Quotes about combat (3551 quotes, page 19)

“Our treatment of both older [people and children] reflects the value we place on independence and autonomy. We do our best to make our children independent from birth. We leave them all alone in rooms with the lights out and tell them, Go to sleep by yourselves. And the old people we respect most are the ones who will fight for their independence, who would sooner starve to death than ask for help.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

As quoted in "Growing Old in America" by Grace Hechinger, in Family Circle magazine (25 July 25 1977)
1970s

Death , Children , People , Birth

“EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR ALL…. Nature is no respecter of birth or money power when she lavishes her mental and physical gifts. We fight God when our Social System dooms the brilliant clever child of a poor man to the same level as his father.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

p. 71. https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n100/mode/1up
Records (1919) https://archive.org/stream/cu31924027924509#page/n0/mode/1up

Money , God , Birth , Nature

“The second Transformers movie came out this year. I didn't fight for a ticket. I'd caught the first one by accident. It was like being pinned to the ground while an angry dishwasher shat in your face for two hours. Any human dumb enough to voluntarily sit through a second helping of that unremitting fecal spew really ought to just get up and leave the planet via the nearest window before their continued presence does lasting damage to the gene pool.”

Charlie Brooker (1971) journalist, broadcaster and writer from England

The Guardian, 3 August, 2009 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/03/hollywood-ideas-charlie-brooker
Guardian columns

Help

“Pyrrhus said, "If I should overcome the Romans in another fight, I were undone."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

47 Pyrrhus
Apophthegms of Kings and Great Commanders

“If humans fight the last war, nature fights the next one.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Source: Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder (2012), p. 46

War , Nature

“Comrades, it always affords me much gratification to meet my old comrades in arms of ten or fourteen years ago, and to live over again in memory the trials and hardships of those days. Hardships imposed for the preservation and perpetuation of our free institutions. We believed then, and believe now, that we had a good government, worth fighting for, and, if need be, dying for. How many of our comrades of those days paid the latter price for our preserved Union! Let their heroism and sacrifices be ever green and in our memory. Let not the results of their sacrifices be destroyed. The Union and the free institutions for which they fell, should be held more dear for their sacrifices.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

1870s, Speech to the Society of the Army of Tennessee (1875)

Memory

“The demons will always be there, Always. But you know, (hard breath) you can always fight demons.”

Lawrence Taylor (1959) All-American college football player, professional football player, linebacker, Pro Football Hall of Fame member

on his drug addiction problems.

Problem

“Don't be disheartened. Your voices are being heard and we will keep fighting.”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

Tweet https://twitter.com/ChrisMurphyCT/status/829026284042862594 at twitter.com/chrismurphyCT, 17 Feb. 2017, 9:57 AM.

“You carried it alone as long as you could, and then you weren't strong enough to take it any longer. You kept fighting everything, and everything broke you down, until in the end you were just a little goddam bolt holding on and squealing when the machine went too fast.”

Norman Mailer book The Naked and the Dead

Pt. 3, Ch. 14
The Naked and the Dead (1948)

Strong

“I hate race discrimination most intensely and in all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days. Even although I now happen to be tried by one whose opinion I hold in high esteem, I detest most violently the set-up that surrounds me here. It makes me feel that I am a black man in a white man's court. This should not be.”

Nelson Mandela (1918–2013) President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist

1960s, First court statement (1962)

Life , Hate , Feeling

“Forrest saw the war as a moral crusade, a fight for decency and order, and victory to the British would mean that the Almighty, who could not possibly be suspected of Republican sentiments, had blessed the British effort.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Major Joseph Forrest, p. 162
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Company (1982)

War , Effort , Victory

“Lo, when two dogs are fighting in the streets,
With a third dog one of the two dogs meets;
With angry teeth he bites him to the bone,
And this dog smarts for what that dog has done.”

Henry Fielding (1707–1754) English novelist and dramatist

Act I, sc. vi
Tom Thumb the Great (1730)

Dogs

“I know exactly what it takes to beat this man, but people say, 'Well, Ray, two years of inactivity, you'll be rusty.' No, no. He will eliminate the rust because he is what I want and I am what he wants. And boxing needs that kind of fight.”

Sugar Ray Leonard (1956) American boxer

On his come back fight against Marvin Hagler http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A0DE2DD1F31F931A35756C0A960948260

People , Box

“[I]f you look at Europe and see a continent adrift, with no identity and no strong values beyond economic equality and possessing little capacity to identify evil, let alone a will to fight it, then you need to start fighting.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Dennis Prager. "America Founded To Be Free, Not Secular" https://www.creators.com/read/dennis-prager/01/07/america-founded-to-be-free-not-secular at creators.com, 3 January 2007.
2000s

Strong , Evil

“I want to be the best fighter. I would like to fight in the biggest fights.”

Manny Pacquiao (1978) Filipino boxer, basketball player, singer and politician, dancer.

Conference Call before the "Blaze of Glory: Pacquiao vs. Solis"
As quoted in "Manny Pacquaio/Bob Arum Conference Call Transcript," http://www.eastsideboxing.com/news.php?p=10519&more=1 at East Side Boxing (2007-07-04)

“There was more vindictiveness shown to me by the Virginia people for my voting for Grant than the North showed to me for fighting four years against him.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter to Samuel "Sam" Chapman (May 1907)

People

“It’s really life and death [not art]. When they tell you your mother is 80 years old but you cannot see her again, you can never call it performance art. Or when your son is three, and they tell you that when you are released he will be in his teens and can never recognize you as a father. You feel terrible inside, to lose those chances. Each day, they tell you, 'You will spend your life day after day the same, minute after minute the same. You just have to pay [with] your life for this kind of so-called freedom that you are fighting for.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

There is no sense of justice there. Why do I have to do this with them? Why do I have to argue or play this game?"
2010-, You’re There but You’re Not Existing, 2012

Life , Death , Justice , Art

“They [Americans] have something worth defending…they need to defend it properly from the foe that most people are afraid even to name. How can you possibly fight an enemy when you're afraid to identify him?”

