José Martí Quotes

82 Sourced Quotes

Once I reveled in a destiny
like no other joy I'd known:
when the warden — reading
my death sentence — wept.

José Martí
One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time.

José Martí
I am an an honest man
From where the palm tree grows,
And I want, before I die,
to cast these verses from my soul.

José Martí
It is not the form of things that must be attended to but their spirit. The real is what matters, not the apparent. In politics, reality is that which is unseen. Politics is the art of combining a nation's diverse or opposing factors to the benefit of its domestic well-being, and of saving the country from the open enmity or covetous friendship of other nations.

José Martí
My poems please the brave:
My poems, short and sincere,
Have the force of steel
Which forges swords.

José Martí
To insist on racial divisions, on racial differences, in an already divided people, is to place obstacles in the way of public and individual happiness, which can only be obtained by bringing people together as a nation.

José Martí
A genuine man goes to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go to the roots. He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical.

José Martí
The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task.

José Martí
Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies.

José Martí
The whole afternoon was spent rejoicing as the demonstration spread across the city; no one walked alone for all San Juan was a single family.

José Martí
Man needs to go outside himself in order to find repose and reveal himself.

José Martí
I have lived in the monster [the United States] and I know its insides; and my sling is the sling of David.

José Martí
Poetry is the work of the bard and of the people who inspire him.

José Martí
It was imperative to make common cause with the oppressed, in order to secure a new system opposed to the ambitions and governing habits of the oppressors.

José Martí
A knowledge of different literatures is the best way to free one's self from the tyranny of any of them.

José Martí
Through a marvelous law of natural compensation, he who gives of himself grows, and he who turns inward and lives from small pleasures, is afraid to share them with others, and only thinks avariciously of cultivating his appetites loses his humanity and becomes loneliness itself. He carries in his breast all the dreariness of winter. He becomes in fact and appearance an insect.

José Martí
I grow a white rose
In July just as in January
For the sincere friend
Who gives me his frank hand.
And for the cruel man who pulls out of me
the heart with which I live,
I grow neither nettles nor thorns:
I grow a white rose.

José Martí
Knowing is what counts. To know one's country and govern it with that knowledge is the only way to free it from tyranny.

José Martí
The vote is the most effective and merciful instrument that man has devised to manage his affairs.

José Martí
I wish to leave the world
By its natural door;
In my tomb of green leaves
They are to carry me to die.
Do not put me in the dark
To die like a traitor;
I am good, and like a good thing
I will die with my face to the sun.

José Martí
Only those who hate the Negro see hatred in the Negro.

José Martí
Many houses were still full of light when, at the close of March 22, the people of the Círculo returned to their homes, which were gladdened with a fleeting gladness by an hour of justice — for there are still many slaves, black and white, in Puerto Rico!

José Martí