"Let the world be grafted onto our republics, but the trunk must be our own. And let the vanquished pedant hold his tongue, for there are no lands in which a man may take greater pride than in our long-suffering American republics."

"Knowing is what counts. To know one's country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny."

"En el periódico, en la cátedra, en la academia, debe llevarse adelante el estudio de los factores reales del país. Conocerlos basta, sin vendas ni ambages; porque el que pone de lado, por voluntad u olvido, una parte de la verdad, cae a la larga por la verdad que le faltó, que crece en la negligencia, y derriba lo que se levanta sin ella. Resolver el problema después de conocer sus elementos, es más fácil que resolver el problema sin conocerlos."

"In nations composed of both cultured and uncultured elements, the uncultured will govern because it is their habit to attack and resolve doubts with their fists in cases where the cultured have failed in the art of governing. The uncultured masses are lazy and timid in the realm of intelligence, and they want to be governed well. But if the government hurts them, they shake it off and govern themselves."

"Government must originate in the country. The spirit of government must be that of the country Its structure must conform to rules appropriate to the country. Good government is nothing more than the balance of the country's natural elements."

"To govern well, one must see things as they are."

"The trees must form ranks to keep the giant with seven-league boots from passing! It is the time of mobilization, of marching together, and we must go forward in close ranks, like silver in the veins of the Andes."

"Barricades of ideas are worth more than barricades of stones. There is no prow that can cut through a cloudbank of ideas. A powerful idea, waved before the world at the proper time, can stop a squadron of iron-clad ships, like the mystical flag of the Last judgement."

"The conceited villager believes the entire world to be his village. Provided that he can be mayor, humiliate the rival who stole his sweetheart, or add to the savings in his strongbox, he considers the universal order good, unaware of those giants with seven-league boots who can crush him underfoot, or of the strife in the heavens between comets that go through the air asleep, gulping down worlds."

"Cuba and Belgium are both countries of modest size, surrounded by large, powerful and often hostile powers."

"Day and night I always dream with open eyes."

"La patria es ara, no pedestal."

"Rights are to be taken, not requested; seized, not begged for."

"I have lived in the monster and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David."

"Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro."

"This is the age in which hills can look down upon the mountains."

"Yo quiero salir del mundo por la puerta natural: en un carro de hojas verdes a morir me han de llevar. No me pongan en lo oscuro a morir como un traidor: yo soy bueno, y como bueno moriré de cara al sol."

"Mankind is composed of two sorts of men — those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy."

"Many houses were still full of light when, at the close of March 22, the people of the Círculo returned to their homes, which were gladdened with a fleeting gladness by an hour of justice — for there are still many slaves, black and white, in Puerto Rico!"

"The whole afternoon was spent rejoicing as the demonstration spread across the city; no one walked alone for all San Juan was a single family."

"The spirit of a government must be that of the country. The form of a government must come from the makeup of the country. Government is nothing but the balance of the natural elements of a country."

"Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him."

"Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself."

"Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas."

"Hatred, slavery's inevitable aftermath."

"A grain of poetry suffices to season a century."

"Men are products, expressions, reflections; they live to the extent that they coincide with their epoch, or to the extent that they differ markedly from it."

"A nation is not a complex of wheels, nor a wild horse race, but a stride upward concerted by real men."

"Terrible times in which priests no longer merit the praise of poets and in which poets have not yet begun to be priests."

"Man needs to suffer. When he does not have real griefs he creates them. Griefs purify and prepare him."

"To beautify life is to give it an object."

"A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them."

"Oh, what company good poets are!"

"Love is... born with the pleasure of looking at each other, it is fed with the necessity of seeing each other, it is concluded with the impossibility of separation!"

"Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate."

"Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love. But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything."

"Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men. The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest. An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life. A nation that neglects either of these forces perishes. They must be steered together, like a pair of carriage horses."

"The vote is the most effective and merciful instrument that man has devised to manage his affairs."

"Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand."

"We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor."

"Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together. You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all."

"Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies."

"Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist."

"Liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect."

"Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy."

"Ostentatious men who are governed by self-interest will combine, whether white or black, and the generous and selfless will similarly unite. True men, black and white, will treat one another with loyalty and tenderness, out of a sense of merit and the pride of everyone who honors the land in which we were born, black and white alike. Negroes, who now use the word "racist" in good faith, will stop using it when they realize it is the only apparently valid argument that weak men, who honestly believe that Negroes are inferior, use to deny them the full exercise of their rights as men. White and black racists would be equally guilty of racism."

"In Cuba, there is no fear of a racial war. Men are more than whites, mulattos or Negroes. Cubans are more than whites, mulattos or Negroes. On the field of battle, dying for Cuba, the souls of whites and Negroes have risen together into the air."

"What right do white racist, who believe their race is superior, have for complaining about black racists, who see something special in their own race? What right do black racists, who see a special character in their race, have for complaining about white racists? White men who think their race makes them superior to black men admit the idea of racial difference and authorize and initiate black racists. Black men who proclaim their race — when what they are really proclaiming is the spiritual identity that distinguishes one ethnic group from another — authorize and incite white racists. Peace demands of Nature the recognition of human rights; discrimination is contrary to Nature and the enemy of peace. Whites who isolate themselves also isolate Negroes. Negroes who isolate themselves incite and isolate whites."

"To insist on racial divisions, on racial differences, in an already divided people, is to place obstacles in the way of public and individual happiness, which can only be obtained by bringing people together as a nation."

"Everything that divides men, everything that specified, separates or pens them, is a sin against humanity."