Painters From The Philippines

";De nobis, post haec, tristis sententia fertur!:After all this, you still speak ill of us!"

"[Noli Me Tángere]*"

"He who does not love his own language is worse than an animal and a smelly fish."

"In recognition of the aspirations of the Filipino nation and in proclaiming its noble and patriotic sentiments, I hereby decree."

"And now, gentlemen, you must have a national hero."

"Taft quickly decided that it would be extremely useful for the Filipinos to have a national hero of their revolution against the Spanish in order to channel their feelings and focus their resentment backward on Spain. But he told his advisers that he wanted it to be someone who really wasn’t so much of a revolutionary that, if his life were examined too closely or his works read too carefully, this could cause us any trouble. He chose Rizal as the man who fit his model."

"Under what clime or what skies, has tyranny claimed a nobler victim?"

"It is eminently proper that Rizal should have become the acknowledged national hero of the Philippine people. Rizal never advocated independence, nor did he advocate armed resistance to the government. He urged reform from within by publicity, by public education, and appeal to the public conscience."

"The American decision to make Rizal our national hero was a master stroke."

"Although the Americans encouraged the hero-worship of Rizal, the man was already a national hero to the Filipinos long before the Americans sponsored him as such."

"There is no doubt that we would have made Rizal one of our heroes even without American intervention."

"Rizal's greatest misfortune was becoming a national hero of the Philippines. He is everywhere and therefore nowhere."

"The first Filipino."

"To echo the first Filipino, you get the Rizal you deserve. (alluding to Rizal's statement, 'You get the government you deserve')"

"One of the best exemplars of nationalist thinking."

"Rizal is the spirit of contradiction; a soul that dreads the revolution, although deep down desires it."

"A gem of a man. (Un perla de hombre.)"

"His coming to the world is like the appearance of a rare comet, whose brilliance appears only every other century."

"The life Rizal lived is a more abiding gift than the things he said and wrote. His life will forever be of inestimable importance."

"Sleep in the shadows of nothingness Redeemer of an enslaved land — Don't weep in the mystery of the tomb Nor grieve the momentary triumph of the Spaniard; For if the bullet ravaged your skull Your idea vanquished an empire!"