Monday, August 22, 2005

History Lesson No. 1: Why the revolution failed (and probably also why this nation will)

“The Revolution failed because it was badly directed, because its leader won his post not with praiseworthy but with blameworthy acts, because instead of employing the most useful men of the nation, he jealously discarded them. Believing that the advance of the people was no more than his own personal advance, he did not rate men accoding to their ability, character and partiotism but according to the degree of friendship or kinship binding him to them; and wanting to have favorites willing to sacrifice themselves for him, he showed himself lenient to their faults. Because he disdained the people, he could not but fall like an idol of wax melting in the heat of adversity. May we never forget such terrible lesson learned at the cost of unspeakable sufferings!”

Apolinario Mabini
from Nick Joaquin’s A Question of Heroes


The full text of Mabini's "The Philippine Revolution" can be found here.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is one of my favorite quotations from that book by mabini. in fact, i constantly tell people that if they will only read one book on the revolution, it shoud be mabini's. the whole thing is on line.

Anonymous said...

i agree, i have nothing against rizal and bonifacio but i honestly think that mabini is so underrated.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this quote.

History repeats itself, contrary to a certain comment in a certain blog (I think a comment in MLQ3's blog).