Kimberly Dejan > Kimberly's Quotes

“As you can see, there are quite a number of things taught in school that one has to unlearn or at least correct.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“School made us 'literate' but did not teach us to read for pleasure.”
― Ambeth Ocampo

“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.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“If we cannot agree on what was important yesterday, what more on events that happened a hundred or three hundred years ago? The point here is that history is open ended and we cannot be sure about the past. So why study history? Because it teaches us to see the connections between events. Knowing how and why a certain event happened is helpful because in many cases people separated by time and place can sometimes be in similar situations. They can be mentally contemporaneous without knowing it. History gives us hindsight.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Meaning and History: The Rizal Lectures

“Mahirap ngayon ang educational system. They're out for the degree, not knowledge.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Talking History: Conversations with Teodoro A. Agoncillo

“Reading gives us the furniture of our minds. Reading can spell the difference between independence and slavery; liberation and isolation. Without reading, our history would have turned out differently. Reading made and shaped our heroes. Reading liberates.”
― Ambeth R. Ocampo, Bones of Contention: The Andres Bonifacio Lectures

“Filipinos have an aversion to blank walls.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“It is memory that has made the person I am today. Without memory we cannot form relationships, we cannot know who we are, we cannot forge our identities. The same is true for history.”
― Ambeth R. Ocampo, Bones of Contention: The Andres Bonifacio Lectures

“To live is to be among men and to be among men is to struggle. (From Jose Rizal's letter to his nephew Alfredo or Freding)”
― Ambeth R. Ocampo, Rizal's Teeth, Bonifacio's Bones

“We teach history to instill in new generations the values of patriotism, citizenship, and love of country, but sometimes we must also remember that we teach history so that we can liberate ourselves from the past.”
― Ambeth R. Ocampo, Storm Chasers

“...as we all know from experience elections actually divide more than unite.”
― Ambeth R. Ocampo, Storm Chasers