Robert Spencer (1962) American author and blogger

Robert Spencer talking about identifying Islamic extremists, Michelle interviews Robert Spencer about Religion of Peace: Why Christianity is and Islam Isn’t, 2007-08-13 http://hotair.com/archives/2007/08/13/new-vent-michelle-interviews-robert-spencer-about-religion-of-peace-why-christianity-is-and-islam-isnt/,

People

“If the workers see themselves faced with defeat through starvation, they will prefer to go down fighting rather than fainting — and whether or not we leaders agree.”

Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) British labour leader, politician, and statesman

New York World, 10 May 1926
Message to the American Federation of Labor appealing for help in the General Strike.

“Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white, with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

The Naulahka http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/prose/Naulahka/index.html, ch. 5 (1892).
Other works

Health , Smile , Fools

“Simply, all what we did is that we avoided the country a big crisis and a battle between Egyptians. Beware, instead of Egyptians fighting each other, no, you can fight us, and we protect all. how many would fight us? but Egyptians fighting each other would be a big war, thousands may die, and maybe miliions.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by el-Sisi during a military conference (28 April 2013) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LC93fn9s3-c.
2013
Variant: Simply, all what we did is that we avoided the country a big crisis and a battle between Egyptians. Beware, instead of Egyptians fighting each other, no, you can fight us, and we protect all. how many would fight us? but Egyptians fighting each other would be a big war we couldn't have had the ability to deal with.

War , Country

“Our Party supports and will continue to support peoples fighting for their freedom. In so doing, the Soviet Union does not look for advantages, does not hunt for concessions, does not seek political domination and is not after military bases. We act as we are bid by our revolutionary conscience, our communist convictions.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Ussr: For Peace Against Aggression http://leninist.biz/en/1976/UFPAA243/5.1-Against.Spread.of.Fascist.Aggression

People , Support , Freedom

“You fight dandelions all week-end, and late Monday afternoon there they are, pert as all get out, in full and gorgeous bloom, pretty as can be, thriving as only dandelions can in the face of adversity.”

Hal Borland (1900–1978) American journalist and writer

"Dandelions," http://books.google.com/books?id=IYYZAAAAIAAJ&q=%22You+fight+dandelions+all+week+end+and+late+Monday+afternoon+there+they+are+pert+as+all+get+out+in+full+and+gorgeous+bloom+pretty+as+can+be+thriving+as+only+dandelions+can+in+the+face+of+adversity%22&pg=PA60#v=onepage The New York Times, 9 May 1954 http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=950CE5D9113CE43ABC4153DFB366838F649EDE

“You have called upon us to expose ourselves to all the subtle machinations of their malignity for all time. And now, what do you propose to do when you come to make peace? To reward your enemies, and trample in the dust your friends? Do you intend to sacrifice the very men who have come to the rescue of your banner in the South, and incurred the lasting displeasure of their masters thereby? Do you intend to sacrifice them and reward your enemies? Do you mean to give your enemies the right to vote, and take it away from your friends? Is that wise policy? Is that honorable? Could American honor withstand such a blow? I do not believe you will do it. I think you will see to it that we have the right to vote. There is something too mean in looking upon the Negro, when you are in trouble, as a citizen, and when you are free from trouble, as an alien. When this nation was in trouble, in its early struggles, it looked upon the Negro as a citizen. In 1776 he was a citizen. At the time of the formation of the Constitution the Negro had the right to vote in eleven States out of the old thirteen. In your trouble you have made us citizens. In 1812 General Jackson addressed us as citizens; 'fellow-citizens'. He wanted us to fight. We were citizens then! And now, when you come to frame a conscription bill, the Negro is a citizen again. He has been a citizen just three times in the history of this government, and it has always been in time of trouble. In time of trouble we are citizens. Shall we be citizens in war, and aliens in peace? Would that be just?”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Men , War , Peace , History

“In this great problem which is facing the country in years to come, it may be from one side or the other that disaster may come, but surely it shows that the only progress that can be obtained in this country is by those two bodies of men—so similar in their strength and so similar in their weaknesses—learning to understand each other, and not to fight each other…we are moving forward rapidly from an old state of industry into a newer, and the question is: What is that newer going to be? No man, of course, can say what form evolution is taking. Of this, however, I am quite sure, that whatever form we may see…it has got to be a form of pretty close partnership, however that is going to be arrived at. And it will not be a partnership the terms of which will be laid down, at any rate not yet, in Acts of Parliament, or from this party or that. It has got to be a partnership of men who understand their own work, and it is little help that they can get really either from politicians or from intellectuals. There are few men fitted to judge, to settle and to arrange the problem that distracts the country to-day between employers and employed. There are few men qualified to intervene who have not themselves been right through the mill. I always want to see, at the head of these organisations on both sides, men who have been right through the mill, who themselves know exactly the points where the shoe pinches, who know exactly what can be conceded and what cannot, who can make their reasons plain; and I hope that we shall always find such men trying to steer their respective ships side by side, instead of making for head-on collisions.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1925/mar/06/industrial-peace in the House of Commons (6 March 1925).
1925

Men , Hope , Shoe , Understanding

“Thompson landed again. Glenn and I got out of the aircraft, took out the guns. Hugh walked over to this lieutenant [Brooks], and I could tell they were in a shouting match. I thought they were going to get in a fist fight. He told me later what they said. Thompson: 'Let's get these people out of this bunker and get 'em out of here.' Brooks: 'We'll get 'em out with hand grenades.' Thompson: 'I can do better than that. Keep your people in place. My guns are on you.”

