Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 591.
Reported in Benjamin H. Hill, Jr., Senator Benjamin H. Hill of Georgia; His Life, Speeches and Writings (1893), epigraph, p. 594. From "Notes on the Situation", a series of articles appearing in the Chronicle and Sentinel, Atlanta, Georgia.
Ichabod Spencer (1798–1854) American minister
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 591.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
Source: Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852), St. VIII
Context: Yea, let all good things await
Him who cares not to be great
But as he saves or serves the state.
Not once or twice in our rough island-story
The path of duty was the way to glory.
He that walks it, only thirsting
For the right, and learns to deaden
Love of self, before his journey closes,
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting
Into glossy purples, which outredden
All voluptuous garden-roses.
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), X : Religion, the Mythology of the Beyond and the Apocatastasis
W. Mark Felt (1913–2008) Whistleblower who exposed the Watergate scandal
Family press statement by his grandson Nick Jones. (31 May 2005)
Paddy Chayefsky (1923–1981) American playwright, screenwriter and novelist
Lt. Cmdr. Charles E. Madison.
The Americanization of Emily (1964)
Context: You've done the morally right thing. God save us all from people who do the morally right thing. It's always the rest of us who get broken in half.
George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States
As quoted in "Former President Bush and wife Laura visit Africa to promote initiative to fight cervical, breast cancer" https://web.archive.org/web/20130522023945/http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/bushes-visit-africa-promote-initiative-fight-cervical-breast-cancer-article-1.1109613 (22 May 2013), by Meghan Neal, New York Daily News. <br class="br">2010s, 2013
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) Russian author
Book II, ch. 3 (trans. Constance Garnett)
The Elder Zossima, speaking to a devout widow afraid of death
The Brothers Karamazov (1879–1880)
Context: If you are penitent, you love. And if you love you are of God. All things are atoned for, all things are saved by love. If I, a sinner even as you are, am tender with you and have pity on you, how much more will God have pity upon you. Love is such a priceless treasure that you can redeem the whole world by it, and cleanse not only your own sins but the sins of others.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
1850s, Speech at Peoria, Illinois (1854)
Context: Our republican robe is soiled, and trailed in the dust. Let us repurify it. Let us turn and wash it white, in the spirit, if not the blood, of the Revolution. Let us turn slavery from its claims of “moral right,” back upon its existing legal rights, and its arguments of 'necessity'. Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it; and there let it rest in peace. Let us re-adopt the Declaration of Independence, and with it, the practices, and policy, which harmonize with it. Let north and south — let all Americans — let all lovers of liberty everywhere — join in the great and good work. If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author
Guest of Honor Speech at the 29th World Science Fiction Convention, Seattle, Washington (1961)<br> The Quotable Heinlein http://www.quotableheinlein.com/html/home.html <br class="br">Context: I also think there are prices too high to pay to save the United States. Conscription is one of them. Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called. We have had the draft for twenty years now; I think this is shameful. If a country can't save itself through the volunteer service of its own free people, then I say : Let the damned thing go down the drain!