Why does our march down the road to development seem to be a pattern o — Francis Escudero

"These are countries that started with higher levels of poverty incidence than our country but have successfully managed to lessen, if not virtually eliminate, extreme poverty."

"Perhaps the answer can be found in an old African adage: "If you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together."

"It’s sad to say but agriculture remains to be a poor man’s sector. Despite being a huge asset to national development, agriculture has been the most neglected and least understood sector of the nation’s economy."

"These legal disputes hinder the adequate education of our youth. It has negative impacts on the overall development of the nation in tapping and harnessing the talents of the Filipino youth, if schools, considered as their second abode, is constantly threatened with legal disputes and uncertainties. We have seen and heard cases that upon the death of the donors, heirs claim ownership of the land through revocation of the original donation. These result to endless court litigations. The passage of this bill will pave the way for simplifying the process of land titling registration of almost 90 percent of school sites in favor of the DepEd."

"I am deeply saddened and shocked by the sudden demise of Ambassador Roy Seneres. He is a big loss to the OFWs and their families, whose causes and concerns he had fought for. Our deepest condolences to his family. I appeal to our people to pray for the eternal repose of Ambassador Seneres, as well as for strength for his loved ones during this difficult time."

"Fascinated in the sense that it’s advanced human rights; it’s advanced in the sense that everything in your license, everything in your birth certificate can now be determined by the person himself. Nothing to be determined by the accident of birth. That is advanced citizenship, and I am all for it."

"Gentlemen, no fighting please. This is, after all, a council of war. (p. 26)"

"I should say that when people talk about capitalism its a bit of a joke. Theres no such thing. No country, no business class, has ever been willing to subject itself to the free market, free market discipline. Free markets are for others. Like, the Third World is the Third World because they had free markets rammed down their throat. Meanwhile, the enlightened states, England, the United States, others, resorted to massive state intervention to protect private power, and still do. Thats right up to the present. I mean, the Reagan administration for example was the most protectionist in post-war American history. Virtually the entire dynamic economy in the United States is based crucially on state initiative and intervention: computers, the internet, telecommunication, automation, pharmaceutical, you just name it. Run through it, and you find massive ripoffs of the public, meaning, a system in which under one guise or another the public pays the costs and takes the risks, and profit is privatized. Thats very remote from a free market. Free market is like what India had to suffer for a couple hundred years, and most of the rest of the Third World."

"The Dwarf sees farther than the Giant, when he has the Giants shoulders to mount on."

"If civilization has an opposite, it is war."

"A word of the faith that never balks, Here or henceforward it is all the same to me, I accept Time absolutely. It alone is without flaw, it alone rounds and completes all, That mystic baffling wonder alone completes all. (23)"

"I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract. The expression of human feelings and the passions of man certainly interest me deeply, but I am less concerned with expressing the motions of the soul and mind than to render visible, so to speak, the inner flashes of intuition which have something divine in their apparent insignificance and reveal magic, even divine horizons, when they are transposed into the marvellous effects of pure plastic art."