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“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

“Sometimes it pays not to be interested in what happened but in what did not happen.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“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?”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“Rizal learned the right ideas at the wrong time, and for this he was shot.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“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'.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“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.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Meaning and History: The Rizal Lectures

“Can you imagine the feeling of being an oppressed colonial being addressed respectfully by a colonizer in the mother country?”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“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.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“Doreen Fernandez' foreword to "Rizal Without the Overcoat":

His essays remind us that history need not and should not be relegated to schoolbooks and classrooms, where it often becomes a set of names and dates to memorize and spew out on test papers. History is a living and lively account of what we were and are; it could and should be as real to each of us as stories about family or about recent and past events.. If all of that makes us understand humanity better, so does history make us understand ourselves, and our country infinitely better, in the context of our culture and our society.”
― Ambeth Ocampo, Rizal Without the Overcoat

“We want the happiness of the Philippines, but we want to obtain it through noble and just means. If I have to commit villainy to make her happy, I would refuse to do so, because I am sure that what is built on sand sooner or later would tumble down.”
― José Rizal, The Rizal-Blumentritt Correspondence

“A revolution does not have to eat its children. In fact, it is those who are in power who could very well initiate revolutions. Let us not be old-fashioned and think only of armed uprisings of minorities as revolutions. Any movement that seeks to overhaul established attitudes is a revolution.”
― F. Sionil José