Quotes from Ambeth Ocampo

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

It is ironic that many Filipinos learn to love the Philippines while abroad, not at home.

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

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

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.

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'.

We make Rizal in our own image and likeness. Our image of Rizal is usually formed or deformed in school through numerous biographies with flattering titles.

Rizal's greatest misfortune is being national hero of the Philippines.

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

Even a quick reading of Rizal's trial will prove that those who take Constantino's works uncritically are likewise guilty of Veneration Without Understanding. Since there is so much fiction and faction in history it is always essential to return to the sources.

Mahirap ngayon ang educational system. They're out for the degree, not knowledge.

I was to discover that like the overcoat that snugly wraps Rizal in all his statues and photographs, Rizal is obscured by countless myths and preconceived ideas... Without his overcoat, Rizal was human, like you and me.

Filipinos have an aversion to blank walls.

I guess if you go around with famous people you are assured of some reflected (or deflected) glory.