“I am a Bedouin warrior who brought glory to Libya and will die a martyr.”

Radio interview on Radio Alice (KLLC 97.3)

Source: Beowulf

1960s, A Time for Choosing (1964)
Context: The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all. You and I have the courage to say to our enemies, "There is a price we will not pay." There is a point beyond which they must not advance. This is the meaning in the phrase of Barry Goldwater's "peace through strength." Winston Churchill said that "the destiny of man is not measured by material computation. When great forces are on the move in the world, we learn we are spirits — not animals." And he said, "There is something going on in time and space, and beyond time and space, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty."

Statement in al-Quds al-Arabi, as quoted in "Bin Laden: I Didn't Do It" CBS News (12 September 2001); also at Positive Atheism's "Big List of Scary Quotes" http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/scar_l.htm
2000s, 2001

Source: Thoughts Selected from the Writings of Horace Mann (1872), p. 213

Source: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Speech (17 June 1975), quoted in "Las frases para el bronce de Pinochet."
1970s

Variant: There's no greater misfortune than dying alone.
Source: Love in the Time of Cholera