Every human being has within him an ideal man, just as every piece of marble contains in a rough state a statue as beautiful as the one that Praxitel… - José Martí

America began to suffer, and still suffers, from the tiresome task of reconciling the hostile and discordant elements it inherited from the despotic and perverse colonizer, and the imported methods and ideas which have been retarding logical government because they are lacking in local realities. Thrown out of gear for three centuries by a power which denied men the right to use their reason, the continent disregarded or closed its ears to the unlettered throngs that helped bring it to redemption, and embarked on a government based on reason-a reason belonging to all for the common good, not the university brand of reason over the peasant brand. The problem of independence did not lie in a change of forms but in change of spirit.

Seule l’oppression devrait craindre l’expression complète de la liberté.

All is beautiful and unceasing, all is music and reason, and all, like diamond, is carbon first, then light.