"A declaratory sentence can be asserted, because it is an incomplete symbol, of indeterminate modality; while a question, a command, an invective, or any other sentence of fixed intention can no more be asserted than could my act of hewing wood or of drinking tea."

"While the articulate contents of science are successfully taught all over the world in hundreds of universities, the unspecifiable art of scientific research has not yet penetrated to many of these."

"To learn by example is to submit to authority. ...By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the rules of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. These hidden rules can be assimilated only by a person who surrenders himself to that extent uncritically to the imitation of another. A society which wants to preserve a fund of personal knowledge must submit to tradition. ...Common Law ...is the most important system of strictly traditional activities."

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

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

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

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

"The first Filipino."

"One of the best exemplars of nationalist thinking."

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

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

"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!"

"[Noli Me Tángere]*"

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

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

";The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin."

";The school of suffering tempers the spirit, the arena of combat strengthens the soul."

";Pure and spotless must the victim be if the sacrifice is to be acceptable."

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

";Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?"

";There are 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 in the field without becoming part of an edifice."

"Fate presented itself to some like a chinese fan--one side black, the other side gilded with flowers."

"Believing in accidents is like believing in miracles--both presuppose that God does not know the future."

"Not all were asleep during the night of our forefathers!"

";You must shatter the vase to spread its perfume, and smite the rock to get the spark."

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

"I go where there are no slaves, hangmen or oppressors; Where faith does not kill; where the one who reigns is God."

"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."

"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!"

"The Filipino loves his country no less than the Spaniard does his, and although he is quieter, more peaceful and with more difficulty stirred up, once aroused he does not hesitate and for him the struggle means death to the finish. He has both the meekness and ferocity of the carabao. Climate affects bipeds in the same way it does quadrupeds."

"Law has no skin, reason has no nostrils."

"It breaks immortality's neck Contemplates crime and therefore halts it; It humbles barbarous nations And makes of savages, champions."

"Truth does not need to borrow garments from error. (Also translated as: Truth does not need to borrow garments from falsehood.)"

"Travel is a caprice in childhood, a passion in youth, a necessity in manhood, and an elegy in old age."

"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."

"He who knows the surface of the earth and the topography of a country only through the examination of maps..is like a man who learns the opera of Meyerbeer or Rossini by reading only reviews in the newspapers. The brush of landscape artists Lorrain, Ruysdael, or Calame can reproduce on canvas the sun's ray, the coolness of the heavens, the green of the fields, the majesty of the mountains...but what can never be stolen from Nature is that vivid impression that she alone can and knows how to impart--the music of the birds, the movement of the trees, the aroma peculiar to the place--the inexplicable something the traveller feels that cannot be defined and which seems to awaken in him distant memories of happy days, sorrows and joys gone by, never to return"

"Man is multiplied by the number of languages he possesses and speaks."

"Virtue lies in the middle ground."

"Necessity is the most powerful divinity the world knows--it is the result of physical forces set in operation by ethical forces."

"Fame to be sweet must resound in the ears of those we love, in the atmosphere of the land that will guard our ashes. Fame should hover over our tomb to warm with its heat the chill of death, so that we may not be completely reduced to nothingness, that something of us may survive."

"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."

"The world laughs at another man's pain."

"The sea, the sea is everything! Its sovereign mass brings to me atoms of a myriad faraway lands; Its bright smile animates me in the limpid mornings And when at the end of day my faith has failed me My heart echoes the sound of its sorrow in the sands."

"He who would love much has also much to suffer."