José Martí

THOUGHTS

Carlos Ripoll

ON LIBERTY

1.- Respect for the freedom and ideas of others, of even the most wretched being, is my fanaticism. When I die, or if I am killed, it will be because of that.

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

3.- As the 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.

4.- Only oppression should fear the full exercise of freedom.

5.- It is not enough to come to the defense of freedom with epic and intermittent efforts when it is threatened at moments of crisis. Every moment is critical for the preservation of freedom.

6.- People love liberty, even if they do not know that they love it. They are driven by it and flee from where it does not exist.

7.- Perhaps the enemies of liberty are such because they judge it by its loud voice. If they knew its charms, the dignity that accompanies it, how much a free man feels like a king, the perpetual inner light that is produced by decorous self-awareness and realization, perhaps there would be no greater friends of freedom than those who are its worst enemies.

8.- Anyone who offends the sacred freedom of our adversaries is reprehensible, and more so if he or she does it in the name of freedom.

9.- There isn't a throne that can compare with the mind of a free person or a more august authority than a person's thoughts when liberty truly reigns subject to no obstacles other than those created by human nature.

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

11.- It is terrible to speak of you, Liberty, for one who lives without you. A wild beast does not bend its knee before its tamer with greater fury. One discovers the depths of hell, and from there looks up at free men with their sun-like arrogance. One bites the air, like a hyena biting the bars of its cage. One's spirit writhes inside the body, like a man who has been poisoned. The wretch who lives without freedom feels like dressing in the mud from the streets. Those who have you, oh Liberty, do not know you. Those who do not have you should not speak of you, but win you.

12.- Animals move in herds; men, guided by free thought.

13.- A human being's entry into the happiness and discipline of liberty brings about something like a colossal flowering of lilies, a chaste and profound faith in the utility and justice of nature.

14.- A person who lives under autocratic rule is like an oyster in its shell that sees only the prison that confines it and, in the darkness, believes that to be the world. Freedom gives the oyster wings, and the portentous battle heard inside the shell turns out, in the light of day, to be the natural motion of life-blood in the world's vigorous pulse.

15.- A good rider should not let go the reins of his horse, nor a free man his rights. It is true that it is easier to be led than to lead, but it is also more dangerous.

16.- There is no forgiveness for acts of hatred. Daggers thrust in the name of liberty are thrust into liberty's heart.

17.- If a nation of debate, a nation of votes, a nation of action, does not lose its freedom through its vices, does not sully it out of ambition by turning to conquest, does not leave it uncared for in evil hands out of a fierce and miserable appetite for wealth, who will steal, offend or abridge the freedom of such a nation? To merely talk about liberty, to demand rights without preparing for them or protecting them in practice, is like venturing into a briar patch to throw stones at feathers.

18.- Of course, liberty is not diminished if it wears a well-tailored suit and combines the merit of virtue with good manners. Knowing how to wear a frockcoat does not make one a born accomplice of tyrants. Neither frockcoats nor cassocks are sins. Washington, Bolivar, and Lafayette were three perfect dandies.

19.- Freedom is only served honorably by a person who, at the risk of being taken for its enemy, preserves it without quaking before those who compromise it with their errors. Anyone who excuses its vices and crimes out of a faint hearted fear of seeming lukewarm in its defense does not deserve to be called a defender of freedom.

20.- The sufferings endured for the sake of winning freedom make us love it the more. The repose produced by tyrannic rule allows the spirit to purify and strengthen itself.

21.- Where there is enlightened liberty not even age-old angers can sink in their teeth and raise storms. Rather, they melt and crumble, like a comet in its collision with the sun. The steed of liberty was born with a bridle.

22.- Every time a person is deprived of the right to think I feel a child of mine has been murdered.

23.- 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. We must say no once more. Man is not free to watch impassively the enslavement and dishonor of human beings, nor their struggles for liberty and honor.

24.- Liberty is not a banner in whose shadow the victors devour the vanquished and overwhelm them with untiring rancour; liberty is a robust madwoman whose father, the sweetest of fathers, is love, and whose mother, the richest of mothers, is peace.

25.- Liberty needs people who sacrifice, not people who dishonor or belittle or abandon those who are ready to sacrifice rationally and pragmatically today for the happiness of others tomorrow. That is the mystery of the stumblings and downfalls in the struggle for liberty, the agony, the secret of the defeats. Lest they be compelled to join in the sacrifice, those who want liberty to serve them, for their benefit or success, block the way of those who want liberty at the expense of their own lives, to serve others, to serve their fellow citizens.