12 Quotes by Ambeth Ocampo

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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'.