“But the people of the Baltic nations also knew that freedom needs a foundation of security.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)
Speech in the House of Commons (26 February 1816), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 11-12.
1810s
Context: I will venture to lay it down as a general principle, that there are no better means for securing the continuance of peace, than to have it known that the possessions in the neighbourhood of a foreign state are in a condition to repel attack. I am firmly persuaded that among nations, weakness will never be a foundation for security.
“But the people of the Baltic nations also knew that freedom needs a foundation of security.”
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2014, Remarks to the People of Estonia (September 2014)
Mary Wollstonecraft book Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Letter 17
Letters Written in Sweden (1796)
Context: Affection requires a firmer foundation than sympathy, and few people have a principle of action sufficiently stable to produce rectitude of feeling; for in spite of all the arguments I have heard to justify deviations from duty, I am persuaded that even the most spontaneous sensations are more under the direction of principle than weak people are willing to allow.
Subhas Chandra Bose (1897–1945) Indian nationalist leader and politician
Source: quoted in Leonard Gordon, Bengal The Nationalist Movement, p 260, and in Elst, K. (2010). The saffron swastika: The notion of "Hindu fascism". p 959
Algernon Sidney (1623–1683) British politician and political theorist
Scaffold speech (1683)
Context: I am persuaded to believe that God had left nations to the liberty of setting up such governments as best pleased themselves, and that magistrates were set up for the good of nations, not nations for the honor and glory of magistrates. That the right and power of magistrates in every country was that which the laws of that country made it to be. That these laws are to be observed and the oaths taken by rulers to be kept. And that having the force of contracts between magistrates and people, they cannot be violated without danger of dissolving the whole fabric.
Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher
Letter to James Warren (12 February 1779)
Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist
Homecoming saga, The Memory Of Earth (1992)
Jeff Sessions (1946) Former United States Attorney General
Said in a derogatory tone on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Monday, 17 December 2007 http://unamericanrevolution.com/policy/betrayal-of-the-american-conscience/ http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/C?r110:./temp/~r110JlvtMq
“If we do not secure the foundation, we cannot secure the edifice.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
The Art of Persuasion
Margot Parker (1943) UK politician
We Need To Unite To Fight For A Clean Brexit http://www.ukip.org/margot_parker_we_need_to_unite_to_fight_for_a_clean_brexit (November 9, 2017)
“I want you to be weak. As weak as I am.”
Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being