120 Quotes by F. Sionil José

Virtue and wealth sometimes go together.

A nation which has people who can think, that nation already has strength. It is the mind which rules, Eustaquio -- not instinct or habit.

Are You, then the God of white people, and if we who are brown worship You, do we receive Your blessings as white men do?

I pray that You be not white, that You be without color and that You be in all men because goodness cannot be encased only in white.

The obscenities of this country are not girls like you. It is the poverty which is obscene, and the criminal irresponsibility of the leaders who make this poverty a deadening reality. The obscenities in this country are the places of the rich, the new hotels made at the expense of the people, the hospitals where the poor die when they get sick because they don't have the money either for medicines or services. It is only in this light that the real definition of obscenity should be made.

Shit!" I shouted at him. "Now listen, my friend. The youth have no role. They have no jobs. They have no money. They are not in power and they do not make decisions. If there is going to be a war, they will be dumped into the army. And they will be killed like young men everywhere have been killed - whether or not they believe in the war. Having no role is their role.

Ubi boni, malum prosperat (Where good men are silent, evil prospers)

No man stops caring as long as he breathes. As long as he has a mind and memory, he will care. This is what separates us from the animals. We have feelings.

I am a commuter, not between the city and the village, although I do this frequently; not between the inane idealism of the classroom and the stifling reality beyond it, which I must do for survival and self-respect. I am a commuter between what I am now and what I was and would like to be and it is this commuting at lightning speed, at the oddest hours, that has done havoc to me.