“The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
Address to the Continental Army before the Battle of Long Island (27 August 1776)
1770s
Context: The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.
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George Washington 186
first President of the United States 1732–1799Related quotes
A few Matters must be dispatched before I can return. Every Colony must be induced to institute a perfect Government. All the Colonies must confederate together, in some solemn Compact. The Colonies must be declared free and independent states, and Embassadors, must be Sent abroad to foreign Courts, to solicit their Acknowledgment of Us, as Sovereign States, and to form with them, at least with some of them commercial Treaties of Friendship and Alliance. When these Things shall be once well finished, or in a Way of being so, I shall think that I have answered the End of my Creation, and sing with Pleasure my Nunc Dimittes, or if it should be the Will of Heaven that I should live a little longer, return to my Farm and Family, ride Circuits, plead Law, or judge Causes, just as you please.
Letter to William Cushing http://www.masshist.org/publications/apde2/view?id=ADMS-06-04-02-0109 (9 June 1776).
1770s
2000s, 2001, Freedom and Democracy Are Under Attack (September 2001)
The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul.
Un Art de Vivre (The Art of Living) (1939), The Art of Loving
reportedly during a 1974 speech to the United Nations, as reported by Loonwatch on 25 March 2017 http://www.loonwatch.com/2017/03/25/the-1974-houari-boumedienne-u-n-speech-myth/
Misattributed
“We are mortals,” she said with a shrug. “That is our particular doom.”
Book 3, Chapter 3 “Celebrations at the Silver Flower Oasis” (p. 267)
The Elric Cycle, The Fortress of the Pearl (1989)
From Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Causes_and_Necessity_of_Taking_Up_Arms, adopted by the Second Continental Congress (1775)
"Peaceableness Toward Enemies".
Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community (1993)
From The Declaration upon taking up Arms, before Congress, July 6th, 1775: as cited in A Conspectus of American Biography, Volume 1, ed. George Derby, J. T. White (1906), p. 239