Top 109 Quotes & Sayings by Jose Marti

Explore popular quotes and sayings by a Cuban activist Jose Marti.

Last updated on September 12, 2024.

José Julián Martí Pérez was a Cuban nationalist, poet, philosopher, essayist, journalist, translator, professor, and publisher, who is considered a Cuban national hero because of his role in the liberation of his country from Spain. He was also an important figure in Latin American literature. He was very politically active and is considered an important philosopher and political theorist. Through his writings and political activity, he became a symbol of Cuba's bid for independence from the Spanish Empire in the 19th century, and is referred to as the "Apostle of Cuban Independence". From adolescence, he dedicated his life to the promotion of liberty, political independence for Cuba, and intellectual independence for all Spanish Americans; his death was used as a cry for Cuban independence from Spain by both the Cuban revolutionaries and those Cubans previously reluctant to start a revolt.

Cuban - Activist | January 28, 1853 - May 19, 1895

Source: Wikipedia

To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.

Jose Marti

One just principle from the depths of a cave is more powerful than an army.

Jose Marti

Man loves liberty, even if he does not know that he loves it. He is driven by it and flees from where it does not exist.

Jose Marti

It is necessary to make virtue fashionable.

Jose Marti

He who uses the office he owes to the voters wrongfully and against them is a thief.

Jose Marti

Like stones rolling down hills, fair ideas reach their objectives despite all obstacles and barriers. It may be possible to speed or hinder them, but impossible to stop them.

Jose Marti

It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you.

Jose Marti

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

Jose Marti

Freedoms, like privileges, prevail or are imperiled together You cannot harm or strive to achieve one without harming or furthering all.

Jose Marti

To use for our exclusive benefit what is not ours is theft.

Jose Marti

Men are like the stars; some generate their own light while others reflect the brilliance they receive.

Jose Marti

Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such only because they judge it by its loud voice.

Jose Marti

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.

Jose Marti

He who could have been a torch and stoops to being a pair of jaws is a deserter.

Jose Marti

Charm is a product of the unexpected.

Jose Marti

We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.

Jose Marti

But when women are moved and lend help, when women, who are by nature calm and controlled, give encouragement and applause, when virtuous and knowledgeable women grace the endeavor with their sweet love, then it is invincible.

Jose Marti

Only those who spread treachery, fire, and death out of hatred for the prosperity of others are undeserving of pity.

Jose Marti

Mountains culminate in peaks, and nations in men.

Jose Marti

Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.

Jose Marti

One is guilty of all abjection that one does not help to relieve.

Jose Marti

Others go to bed with their mistresses; I with my ideas.

Jose Marti

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

Jose Marti

The wretch who lives without freedom feels like dressing in the mud from the streets Those who have you, o Liberty, do not know. you. Those who do not have you should not speak of you, but win you.

Jose Marti

To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.

Jose Marti

Culture, which makes talent shine, is not completely ours either, nor can we place it solely at our disposal. Rather, it belongs mainly to our country, which gave it to us, and to humanity, from which we receive it as a birthright.

Jose Marti

But love, like the sun that it is, sets afire and melts everything. what greed and privilege to build up over whole centuries the indignation of a pious spirit, with its natural following of oppressed souls, will cast down with a single shove.

Jose Marti

A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.

Jose Marti

The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest.

Jose Marti

It is the duty of man to raise up man.

Jose Marti

Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life.

Jose Marti

Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxiteles the Greek made of the god Apollo.

Jose Marti

Love is the bond between men, the way to teach and the center of the world.

Jose Marti

He who does not see things in their depth should not call himself a radical.

Jose Marti

Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men.

Jose Marti

A selfish man is a thief.

Jose Marti

If I survive, I will spend my whole life at the oven door seeing that no one is denied bread and, so as to give a lesson of charity, especially those who did not bring flour.

Jose Marti

In truth, men speak too much of danger.

Jose Marti

We are free, but not to be evil, not to be indifferent to human suffering, not to profit from the people, from the work created and sustained through their spirit of political association, while refusing to contribute to the political state that we profit from.

Jose Marti

The struggles waged by nations are weak only when they lack support in the hearts of their women.

Jose Marti

An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.

Jose Marti

The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well.

Jose Marti

Other famous men, those of much talk and few deeds, soon evaporate. Action is the dignity of greatness.

Jose Marti

A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.

Jose Marti

There is happiness in duty, although it may not seem so.

Jose Marti

He who receives money in trust to administer for the benefit of its owner, and uses it either for his own interest or against the wishes of its rightful owner, is a thief.

Jose Marti

A genuine man goes to the roots. To be a radical is no more than that: to go to the roots.

Jose Marti

Peoples are made of hate and of love, and more of hate than love.

Jose Marti

Men of action, above all those whose actions are guided by love, live forever.

Jose Marti

Man is a living duty, a depository of powers that he must not leave in a brute state. Man is a wing.

Jose Marti

A child who does not think about what happens around him and is content with living without wondering whether he lives honestly is like a man who lives from a scoundrel's work and is on the road to being a scoundrel.

Jose Marti

Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

Jose Marti

Everything that divides men, everything that separates or herds men together in categories, is a sin against humanity.

Jose Marti

To educate is to give man the keys to the world, which are independence and love, and to give him strength to journey on his own, light of step, a spontaneous and free being.

Jose Marti

To change masters is not to be free.

Jose Marti

Socialist ideology, like so many others, has two main dangers. One stems from confused and incomplete readings of foreign texts, and the other from the arrogance and hidden rage of those who, in order to climb up in the world, pretend to be frantic defenders of the helpless so as to have shoulders on which to stand.

Jose Marti

People can only be free if they are truly educated.

Jose Marti

It is my duty to prevent, through the independence of Cuba, the U.S.A. from spreading over the West Indies and falling with addedweight upon other lands of Our America. All I have done up to now and shall do hereafter is to that end.... I know the Monster, because I have lived in its lair--and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.

Jose Marti

In a time of crisis, the peoples of the world must rush to get to know each other.

Jose Marti

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

Jose Marti