Hugh Thompson, Jr. (1943–2006) United States helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War

Hugh was outranked, so this was not good to do, but that's how committed he was to stopping it.
Thompson's gunner, Spec. Lawrence Colburn http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2002/0310/cover.html
Quotes of others about Thompson

People

“Prior to his introduction to combat, the average flier possesses a series of intellectual and emotional attitudes regarding his relation to the war. The intellectual attitudes comprise his opinon concerning the necessity of the war and the merits of our cause. Here the American soldier is in a peculiarly disadvantageous position compared with his enemies and most of his Allies. Although attitudes vary from strong conviction to profound cynicism, the most usual reaction is one of passive acceptance of our part in the conflict. Behind this acceptance there is little real conviction. The political, economic or even military justifications for our involvement in the war are not apprehended except in a vague way. The men feel that, if our leaders, the “big-shots,” could not keep us out, then there is no help for it; we have to fight. There is much danger for the future in this attitude, since the responsibility is not personally accepted but is displaced to the leaders. If these should lose face or the men find themselves in economic difficulties in the postwar world, the attitude can easily shift to one of blame of the leaders. The the cry will rise: “We were betrayed—the politicians got us in for their own gain. The militarists made us suffer for it.”

Roy R. Grinker, Sr. (1900–1993) American psychiatrist and neurologist

Source: Men Under Stress, 1945, p. 38-39 cited in: The Clare Spark Blog (2009) Strategic Regression in “the greatest generation” http://clarespark.com/2009/12/09/strategic-regression-in-the-greatest-generation/ December 9, 2009

Men , War , World , Way

“It is vital now to see this [Brexit] moment for what it is. This is not a time to quail, it is not a crisis, nor should we see it as an excuse for wobbling or self-doubt, but it is a moment for hope and ambition for Britain. A time not to fight against the tide of history, but to take that tide at the flood, and sail on to fortune.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

During the announcement that he would not run to become Britain's prime minister. A reference to Brutus's "There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune" in Julius Caesar. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/01/world/europe/britain-conservative-party.html (June 30, 2016)
2010s, 2016

Hope , History , Time

“Bureau of Ordnance, Richmond
January 17, 1864
General Lee:
I have the honor to present to you with this letter Mr. Andries Rhoodie of Rivington, North Carolina, who has demonstrated in my presence a new rifle, which I believe may prove to be of the most significant benefit conceivable to our soldiers. As he expressed the desire of making your acquaintance & as the Army of Northern Virginia will again, it is likely, face hard fighting in the months ahead, I send him on to you that you may judge both him & his remarkable weapon for yourself. I remain,
Your most ob't servant,
Josiah Gorgas
Colonel”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 5

“Commander Bainimarama is clean and fighting for the truth. The stand he is taking is going to save the Fijian race.”

Josaia Waqabaca Fijian politician

On the opposition of Bainimarama, the Military commander, to many of the policies pursued by the present government.
Interview, 11 January 2006

Truth

“Power is no linger seen as inheriting its legitimacy from some divine authority; it is a mere convention which we adhere to because we are born and educated into it, and because we see others conform to it. Its strength lies in the fact that we believe that others believe in it: power is no more than the illusion of power. The exercise of power is a constant fight to keep up appearances.”

Ivar Ekeland (1944) French mathematician

Source: The Best of All Possible Worlds (2006), Chapter 8, The End of Nature, p. 164.

Education , Exercises , Appearance

“God said, “I am tired of kings,”—
But that was a long while ago!
And meantime man said, “No,—
I like their looks in their robes and rings.”
So he crowned a few more,
And they went on playing the game as before,
Fighting and spoiling things.Man said, “I am tired of kings!
Sons of the robber-chiefs of yore,
They make me pay for their lust and their war;
I am the puppet, they pull the strings;
The blood of my heart is the wine they drink.
I will govern myself for awhile I think,
And see what that brings!”Then God, who made the first remark,
Smiled in the dark.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Remarks About Kings (October 1915).

God , War , Smile , Game

“When you get to know a fellow, know his joys and know his cares,
When you've come to understand him and the burdens that he bears,
When you've learned the fight he's making and the troubles in his way,
Then you find that he is different than you thought him yesterday.
You find his faults are trivial and there's not so much to blame
In the brother that you jeered at when you only knew his name.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), When You Know a Fellow, stanza 1, p. 12.

