“The identity of the Filipino today is of a person asking what is his identity.”

“Identity is the history that has gone into bone and blood and reshaped the flesh. Identity is not what we were but what we have become what we are at this moment.”

“Before 1521 we could have been anything and everything not Filipino; after 1565 we can be nothing but Filipino.”

“This is the difference between the Spanish advent and the American; that the technical revolution provoked by the first produced the Filipino, while the cultural upheaval provoked by the second merely helped us to become more aware of this Filipinoness.”

“No individual existence can be traced further than the moment of conception, which determined that what was to be born would be this person and no other. The person may change from baby to child, and from boy to man, but through all these changes he will remain this person and cannot be another, because all possibilities to the contrary that may have existed before the moment of conception ended forever with the moment of conception.”

“Shouldn't we rather recognize that each person is a sort of unconscious anthology of all epochs of man; and that he may at times be moving simultaneously among different epochs?”

“Environment is what you make it and destiny is how you react to your environment: whether you try to overcome it or just resign yourself to it.”