…children are the hope of the world.

One’s home and one’s behavior must both be clean…

Students are the bastion of freedom.

To know how to read is to know how to walk. To know how to write is to know how to climb..

At times, the way justice is defended makes it appear unjust.

Those who are passionate are the world’s first born.

No man’s glory is complete without a woman’s smile

All great ideas have their great Nazarene

Mountains culminate in peaks and peoples in men.

Men are divided into two ranks: those who love and create, and those who hate and destroy.

Each race brings forth its mandate to the world, and the road must be cleared for them all.

Scarce, like mountains, are the men who know how to look out from the peaks of mountains, and feel with the heart of a nation, or of humanity.

A school is a forge of spirits.

Cold-blooded murderer, ungrateful to God and an enemy of men, is he who, under the pretext of guiding the new generations, teaches them an isolated and absolute set of doctrines, and preaches into their ears the barbaric gospel of hatred, instead of the sweet words of love.

I am a son of America : I owe myself to her.

Victory is made up of concessions.

…to forgive is to triumph.

To think is to serve.

A grain of poetry seasons a century.

The world is strong and beautiful because of friends.

All is joy when you are fighting for the light of the world.

The law itself, when is exercised by the ignorant, can resemble a crime.

Freedom is the right of every man to be honest, and to think and speak without hypocrisy.

Every American of our America is Cuban.

Trenches of ideas are worth more than trenches of stones.

To be ahead of the rest, you need to see more than they do..

Silence is the modesty of great characters.

Unite: this is the word of the world.

One must rise up like the mountains to be seen from afar.

Glory will emerge triumphant from the darkest heart.

To postpone is never to decide.

Without noble ideas one cannot aspire to common respect.

Love is but a way to grow.

He who disdains his own life, will be able to honor it.

Pain is the salt of glory.

All men have a bit of lion in them, and want the lion’s share for themselves. They protest the oppression of others, but as soon as they can oppress someone, they do. They cry out against the monopolies of others, but as soon as they can monopolize something, they do. It is no wonder that when the Bible refered to an admirable man, they called him just. To not want everything for oneself, to do without something so that all may have an equal share, is a merit that seems heroic, judging by the scant number of those who demonstrate him.

Homeland is humanity, it is that part of humanity that we see closer, and where it was our fate to be born.

Everything has already been said, but things are always new if they are sincere.

…If I were to choose an ideal from among all the others in the affairs of my homeland, a fundamental ideal that would be the foundation and guiding principle for all the rest, and without which the others would be fallacious and insecure, this is the one I would choose: I would like the first law of our Republic to be the absolute dedication of all Cubans to the full dignity of man.

To govern is nothing more than to foresee.

Either the Republic is founded upon the integral character of every one of its children, the habit of working with one’s hands and thinking for oneself, the full realization of one’s own potential, and respect like that of a family’s honor for the full realization of others, in short, a passion for the dignity of man, or else the Republic is not worth a single tear shed by our women, nor a single drop of our heroes’ blood.

The indispensable friendship between Cuba and the United States requires the Cubans to continually demonstrate their ability to create, to organize, to join together, to understand and defend freedom, and to penetrate the language and customs of the North more easily and quickly than the Northerners can penetrate the civilizations of others…

…Teaching, which is the most beautiful and honorable thing in the world.

Men are born from both a mother and a motherland.

46- Let us rise up once and for all, with a final charge from the heart, let us rise up so that freedom is not endangered, once we have triumphed, by disorder or clumsiness, by impatience in achieving it. Let us rise up for the true republic, those of us who will know how to maintain it through our passion for what is right and our habit for hard work… Let us rise up to provide a final resting place for the heroes whose spirit roams the world, ashamed and alone. Let us rise up so that some day our children will have a final resting place, and let us place around the star of the new flag this declaration of love triumphant: ‘With all, and for the good of all”.

For me, homeland will never mean triumph, but rather suffering and duty.

A nation that wants to be free should be free in business.

The blood of the good is never spilled in vain.

Honoring the homeland is a way of fighting for it.

Presidents should serve to unite, not divide.

I am carrying on with my work, dear Mother, a work more pure than a newborn child, immaculate as a star, unstained by ambition, intrigue or hatred.

The war for the independence of Cuba, a knot in the sheaf of islands that the continental trade routes will cross within a few years, is an event of great human significance, and a timely service which the judicious heroism of the Antilles lends to stability and fair treatment among the American nations, and the still uncertain balance in the world.

Education begins at the same time as life, and ends only with death.

A man died on the cross one day; but we should learn to die on the cross every day.

To shamefully forget the dead is a desecration. Greatness is rooted in truth and truth is virtue.

One leaves this Earth happily when one has achieved a great work.

There is only one true glory, that of a soul that is self- contented.

Every death is the beginning of a life.

No chisel engraves as deeply as death engraves suffering into the soul.

Suffering is greater than pleasure: it is to truly live.

It is a sin not to do what you are capable of doing.

Death is meaningless when you have fulfilled your life’s work.

No! Human life is not all of life! The grave is a means, not an end.

Human life would be a repugnant and barbaric invention if it were limited to life on Earth.

An honest man has the right to err.

Duty should be simply and naturally fulfilled.

Freedom is the tyranny of duty.

If I was of any use before now I do not remember: what I want is to do more

Those who sow schools will harvest men.

72- ... If one is honest and was born poor, there is no time for being wise and rich.

…Those who want peoples must make men.

A nation that buys, commands. A nation that sells, serves.

Honor can be tarnished
Justice can be overthrown
Everything can be destroyed
But the idea of goodness rises above everything and never founders.

Those who have maintained their dignity know the worth of the dignity of others, and respect it.

Words debase if a pure, whole heart does not support them.

Words are superfluous when they do not create, when they do not enlighten, when they do not attract, when they not add anything new.
By dint of equal merits, inequality of size should disappear.

Trade must be balanced in order to ensure freedom.

Power is almost always reached on one’s knees. Those who reach it on their feet are the ones who have the right to it.

The best citizen is he who cultivates a larger area of land.

Where he wrote, he carved. Where he censured, he healed. What he imitated, he enhanced. He distrusted himself and loved purely. That is an epitaph.

Never doubt, young man. Never deny, stubborn man. Study and then believe.

Let he who loves not he marked, so that shame may convert him.

Montecristi, March 25, 1895

Dear Mother,

Today on the eve of a long voyage, I am thinking of you. I never stop thinking of you. In the anger of your love, you suffer over the sacrifice of my life. But why I was born from you to a life that loves sacrifice? I can not find the words. A man’s duty lies where he is most useful. But the memory of my mother is always with me, in my growing and necessary agony

Embrace my sisters and their husbands for me. I hope that one day I will see you all around me once again, and you will be pleased with me. And then I truly will take care of you, with tenderness and with pride. For now, give me your blessing, and believe that every act that comes from my heart will be compassionate and pure. Blessings...

Your son.

José Martí

I have reason to be happier and more confident than you could ever imagine. Truth and tenderness are not worthless. Do not suffer.

A nation that honors its heroes affirms itself.

No voice is too weak to pay tribute.

Major rights are not attained with tears, but with blood.

Marti died in Dos Rios on May 19, 1895.