Way , Understanding , Learning , Joy

“We have carried our quest for peace to many nations and peoples because we share this planet with others whose future, in large measure, is tied to our own action, and whose counsel is necessary to our own hopes. We have found understanding and support. And we know they wait with us tonight for some response that could lead to peace. I wish tonight that I could give you a blueprint for the course of this conflict over the coming months, but we just cannot know what the future may require. We may have to face long, hard combat or a long, hard conference, or even both at once. Until peace comes, or if it does not come, our course is clear. We will act as we must to help protect the independence of the valiant people of South Vietnam. We will strive to limit the conflict, for we wish neither increased destruction nor do we want to invite increased danger. But we will give our fighting men what they must have: every gun, and every dollar, and every decision—whatever the cost or whatever the challenge. And we will continue to help the people of South Vietnam care for those that are ravaged by battle, create progress in the villages, and carry forward the healing hopes of peace as best they can amidst the uncertain terrors of war. And let me be absolutely clear: The days may become months, and the months may become years, but we will stay as long as aggression commands us to battle. There may be some who do not want peace, whose ambitions stretch so far that war in Vietnam is but a welcome and convenient episode in an immense design to subdue history to their will. But for others it must now be clear—the choice is not between peace and victory, it lies between peace and the ravages of a conflict from which they can only lose.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Men , War , People , Peace

“Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a 'War for Southern Independence.' They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"Yankee Supremacists Trash South’s Heroes," http://praag.org/?p=19556 Praag.org June 26, 2015.
2010s, 2015

War , Way , Support

“Republicans sure don't care about finding $200 billion to fight the illegal war in Iraq. Where are you going to get that money? Are you going to tell us lies like you're telling us today? Is that how you're going to fund the war? You don't have money to fund the war or children. But you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if he can get enough kids to grow old enough for you to send to Iraq to get their heads blown off for the President's amusement.”

Pete Stark (1931–2020) American politician

Statement on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives regarding the SCHIP bill, October 18, 2007. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsGaNR9dVPM

Money , War , Children , People

“He tried also to encourage civilised warfare among earthworms, by supplying them with small pieces of pipe, with which they might fight if so disposed.”

Stuart Dodgson Collingwood (1870–1937) English clergyman, headmaster, author

The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll (1898) p. 11.

“History will record that the two biggest deficits of the Obama administration were the failure to create a robust economy and the president's retreat from the terrorist battlefield. For years, Talking Points has been telling you the Obama administration has no strategy to defeat the ISIS threat. But President Obama somehow does not seem to understand that the civilized world is losing the fight against ISIS. Just hours before the Paris attack the president said 'we have contained' ISIS. Obviously that is not true. They are a threat worldwide, they continue to kill people with impunity. Nevertheless, the president is unrepentant and unwilling to admit that his strategy has failed. At a press conference today in Turkey he said, 'The strategy we're pursing is the right one.' The Republican Party is taking note. Senator Ted Cruz says 'Barack Obama does not wish to defend the country,' and Senator Lindsey Graham warns, 'There's a 9/11 coming, and it's coming from Syria if we don't disrupt their operations inside of Syria.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

It is long past time that we the people demand ISIS be defeated, not contained.
The O'Reilly Factor http://www.billoreilly.com/show?action=viewTVShow&showID=4059&destinationpage=/mobile/tvshow.jsp (16 November 2015)

People , World , History , Failure

“We now face the culmination of a long campaign in the courts and in the halls of various governmental bodies, and in the press, to remove the laws against homosexuality from the statute books, and to permit any such relationship between consenting adults. Part of this is a new, anti-Biblical interpretation of this perversion. The facts are read in evolutionary framework, and so we are told it is a form of immaturity. Again, others read it as environmentally determined, so that the pervert is simply reflecting his environmental conditioning. Again there are others who say it is simply a fight for masculinity in a difficult world. All these and the other variations on the modern interpretation, share in common an environmental and an evolutionary approach. There are those in fact who claim that it is a basic component of all people, so that all of us have some aspect of every perversion in us.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Audio lectures, Homosexuality (n. d.)

People , Books , World , Law

“I have never in my whole life had a fight with a smart person or even seen anybody else have one either. That is because when the fight starts the smart people are not there anymore. They have gone off someplace else, and when it is over they come back and tell you how much they did in the fight, only it is all lies.”

Gene Wolfe book Starwater Strains

"Has Anybody Seen Junie Moon?", Moon Shots (1999), ed. Peter Crowther, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Starwater Strains (2005), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Life , People , Personality

“Are we opposed to Prussian militarism? … We have been fighting it since the day the Socialist movement was born; and we are going to continue to fight it, day and night, until it is wiped from the face of the earth. Between us there is no truce—no compromise.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

The Canton, Ohio Speech, Anti-War Speech (1918)

Night

“Sixty years ago, at dawn on June 25, the Korean War broke out when Communist North Korea invaded the Republic of Korea. In response, 16 member countries of the United Nations, including the United States, joined with the Republic of Korea to defend freedom. Over the next three years of fighting, about 37,000 Americans lost their lives. They fought for the freedom of Koreans they did not even know, and thanks to their sacrifices, the peace and democracy of the republic were protected.”

Lee Myung-bak (1941) 10th President of South Korea

A Note of Thanks (2010)

