“Regarding technique, from ancient times it has been said that movements must fly like lightning and attacks must strike like thunder.”

Act iv, Scene v
Every Man in His Humour (1598)

Source: Leadership in Administration: A Sociological Interpretation, 1957, p. 127

Source: E Pluribus Unicorn

Book VI, Ch. 1
Progress and Poverty (1879)
Context: In the plan of forcing by endurance an increase of wages, there are in such methods inherent disadvantages which workingmen should not blink. I speak without prejudice, for I am still an honorary member of the union which, while working at my trade, I always loyally supported. But, see: The methods by which a trade union can alone act are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical. A strike, which is the only recourse by which a trade union can enforce its demands, is a destructive contest — just such a contest as that to which an eccentric, called "The Money King," once, in the early days of San Francisco, challenged a man who had taunted him with meanness, that they should go down to the wharf and alternately toss twenty-dollar pieces into the bay until one gave in. The struggle of endurance involved in a strike is, really, what it has often been compared to — a war; and, like all war, it lessens wealth. And the organization for it must, like the organization for war, be tyrannical. As even the man who would fight for freedom, must, when he enters an army, give up his personal freedom and become a mere part in a great machine, so must it be with workmen who organize for a strike. These combinations are, therefore, necessarily destructive of the very things which workmen seek to gain through them — wealth and freedom.

Source: Shrek!

Poems (1917), The Great Minimum
Context: In a time of sceptic moths and cynic rusts,
And fattened lives that of their sweetness tire
In a world of flying loves and fading lusts,
It is something to be sure of a desire.
Lo, blessed are our ears for they have heard;
Yea, blessed are our eyes for they have seen:
Let the thunder break on man and beast and bird
And the lightning. It is something to have been.

Letter to an Unidentified Person (1908)

As quoted in "First African American Senator" http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/First_African_American_Senator.htm, United States Senate