Ambeth Ocampo

“Even a quick reading of Rizal's trial will prove that those who take Constantino's works uncritically are likewise guilty of "Veneration Without Understanding." Since there is so much fiction and faction in history it is always essential to return to the sources.”

“Rizal's greatest misfortune is being national hero of the Philippines.”

“A historian can never claim to have the last word on anything as he is limited by his sources and further so by his viewpoint.”

“We make Rizal in our own image and likeness. Our image of Rizal is usually formed or deformed in school through numerous biographies with flattering titles.”

“Mahirap ngayon ang educational system. They're out for the degree, not knowledge.”

“If we cannot agree on what was important yesterday, what more on events that happened a hundred or three hundred years ago? The point here is that history is open ended and we cannot be sure about the past. So why study history? Because it teaches us to see the connections between events. Knowing how and why a certain event happened is helpful because in many cases people separated by time and place can sometimes be in similar situations. They can be mentally contemporaneous without knowing it. History gives us hindsight.”

“Filipinos have an aversion to blank walls.”

“It is ironic that many Filipinos learn to love the Philippines while abroad, not at home.”

“Rizal learned the right ideas at the wrong time, and for this he was shot.”

“Who says history is stagnant? For a historian, facts do not change; it is the way we look at things, our interpretations, that are always changing. This is what makes history exciting - that we can always find something new in what is old.”

“Filipinos are not a reading people, and despite the compulsory course on the life and works of Rizal today, from the elementary to the university levels, it is accepted that the 'Noli me Tangere' and 'El Filibusterismo' are highly regarded but seldom read (if not totally ignored). Therefore one asks, how can unread novels exert any influence?”

“Rizal" is a compulsory course in school, but few teachers make Rizal's novels interesting. If students are taught to enjoy Rizal's works as literature instead of as a lodemine of 'patriotic' allusions I am sure they would not mind reading and rereading the 'Noli me Tangere'.”

“Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?”

“School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.”

“I guess if you go around with famous people you are assured of some reflected (or deflected) glory.”

“Sometimes it pays not to be interested in what happened but in what did not happen.”

“As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct.”

“Doreen Fernandez' foreword to "Rizal Without the Overcoat":His essays remind us that history need not and should not be relegated to schoolbooks and classrooms, where it often becomes a set of names and dates to memorize and spew out on test papers. History is a living and lively account of what we were and are; it could and should be as real to each of us as stories about family or about recent and past events.. If all of that makes us understand humanity better, so does history make us understand ourselves, and our country infinitely better, in the context of our culture and our society.”

“I was to discover that like the overcoat that snugly wraps Rizal in all his statues and photographs, Rizal is obscured by countless myths and preconceived ideas... Without his overcoat, Rizal was human, like you and me.”