War , Peace , Democracy , Freedom

“This patchwork of largely fictional works makes the Protocols an incoherent text that easily reveals its fabricated origins. It is hardly credible, if not in a roman feuilleton or in a grand opera, that the “bad guys” should express their evil plans in such a frank and unashamed manner, that they should declare, as the Elders of Zion do, that they have “boundless ambition, a ravenous greed, a merciless desire for revenge and an intended hatred.” If at first the Protocols was taken seriously, it is because it was presented as a shocking revelation, and by sources all in all trustworthy. But what seems incredible is how this fake arose from its own ashes each time someone proved that it was, beyond all doubt, a fake. This is when the “novel of the Protocols” truly starts to sound like fiction. Following the article that appeared in 1921 in the Times of London revealing that the Protocols was plagiarized, as well as every other time some authoritative source confirmed the spurious nature of the Protocols, there was someone else who published it again claiming its authenticity. And the story continues unabated on the Internet today. It is as if, after Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, one were to continue publishing textbooks claiming that the sun travels around the earth.
How can one explain resilience against all evidence, and the perverse appeal that this book continues to exercise? The answer can be found in the works of Nesta Webster, an antisemetic author who spent her life supporting this account of the Jewish plot. In her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, she seems well informed and knows the whole story as Eisner narrates it here, but this is her conclusion:
The only opinion I have committed myself is that, whether genuine or not, the Protocols represent the programme of a world revolution, and that in view of their prophetic nature and of their extraordinary resemblance to the protocols of certain secret societies of the past, they were either the work of some such society or of someone profoundly versed in the lore of secret society who was able to reproduce their ideas and phraseology.
Her reasoning is flawless: “since the Protocols say what I said in my story, they confirm it,” or: “the Protocols confirm the story that I derived from them, and are therefore authentic.” Better still: “the Protocols could be fake, but they say exactly what the Jews think, and must therefore be considered authentic.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

In other words, it is not the Protocols that produce antisemetism, it is people’s profound need to single out an Enemy that leads them to believe in the Protocols.
I believe that-in spite of this courageous, not comic but tragic book by Will Eisner- the story is hardly over. Yet is is a story very much worth telling, for one must fight the Big Lie and the hatred it spawns.
Umberto Eco, Milan Italy December 2004 translated by Allesandra Bastagli, p. vi-vii
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Life , People , Lie , Secret

“The time has come to educate people, to cease all quarrels in the name of religion, culture, countries, different political or economic systems. Fighting is useless. Suicide.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

News conference in Vancouver, B.C. as quoted in The Globe and Mail. (8 September 2006).

People , Education , Religion , Suicide

“My conviction comes down to this: we do not create terrorism by fighting the terrorists. We invite terrorism by ignoring them.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2005, Address to the Nation on Iraqi Elections (December 2005)

“Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think. It is vital to mourn the victims of this government, but not at the expense of losing our sense of humor. Our ability to laugh directly coincides with our ability to fight. If we make fun of it, we can transcend it.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Life , Feeling , Thinking , Sense

“Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"A View from the Patriotic Left" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=F01E41CB-A584-4597-B9BE-86BBD9B3F7A1, Boston Globe (2002-09-09)]: On the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan
2000s, 2002

“Tom, I'm a veteran. Okay? I did not get a deferment because I was too depressed to fight a war I supported in Vietnam. I'm a veteran. They want a more effective V. A.”

Markos Moulitsas (1971) American blogger

War , Support

“It looks like the South Bronx is prepared to tell the billionaire class they cannot have it all. It looks like the South Bronx wants to create an economy that works for all of us, not just the 1%. What this campaign is about is creating a political revolution. All over this country I am seeing millions of people standing up, fighting back, saying, “enough is enough.””

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Speaking on a box in South Bronx, act.tv http://www.facebook.com/actdottv/videos/458917784298793/?fref=nf
2010s

People , Country

“Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the War Room!”

Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer

As "President Merkin Muffley" in Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Performances

War

“Barack Obama was always better at explaining the meaning of democracy than at fighting its opponents.”

George Packer (1960) American journalist and writer

Democracy

“This war in Iraq makes millions of dollars for big corporations, either weapons manufacturers or those working in the reconstruction, such as Halliburton and its sister companies... It is crystal clear who benefits from igniting the fire of this war and this bloodshed: They are the merchants of war, the bloodsuckers who run the policy of the world from behind the scenes. President Bush and his ilk, the media giants, and the U. N... all are a fatal danger to the world, and the Zionist lobby is their most dangerous member. God willing, we will persist in fighting them...”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

Reported in Strategic Culture and Violent Non-state Actors: Weapons of Mass Destruction and Asymmetrical Operations Concepts and Cases https://books.google.com/books?id=zUYhAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA33 by James M. Smith, Jerry Mark Long, Thomas H. Johnson, p. 33, USAF Institute for National Security Studies, 2008
2000s, 2004

God , War , World , Sister

“All of us fight a battle every day, but we just don’t know it. Love tries to defeat hatred. Bravery destroys fear.”

John Twelve Hawks American writer

Fourth Realm Trilogy (2005-2009), The Traveler (2005)

Love , Fear

“Why does the guerrilla fighter fight? We must come to the inevitable conclusion that the guerrilla fighter is a social reformer, that he takes up arms responding to the angry protest of the people against their oppressors, and that he fights in order to change the social system that keeps all his unarmed brothers in ignominy and misery.”

Ernesto Che Guevara book Guerrilla Warfare

Source: Guerrilla Warfare (1961), Ch. I: 1. Essence of Guerrilla Warfare

People , Change

“Some of us volunteered to fight for Union. Some came mainly because we were bored at home and this looked like it might be fun. Some came because we were ashamed not to. Many of us came… because it was the right thing to do.”

Michael Shaara book The Killer Angels

Part I, CH 2: Chamberlain, p. 32
The Killer Angels (1974)

Home

“The true Way of sword fencing is the craft of defeating the enemy in a fight, and nothing other than this.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Fire Book

Way

“More and more I am coming to the conviction that Roe vs. Wade, in the guise of a great victory, has been in some respects a disaster for feminism. We might be better off today if it had never happened, and we had had to continue a state-by-state political fight. Roe vs. Wade resulted in a lot of women declaring victory and going home. In the meantime we have been losing abortion rights on the ground, both in terms of access and funding and on the ideological and psychological levels.”

