“Gandhi arrived in South Africa in 1893 at the age of 23. Within a week he collided head on with racism. His immediate response was to flee the country that so degraded people of color, but then his inner resilience overpowered him with a sense of mission, and he stayed to redeem the dignity of the racially exploited, to pave the way for the liberation of the colonized the world over and to develop a blueprint for a new social order.
He left 21 years later, a near maha atma (great soul). There is no doubt in my mind that by the time he was violently removed from our world, he had transited into that state.
He was no ordinary leader. There are those who believe he was divinely inspired, and it is difficult not to believe with them. He dared to exhort nonviolence in a time when the violence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had exploded on us; he exhorted morality when science, technology and the capitalist order had made it redundant; he replaced self-interest with group interest without minimizing the importance of self. In fact, the interdependence of the social and the personal is at the heart of his philosophy. He seeks the simultaneous and interactive development of the moral person and the moral society.”

R Jagannathan, in "Dear Priyanka, your Dad Rajiv was no angel. He let India down (2 May 2014)"

2000s, The Sacred Warrior (2000)

Jean-Christophe (1904 - 1912), Journey's End: The Burning Bush (1911)
Context: Christophe returned to the Divine conflict.... How his own fight, how all the conflicts of men were lost in that gigantic battle, wherein the suns rain down like flakes of snow tossing on the wind!... He had laid bare his soul. And, just as in those dreams in which one hovers in space, he felt that he was soaring above himself, he saw himself from above, in the general plan of the world; and the meaning of his efforts — the price of his suffering, were revealed to him at a glance. His struggles were a part of the great fight of the worlds. His overthrow was a momentary episode, immediately repaired. Just as he fought for all, so all fought for him. They shared his trials, he shared their glory.
"Companions, enemies, walk over me, crush me, let me feel the cannons which shall win victory pass over my body! I do not think of the iron which cuts deep into my flesh, I do not think of the foot that tramples down my head, I think of my Avenger, the Master, the Leader of the countless army. My blood shall cement the victory of the future...."

Henry Kissinger, "Interview: All In The Family" http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901060703-1207766-2,00.html, Time Magazine, 06-25-2006
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Source: Where the Wild Things Are

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies (2007), Chapter 5 “On a Clockwork River” section 4 (p. 253)

Source: Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972), p. 265

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (June 1907)
Context: Mason and Hunter not only voted against the admission of California (1850) as a free state but offered a protest against it which the Senate refused to record on its Journal, nor in the Convention which General Taylor had called to from a Constitution for California, there were 52 northern and 50 southern men, but it was unanimous against slavery. But, the Virginia senator, with Ron Tucker & Co. were opposed to giving local self-government to California. Ask Sam Yost to give Christian a skinning. I am not ashamed of having fought on the side of slavery, a soldier fights for his country, right or wrong, he is not responsible for the political merits of the course he fights in. The South was my country.

Come l'uom né per star né per fuggire,
Al suo fisso destin può contradire.
Canto XXVII, stanza 26 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)