Leadership is the other side of the coin of loneliness, and he who is a leader must always act alone. And acting alone, accept everything alone.
Ferdinand Marcos
Once a champion, always a champion.
There are many things we do not want about the world. Let us not just mourn them. Let us change them.
Filipino talents and skills are becoming ubiquitous in many parts of the world. Returning Filipino workers have helped improve our skills and technological standards.
My countrymen: we have reached a turning point in our history. The choice is yours. Shall we venture into this brave new world, bright with possibilities, or retreat to the safety of our familiar but sterile past? I am for crossing the frontier.
I will fight to the last breath, even though my family cowers in terror in the palace.
I often wonder what I will be remembered in history for. Scholar? Military hero? Builder?
Whatever be the challenges, whatever be the obstacles before us, I say to you as I say to everybody else that we will overcome.
My life has been devoted to the upliftment of the Filipino by reestablishing his identity and dignity.
Freedom is not just declared; it is exercised.
I do not care how brave a president is; I do not care how many medals he may wear. I do not care how well trained his guards may be. If he violates the will of the people, he shall be eliminated.
I'll take my destiny, whatever that may be, but I'm going to fight for my dignity and my honor.
I have Chinese blood in me... I am not ashamed to admit that perhaps the great leaders of our country all have Chinese blood.
Nobody is impervious to misfortune.
I have been called brave in my time, but brave as I may have been against foreign invaders, I have no heart to shed Filipino blood.
Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them.
Let us not be so naive as to think that revolution is just a matter of social or economic discontent.
To write our constitution is for the past, the present, and the future to come together all at once in one single motion, in one single heave, one single cry. For we correct the errors of the past and chart a new course for the future, based on the experience of the present.
It is not true that I dictate what should be done. There is a dialogue.
I am not afraid to go to jail.
My friends in the opposition have forgotten that the constitution of the Philippines was amended in 1973 with their participation. The constitution mandates the administration, including the Batasan, or legislature, to convert slowly into a semiparliamentary form of government. The president in such a situation can issue decrees and edicts.
I was deposed by a coup d'etat, by friends that I trusted and aided by the American Government.
History should not be left to the historians. Rather, be like Churchill. Make history, and then write it.
We have no quarrel with a policy that seeks to support human rights.
For us, overseas employment addresses two major problems: unemployment and the balance of payments position.
President Reagan has no enemies in the Phillipines.
The primary problem in many modernizing societies is not liberty but the creation of a legitimate public order. Men may, of course, have order without liberty, but they cannot have liberty without order.
I am ashamed to run against a lady. It's demeaning, very degrading. I have always refused to argue with a lady.
We dare not supress thoughts, but when they are expressed through violence, like the idea that power comes from the barrel of a gun, they must be dealt with and met accordingly.
If it were true that special favors were given to some of these people because they are my cronies, then they should still be here, and they should be wealthy. But who are these cronies? If there be any cronies in government, point them out, and we will investigate.
America must realize, there are conditions she must accept in Asia. The first is a diversity of Asian cultures, governments, economic and political systems; the second, that to run against the tide of Asian nationalism is worse than impractical - it is also highly dangerous.
So long as I'm president, communism will not thrive here.
The permissiveness of society must be balanced with authoritativeness.
What we ask of the developed countries is to let the Third World find a third way.
To preserve our sovereign integrity, we must prove to them nobody need tell us how to hold a clean and democratic election.
The one indisputable reality of dictatorship is that dissent, insult, and malevolent language do not go unpunished if it is allowed at all.
Let us not be carried away by the undisguised agitations of leaders who virtually asked people to take the law into their own hands.
In the Philippines, the host should always be willing to defer to the wishes of the guest.
There is a standard joke in the family. Probably we should go into selling second-hand shoes.
These statements about torture, about alleged misuse of power and things like that, insulted the Filipinos more than their leader because it was made to appear as if Filipinos would tolerate a leader who would torture his own people, who would utilize his executive prerogatives for abuses.
The challenge to Asia is to discard the dry, meatless bone of mysticism and fatalism.
We do not postpone the participation of the lower classes of our people in the profits of economic enterprise, and in other countries, they do postpone it. In the long run, I think our policy is better, and we stand by it.
Little boys have amazing minds.
The challenge to America is to extend to Asia the defensive shield of American power in forms consonant with Asian freedom and self-respect.
The U.S. State Department has a consistent record of error in the assessment of Asian situations and judging Red Chinese intentions.
I can understand the Cultural Revolution of Mao Tse-tung.
Authority has to exist before it can be limited, and it is authority that is in scarce supply in those modernizing countries where government is at the mercy of alienated intellectuals, rambunctious colonels, and rioting students.
I can feel it in my bones that no matter what we do, even if we do not do anything, the revolutionary government of Madame Cory Aquino will collapse.
How can I wage political battle against a widow who does not mean anyone any harm except only the president himself?
I would like to see whether my supposed successors can really operate the government without causing a crisis.