Ellen Willis (1941–2006) writer, activist

"Vote for Ralph Nader!" http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/11/06/willis/index.html, Salon (6 November 2000)

Women , Home , Victory

“In September 1979, on Defence of Pakistan Day, there was a long article in the Pakistan Times on Bin Qasim as a strategist. The assessment was military, neutral, fair to the soldiers of both sides. It drew a rebuke from the chairman of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research.
“Employment of appropriate phraseology is necessary when one is projecting the image of a hero. Expressions such as ‘invader’ and ‘defenders,’ and ‘the Indian army’ fighting bravely but not being quick enough to ‘fall upon the withdrawing enemy’ loom large in the article. It is further marred by some imbalanced statements such as follows: ‘Had Raja Dahar defended the Indus heroically and stopped Qasim from crossing it, the history of this sub-continent might have been quite different.’ One fails to understand whether the writer is applauding the victory of the hero or lamenting the defeat of his rival?””

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Naipaul, V. S. (1981). Among the believers: An Islamic journey. New York: Knopf.

History , Understanding , Time , Victory

“I think we're living in an age which despises humanity and despises bravery and doesn't need bravery because modern warfare has rather gone beyond bravery. It is a kind of warfare where people are fighting enemies they never see, killing people of whom they know nothing.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

"Sunday Morning".
Conversations with Robertson Davies (1989)

People , Age , Thinking

“Some men are born to feast, and not to fight;
Whose sluggish minds, e'en in fair honor's field,
Still on their dinner turn—
Let such pot-boiling varlets stay at home,
And wield a flesh-hook rather than a sword.”

Joanna Baillie (1762–1851) Scottish poet and dramatist

Act I, scene 1.
Count Basil (1798)

Men , Home

“And let us make no mistake as to what Tone sought to do, what it remains to us to do. We need to restate our programme: Tone has stated it for us:
"To break the connection with England, the never-failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country—these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland, to abolish the memory of all past dissentions, and to substitute the common name of Irishmen in place of the denominations of Protestant, Catholic and Dissenter—these were my means."
I find here implicit all the philosophy of Irish nationalism, all the teaching of the Gaelic League and the later prophets. Ireland one and Ireland free—is not this the definition of Ireland a Nation? To that definition and to that programme we declare our adhesion anew; pledging ourselves as Tone pledged himself—and in this sacred place, by this graveside, let us not pledge ourselves unless we mean to keep our pledge—we pledge ourselves to follow in the steps of Tone, never to rest either by day or night until his work be accomplished, deeming it the proudest of all privileges to fight for freedom, to fight not in despondency but in great joy hoping for the victory in our day, but fighting on whether victory seem near or far, never lowering our ideal, never bartering one jot or tittle of our birthright, holding faith to the memory and the inspiration of Tone, and accounting ourselves base as long as we endure the evil thing against which he testified with his blood.”

Patrick Pearse (1879–1916) Irish revolutionary, shot by the British Army in 1916

Address delivered at the Grave of Wolfe Tone in Bodenstown Churchyard, Co. Kildare, 22 June 1913

People , Faith , Hope , Freedom

“Yasuji Okamura, commander of the Japanese forces in China, had this to say about the Chinese Nationalist Army: "The center of resistance was neither the four hundred million Chinese civilians, nor the two million-strong ragtag army composed of local troops. Instead, it was the Central Army, led by the young officers of the Whampoa Military Academy, with Chiang Kai-shek at its nucleus. In numerous major battles, the Central Army not only was the main force engaged in combat, but also oversaw the local troops who were increasingly losing the will to fight. The Central Army kept the local troops from wavering. As seen, training by Whampoa was thorough, and it was impossible to resolve the China Incident peacefully with the existence of such an army.”

Yasuji Okamura (1884–1966) Japanese general

Source:《大本营陆军部.上》519页
Translated from Chinese text: 侵华日军司令官冈村宁次在1939年对国军抗日的评论，他说："看来敌军抗日力量的中心不在于四亿中国民众，也不是以各类杂牌军混合而成的二百万军队，乃是以蒋介石为核心、以黄埔军校青年军官阶层为主体的中央军。在历次会战中，它不仅是主要的战斗原动力，同时还严厉监督着逐渐丧失战斗力意志而徘徊犹豫的地方杂牌军，使之不致离去而步调一致，因此不可忽视其威力。黄埔军校教育之彻底，由此可见......有此军队存在，要想和平解决事变，无异是缘木求鱼" （摘自《大本营陆军部.上》519页）。

Strong , Training

“I would fight to change the policy before the General Election. If I failed then I wouldn't accept office in a Labour Government.”

Denis Healey (1917–2015) British Labour Party politician and Life peer

On unilateral nuclear disarmament. (The Guardian, 15 September 1981).
1980s

Change

“The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad reason in this mad world of ours, the things which men differ about most are exactly the things about which they must be got to agree. Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes round the sun. But then it does not matter a dump whether the earth goes around the sun or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about morals: sex, property, individual rights, fixity and contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits of health – these are exactly the things that men tend to fight about. And these are exactly the things that must be settled somehow on strict principles. Study each of them, and you will find each of them works back certainly to a philosophy, probably to a religion.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

According to Larry Azar (Evolution and Other Fairy Tales, AuthorHouse, 2005, p. 470), Chesterton made this statement on 16 March 1907

Life , Men , Health , World

“Authorities … are where they are only because God is allowing them to be there. They exist only at his sufferance. And if God is willing to put up with…the Roman Empire, you ought to be willing to put up with it, too. There is no indication God has called you to clear it out of the way or get it converted for him. You can't fight an Empire without becoming like the Roman Empire; so you had better leave such matters in God's hands where they belong.”

