“Someone 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.”
Spoken by Socrates in the year of 399 BC
“My loving people, we have been persuaded by some, that
are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed
multitudes, for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to
distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear; I have always so
behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and
safeguard in the loyal hearts and good will of my subjects. And therefore I am
come amongst you at this time, not as for my recreation or sport, but being
resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all;
to lay down, for my God, and for my kingdom, and for my people, my honor and my
blood, even the dust. I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman;
but I have the heart of a king, and of a king of England, too; and think foul
scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the
borders of my realms: to which, rather than any dishonor should grow by me, I myself
will take up arms; I myself will be your general, judge, and rewarder of every
one of your virtues in the field. I know already, by your forwardness, that you
have deserved rewards and crowns; and we do assure you, on the word of a
prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the mean my lieutenant general shall be
in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble and worthy subject;
not doubting by your obedience to my general, by your concord in the camp, and
by your valor in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over the
enemies of my God, of my kingdom, and of my people.”
Speech given by Queen Elizabeth against the Spanish Armada
on the 8th of August in the year of 1588 at Tilsbury, Essex, England
“Four score and seven years ago our
fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil
war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated,
can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to
dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and
proper that we should do this.
But in a larger sense, we cannot
dedicate – we cannot consecrate – we cannot hallow – this ground. The brave
men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our
poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember,
what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who
fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here
dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead
we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full
measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not
have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of
freedom – and that government of the people, by the people, for the people,
shall not perish from the earth.”
Abraham Lincoln speaking at
Gettysburg on November 19, 1863
“During my lifetime I have dedicated
myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white
domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the
ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in
harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for
and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to
die.”
Nelson Mandela on the 20th
of April 1964 speaking at his own defence at the Pretoria Supreme Court, South
Africa.
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