one who reigns is God.
Jose Rizal
#67. A lie among the stars
Is a comfortable lie.
Jose Rizal
#68. 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
#69. 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
#70. He who would love much has also much to suffer.
Jose Rizal
#71. The people no longer has confidence in its former protectors, now its exploiters and executioners. The masks have fallen.
Jose Rizal
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. Man works for an object. Remove that object and you reduce him into inaction.
Jose Rizal
#75. The world laughs at another man's pain.
Jose Rizal
#76. 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
#77. Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks.
Jose Rizal
#78. Let her be loved not only for her beauty and amiable character, but also for her strength of mind and loftiness of purpose, which enliven and raise the feeble and the timid and ward off all vain thoughts. Let her be the pride of her country and let her command respect.
Jose Rizal
#79. Law has no skin, reason has no nostrils.
Jose Rizal
#80. 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
#81. Each one writes history according to his convenience.
Jose Rizal
#82. Justice is the foremost virtue of the civilizing races. It subdues the barbarous nations, while injustice arouses the weakest.
Jose Rizal
#83. The youth is the hope of our future.
Jose Rizal
#84. Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.
Jose Rizal
#85. 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
#86. 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
#87. The tyranny of some is possible only through the cowardice of others.
Jose Rizal
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. The glory of saving a country doesn't mean having to use the measures that contributed to its ruin!
Jose Rizal
#93. 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
#94. Truth does not need to borrow garments from falsehood.
Jose Rizal
#95. Genius has no country. It blossoms everywhere. Genius is like the light, the air. It is the heritage of all.
-Dr. Jose Rizal
Jose Rizal
#96. 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
#97. The example could encourage others who only fear to start.
Jose Rizal
#98. Night favors belief, and the imagination peoples the air with specters.
Jose Rizal
#99. Ah, is this thing that you call tinola a variety of lotus which makes people - er - forgetful?
Jose Rizal
#100. 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
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