Vernard Eller (1927–2007) Church of the Brethren pastor and academic, coiner of the term "Christian anarchy"

Christian Anarchy: Jesus’ Primacy Over the Powers (1987)

God , Way , Suffering

“By abandoning the naval base at Singapore the Socialist Government has made it impossible for the British Navy to enter the Pacific, and consequently to afford the slightest assistance to Australia and New Zealand, no matter how terrible their need might be. Yet almost at the same time that the British Navy is stripped of its old power of defending the British Empire we know well that they would gladly hawk it round Europe to be the drudge of an international organization and fight in every quarrel but its own.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Edinburgh (25 September 1924), quoted in The Times (26 September 1924), p. 14
Early career years (1898–1929)

Time

“If I were to persuade just one person to stop fighting for something they were convinced was worthwhile, I would end up persuading myself, and my whole life would be diminished.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Life , Personality

“For those that fly may fight again,
Which he can never do that's slain.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

Canto III, line 243
Source: Hudibras, Part III (1678)

Flying

“The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. He is also not the private adversary whom one hates. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy, because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship.”

Carl Schmitt book The Concept of the Political

The Concept of the Political (1927)

Men , Hate , People

“There were lots of celebrities at my fight. I heard through the grapevine Michael Caine was one…and not a lot of people know that!”

Ricky Hatton (1978) English former professional boxer

Ricky Hatton http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/6275535.stm

People

“Everyman is somebody because he is a child of God. And so when we say Thou shalt not kill, we're really saying that human life is too sacred to be taken on the battlefields of the world. Man is more than a tiny vagary of whirling electrons or a wisp of smoke from a limitless smoldering. Man is a child of God, made in His image, and therefore must be respected as such. Until men see this everywhere, until nations see this everywhere, we will be fighting wars. One day somebody should remind us that, even though there may be political and ideological differences between us, the Vietnamese are our brothers, the Russians are our brothers, the Chinese are our brothers; and one day we've got to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. But in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile. In Christ there is neither male nor female. In Christ there is neither Communist nor Capitalist. In Christ, somehow, there is neither bound nor free. We are all one in Christ Jesus. And when we truly believe in the sacredness of human personality, we won't exploit people, we won't trample over people with the iron feet of oppression, we won't kill anybody.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, A Christmas Sermon (1967)

Life , Men , God , War

“The Blockade Laws are about as rascally an invention as the old Corn Laws. Suppose Tom Sayers lived in a street, and on the opposite side lived a shopkeeper with whom he has been in the habit of dealing. Tom quarrels with his shopkeeper and forthwith sends him a challenge to fight, which is accepted. Tom, being a powerful man, sends word to each and every householder in the street that he is going to fight the shopkeeper, and that until he has finished fighting no person in the street must have any dealings with the shopkeeper. "We have nothing to do with your quarrel," say the inhabitants, "and you have no right to stop our dealings with the shopkeeper."”

Richard Cobden (1804–1865) English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman

Letter to Henry Asworth (3 September 1864), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 916.
1860s

Law , Personality

“Who would not rather founder in the fight
Than not have known the glory of the fray?”

Richard Hovey (1864–1900) American writer

"Two and Fate", p. 29.
Along the Trail (1898)

“I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq… And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

According to Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath, said by Bush to him, apparently in the same June 2003 meeting, as reported by BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4317498.stm. Shaath later clarified this with "We understood that he was illustrating [in his comments] his strong faith and his belief that this is what God wanted." http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4320586.stm, i.e. Shaath didn't take Bush's statement literally.
Denied by White House spokesperson Scott McClellan, October 6, 2005. Denied also by Mahmoud Abbas, who attended the meeting in question. Abbas said "This report is not true. I have never heard President Bush talking about religion as a reason behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush has never mentioned that in front of me on any occasion and specifically not during my visit in 2003." http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/abbas-denies-bushs-mission-from-god-remark/2005/10/08/1128563027485.html.
Attributed, Disputed

God , Peace , Feeling

“We fight to great disadvantage when we fight with those who have nothing to lose.”

Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540) Italian writer, historian and politician

Con disavvantaggio grande si fa la guerra con chi non ha che perdere.
Storia d' Italia (1537-1540)

“He was never in one spot for more than half a second, all my punches were aimed and timed properly but they always wound up hitting empty air. He'd jump in and out, slamming me with a left and whirling me around with his right or the other way around. My arms were plastered with leather and although I jabbed, hooked and crossed, it was like fighting an octopus.”

