“Jose Rizal has a good claim to being the first Asian nationalist. An extremely talented Malay born a hundred years ago in a small town near Manila, educated partly in the Philippines and partly in Europe, Rizal inspired Filipinos by his writings and example to make the first nationalist revolution in 1896, to establish its first democratic republic, which survived until 1901, and in 1946, exactly half a century after his execution by the Spanish colonial regime, to become the first Asians to win independence from Western colonialism.”
 
- Leon Ma. Guerrero III, “Introduction: A Novel of Omens and Prophecies” from The First Filipino