Jose Rizal Quotes

The afflicted are not listened to. They are like someone whose tongue has been cut out and who occasionally forgets the fact. When they move their lips no ear perceives any sound. And they themselves soon sink into impotence in the use of language, because of the certainty of not being heard.

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

Freedom can be killed by neglect as well as by direct attack.

A lot of compelling stories in the world aren't being told, and the fact that people don't know about them compounds the suffering.

Idleness is to the human mind like rust to iron.

In ten years of struggle and travail that beggar description, in ten years of suffering almost beyond human endurance, we have witnessed the indifference with which all Europe and even our brothers of the north have remained but passive spectators to our anguish.

Of all the cankers of human happiness, none corrodes with so silent, yet so baneful a tooth as indolence.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

I think there's a lot of catastrophe in this world and a lot of cruelty and a lot of carelessness.

I cannot bear to live where there is so much injustice and I cannot do something about it. What kind of a torturous life is that?

Most of us fall short much more by omission than by commission. While the world perishes we go our way: purposeless, passionless, day after day.

When they remain silent, they cry out.

Singular indeed the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found, to raise the voice of complaint.

It's easy to do nothing, but your heart breaks a little more every time you do.

What hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander.

Negativity is basically laziness.

The world didn’t like to look at the dark underside very often. But that didn’t change the ugliness; it only ensured that those who perpetuated the ugliness were left alone to kill and maim and rape.

Nobody did nothin' to nobody.

His perfect kingdom of killing, suffering and pain Demands devotion, atrocities done in his name.

He who has been impoverished for a long timewho has long stood before the door of the mighty in darkness and begged for alms,has filled his heart with bitterness so that it resembles a sponge full of gall; he knows about the injustice and folly of all human action and sometimes his lips tremble with rage and a stifled scream.

A lobster, when left high and dry among the rock, does not have the sense enough to work his way back to the sea, but waits for the sea to come to him. If it does not come, he remains where he is and dies, although the slightest effort would enable him to reach the waves, which are perhaps within a yard of him. The world is full of human lobsters; people stranded on the rocks of indecision and procrastination, who, instead of putting forth their own energies, are waiting for some grand billow of good fortune to set them afloat.

Racism doesn't know color, death doesn't know age, and pain doesn't know might.

There is a timbre of voice that comes from not being heard and knowing / you are not being heard / noticed only by others / not heard for the same reason.

The silence was unbearable to him. If the pictures could have reflected the feelings inside him, they would have been screaming in pain.