
“A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.”
To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 322.
Spoken to police immediately prior to his arrest at the Lincoln Hotel Restaurant in Chicago (August 1968), quoting himself in "Creating the Perfect Mess" (1 September 1968) in Revolution for the Hell of It (1968); also quoted in Abbie Hoffman : American Rebel (1992) by Marty Jezer.
Source: Steal This Book
Context: The first duty of a revolutionist is to get away with it. The second duty is to eat breakfast. I ain't going.
“A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.”
To Leon Goldensohn, February 4, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004 - Page 322.
“Please realize that the first duty of newspaper men is the get the news and PRINT THE NEWS.”
Quoted in Editor & Publisher (August 12, 1944)
Source: Political Testament (1949), p. 80
Context: We live in a nightmare of falsehoods, and there are few who are sufficiently awake and aware to see things as they are. Our first duty is to clear away illusions and recover a sense of reality. If war should come, it will do so on account of our delusions, for which our hag-ridden conscience attempts to find moral excuses. To recover a sense of reality is to recover the truth about ourselves and the world in which we live, and thereby to gain the power of keeping this world from flying asunder.
Letter to S. Stanwood Menken, chairman, committee on Congress of Constructive Patriotism (January 10, 1917). Roosevelt’s sister, Mrs. Douglas Robinson, read the letter to a national meeting, January 26, 1917. Reported in Proceedings of the Congress of Constructive Patriotism, Washington, D.C., January 25–27, 1917 (1917), p. 172
1910s
Context: Americanism means the virtues of courage, honor, justice, truth, sincerity, and hardihood—the virtues that made America. The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
TIME Magazine (21. May 1928) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,731797,00.html
“The first duty of love is to listen.”
“The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.”
“The first duty of a man is to think for himself”
“The first duty of wine is to be red. The second is to be a Burgundy.”
In Praise of Wine (1959).
“I think the first duty of society is justice.”
Disunion (21 January 1861).
1860s