José Martí Quotes (1853-1895)

“All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason, and all, like diamond, is carbon first, then light.”

“Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of men, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.”

“Happiness exists on earth, and it is won through prudent exercise of reason, knowledge of the harmony of the universe, and constant practice of generosity.”

“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.”

“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.”

“There are men who live contented through they live without decorum. Others suffer as if in agony when they see around them people living without decorum. There must be a certain amount of decorum in the world, just as there must be a certain amount of light. When there are many men without decorum, there are always others who themselves possess the decorum of many men. These are the ones who rebel with terrible strength against those who rob nations of their liberty, which is to rob men of their decorum. Embodied in those men are thousands of men, a whole people, human dignity.”

“While it is the sovereign right of the Cuban people to cherish Jose Marti as their own son of the soil it can be said honestly and accurately without the slightest disagreement from the unselfish, Cuban people that Marti belongs not only to Cuba but to all of the Americas.”

“Sin embargo no has muerto Martí, sólo duermes;/la tierra te pidió como bandera...A tu pecho, José Martí, toco entre lágrimas,/en esta hora del hombre y de la guerra,/para que llegues, a la paz, despierto,/sobre el dolor más grande de la América.”

“José Martí, fulcrum of the revolution that made Cuba free, died in the struggle, but not before he had bequeathed the country which in so large part owes him its independent existence a record in poetry and in prose which is testimony to one of earth's no- blest spirits. Federico de Onís has said of him that his life is among the purest in the history of mankind. Martí's poetry has the seemingly effortless spontaneity of the born lyrist. His prose, as P. Henríquez Ureña has pointed out, was always written either to promote the liberation of Cuba, or earn him enough to live on so that he might continue promoting the liberation of Cuba, and "is thus journalism, but journalism raised to an artistic level that has never been equaled in Spanish, nor probably in any other language."”

“We Cuban artists have played a decisive role not only in the Cuban society of today but also in its greatest definition throughout our history. We Cuban artists have contributed to improving our values, to articulating our character, to stimulating the clearest cultural resistance, to understanding ourselves better, to creating a world where, as the poet José Martí demanded, the most important currency is the full dignity of man and woman...”

“By the mid-nineteenth century, José Marti-hero and example to revolutionaries and dissidents alike-was writing important poetry in the modernist tradition.”

“José Martí always stated that the republic would have been impossible without the brawn and muscle of all races.”

“Hopefully, these characters bring us closer to a sense of self: honest and honored. Icons: Toussaint Louverture to José Martí to lesser known heroes, Atahualpa and Denmark Vesey. We lace our visions with Celia Cruz and Aretha Franklin.”

“Mormino and Pozzeta, professors who studied the labor world of Ybor City, quote Cuban national leader and writer José Martí as saying that "the readers' platforms in the factories were advanced pulpits of liberty."”

“What we need is a collective practice in which investigating and shedding privilege is seen as reclaiming connection, mending relationships broken by the system, and is framed as gain, not loss. Amílcar Cabral, leader of Guinea-Bissau's war of independence from Portuguese colonial rule, called it "class suicide," meaning to die to one's class position by irrevocably aligning oneself with the interests of the oppressed. Cuban revolutionary José Martí put it more positively and poetically in the poem that became the popular song "Guantanamera": "I want to throw in my lot with the poor of the earth. The little mountain stream pleases me more than the sea."”