Socrates in 399 BC Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your
tongue, and then you may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with
you? Now I have great difficulty in making you understand my answer to this.
For if I tell you that to do as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and
therefore that I cannot hold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious;
and if I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other
things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest
good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still
less likely to believe me.
Theodore Roosevelt in1883 Of course, in one sense, the first essential for a man’s being a
good citizen is his possession of the home virtues of which we think when we
call a man by the emphatic adjective of manly. No man can be a good citizen who
is not a good husband and a good father, who is not honest in his dealings with
other men and women, faithful to his friends and fearless in the presence of
his foes, who has not got a sound heart, a sound mind, and a sound body;
exactly as no amount of attention to civil duties will save a nation if the
domestic life is undermined, or there is lack of the rude military virtues
which alone can assure a country’s position in the world.
In a free republic the ideal citizen
must be one willing and able to take arms for the defense of the flag, exactly
as the ideal citizen must be the father of many healthy children. A race must
be strong and vigorous; it must be a race of good fighters and good breeders,
else its wisdom will come to naught and its virtue be ineffective; and no
sweetness and delicacy, no love for and appreciation of beauty in art or
literature, no capacity for building up material prosperity can possibly atone
for the lack of the great virile virtues.
But this is aside from my subject, for what I wish to talk
of is the attitude of the American citizen in civic life. It ought to be
axiomatic in this country that every man must devote a reasonable share of his
time to doing his duty in the Political life of the community. No man has a
right to shirk his political duties under whatever plea of pleasure or
business; and while such shirking may be pardoned in those of small cleans it
is entirely unpardonable in those among whom it is most common–in the people
whose circumstances give them freedom in the struggle for life. In so far as
the community grows to think rightly, it will likewise grow to regard the young
man of means who shirks his duty to the State in time of peace as being only
one degree worse than the man who thus shirks it in time of war.
A great many of our men in business, or of our young men
who are bent on enjoying life (as they have a perfect right to do if only they
do not sacrifice other things to enjoyment), rather plume themselves upon being
good citizens if they even vote; yet voting is the very least of their duties,
Nothing worth gaining is ever gained without effort. You can no more have
freedom without striving and suffering for it than you can win success as a
banker or a lawyer without labor and effort, without self-denial in youth and
the display of a ready and alert intelligence in middle age. The people who say
that they have not time to attend to politics are simply saying that they are
unfit to live in a free community.
Winston Churchill in 1940: I have, myself, full confidence that if all do their duty, if
nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being
made, we shall prove ourselves once again able to defend our Island home, to
ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary
for years, if necessary alone. At any rate, that is what we are going to try to
do. That is the resolve of His Majesty’s Government-every man of them. That is
the will of Parliament and the nation.
The British Empire and the French Republic, linked
together in their cause and in their need, will defend to the death their
native soil, aiding each other like good comrades to the utmost of their
strength.
Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous
States have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Gestapo and all the odious
apparatus of Nazi rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end,
we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight
with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our
Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight
on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we
shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not
for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and
starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British
Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World,
with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of
the old.
Cicero 63 BC: I wish, O conscript fathers, to be merciful; I wish not to
appear negligent amid such danger to the state; but I do now accuse myself of
remissness and culpable inactivity.
A camp is pitched in Italy, at the entrance of Etruria, in
hostility to the republic; the number of the enemy increases every day; and yet
the general of that camp, the leader of those enemies, we see within the
walls-aye, and even in the senate-planning every day some internal injury to
the republic.
If, O Catiline, I should now order you to be arrested, to
be put to death, I should, I suppose, have to fear lest all good men should say
that I had acted tardily, rather than that any one should affirm that I acted
cruelly.
But yet this, which ought to have been done long since, I
have good reason for not doing as yet; I will put you to death, then, when
there shall be not one person possible to be found so wicked, so abandoned, so
like yourself, as not to allow that it has been rightly done. As long as one
person exists who can dare to defend you, you shall live; but you shall live as
you do now, surrounded by my many and trusty guards, so that you shall not be
able to stir one finger against the republic; many eyes and ears shall still
observe and watch you, as they have hitherto done, though you shall not perceive
them.
Winston Churchill in 1940: I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this
government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have
before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many
months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it
is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the
strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never
surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our
policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is
victory. Victory at all costs – Victory in spite of all terrors – Victory,
however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
Franklin D Roosevelt in 1941: Mr. Vice President, Mr. Speaker, members of the Senate and the
House of Representatives: yesterday, December 7, 1941-a date which will
live in infamy-the United States of America was suddenly and
deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan…..
But always will our whole nation
remember the character of the onslaught against us. No matter how long it may
take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their
righteous might will win through to absolute victory.
I believe that I interpret the will
of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend
ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of
treachery shall never again endanger us.
Hostilities exist. There is no
blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in
grave danger.
With confidence in our armed forces-with the un-bounding
determination of our people-we will gain the inevitable triumph-so help us God.
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