Gene Tunney (1897–1978) American boxer

On Harry Greb, as quoted in "Harry Greb, The Human Windmill...“A Perpetual Motion Machine.”" by Monte D. Cox http://coxscorner.tripod.com/greb.html

Way , Time

“I wanna say this to every man that has a mind, to all the intelligent life forms that exist on this planet Earth. I wish the British would say this to the Scottish Rites and the Masons and all the people with minds who have degrees of knowledge, and who are aware of courts, laws, United Nations, governments.
In the 40s, we had a war, and all of our economies went towards this war effort. The war ended on one level, but we wouldn't let it end on the other levels. We kept buying and selling this war. I'm not locked in the penitentiary for crimes, I'm locked in the Second World War. I'm locked in the Second World War with this decision to bring to the World Court - there must be a One World Court, or we're all gonna be devoured by crime.
Crime, and the definition of crime comes from Nuremberg, when the judges decided that they wanted to call Second World War a crime. Honor and war is not a crime. Crime is bad. When you go to war and you're a soldier, and you fight for your God and your country, that's not criminal. That's honorable. That's what you must do to be a man. If you don't fight for your God and your country, you're not worth anything. If you have no honor, then you're not worth petty's pigs.
Truth is, we've got to overturn this decision that you made in the Second World War, or the Second World War will never end. Degrees of the war was written in Switzerland, in Geneva, at conferences that were made by the men at the tables, clearly stated that anyone in uniform would be given the respect of their rank and their uniforms. Then when the United States and got all the Germans in handcuffs, they started breaking their own rules. And they've been breaking their own rules ever since. War is not a crime, but if you judge war as a crime in a court room, then turn around: If 2 + 3 = 5, and 3 + 2 = 5; if you say war is a crime, then crime becomes your war. I am, by all standards, a prisoner of war.
I've been a prisoner of war since 1944 in Juvenile Hall, for setting a school building on fire in Indianapolis, Indiana. I've been locked up 45 years trying to figure out why I got to be a criminal. It matters not whether I want to be; you've got to keep criminals going to keep the war going because that's your economy, your whole economy is based on the war. You've got to get your dollar bills off the war, you've got your silver market sterling off of the war, you've got to take your gold and your diamonds off of the war - You've got to overturn that decision, that hung 6000 men by the neck.
You killed 6000 soldiers for obeying orders. It's wrong. And the world has got to accept that's wrong. When you accept you're wrong, and you say you're sorry for all the things you've done, then that will be a note on that court, and we'll have some harmony going on this planet Earth, now.”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview with Bill Murphy (1994) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAjh_wOByoY

Life , Men , God , War

“I have no joy in strife,
Peace is my great desire;
Yet God forbid I lose my life
Through fear to face the fire.

A peaceful man must fight
For that which peace demands,—
Freedom and faith, honor and right,
Defend with heart and hands.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

The Peaceful Warrior, st. 1-2 (May 1918).

Life , God , Fear , Peace

“Their football Arsenal is on another level but Spurs are fighting like beavers defending for their lives, It's a terrific game, still one nill" Jeff: "Did I hear that correctly? fighting like beavers? not tigers or lions but beavers those ferocious little devils" Chris: "The game as a spectacle is magnificent. Spurs working like beavers but the football from Arsenal Jeff, well it's out of this world it's sensational, their carving them up as easy as….. well, as easy as anything Jeff”

Chris Kamara (1957) English association football player and manager

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/take-a-tour-of-english-football-grounds-with-chris-kamara-9928156.html

World , Game , Football

“After his final fight: "I felt like I was 120 years old. I feel like Rip Van Winkle right now."”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2005/06/12/1390287.htm
On boxing

Feeling

“I'm all for Workers' Rights and stuff like that, that's fair enough. But imagine if you were working in a pub in some real rough-arse of inner-city North Dublin, …and you're built like, say, me. And you've got to go up to some bloke who looks like he's been lured down from a mountain with a hunk of meat, and he's just trying to enjoy his 'post-fight' cigarette, and you've got to tell him to put it out. Somewhere in the back of your head you're going to be thinking "Oh, thank you so much to the government for looking after my health."”

Ed Byrne (1972) Irish comedian

[pauses] Somewhere in the back of your head, where your nose is about to be.
On the 2004 Smoking Ban in the Republic of Ireland.
Pedantic & Whimsical (2006)

Health , Imagination , Mountain , Thinking

“We have time travel," she said, "and none of us, I am sure, really understands it. We stole it from the Infinites. To steal time travel was the one way we could fight back, the one way we could flee. The human race had far space travel before the Infinites showed up. I think it was our far travel that aroused the interest of the Infinites in us. I've often wondered if some of the very primitive principles of time might not have made our many-times-faster-than-light travel possible. Time is somehow tied into space, but I have never known quite how.”

Clifford D. Simak Highway of Eternity

Highway of Eternity (1986)

Way , Travel , Understanding , Thinking

“Since no welterweight or middleweight will fight me I am compelled to go to the next class. Will any heavyweights fight me?”

Barbados Joe Walcott (1873–1935) British boxer

Police Gazette Oct 13, 1900. Walcott issued challenges to Tom Sharkey, Gus Ruhlin and even champion Jim Jeffies, though they all declined.

“He had been fighting with himself longer than he could remember and was still not sure who was winning.”

Jon Courtenay Grimwood (1953) British writer

Source: Stamping Butterflies (2004), Chapter 5 (p. 37)

“I don't have the stomach for this anymore. I don't have anything to fight for anymore.”

Mike Tyson (1966) American boxer

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2005/06/12/1390287.htm
On boxing

“But whoever thinks that beauty is something he can enjoy exclusively for himself just by abandoning other people and closing his eyes to the human life of which he is part—he is not the friend of beauty. He ends up either as Pétur Þríhross's poet, or his secretary. He who doesn't fight every day of his life to the last breath against the representatives of evil, against the living images of evil who rule Sviðinsvík—he blasphemes by taking the word beauty into his mouth.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Örn Úlfar
Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Two: The Palace of the Summerland

Parting , Evil , Thinking , Beauty

“We should fight to preserve a country where people such as Michael Moore get to miss the point as badly as he misses it. Michael Moore represents everything I detest in a human being.”

Dennis Miller (1953) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actor

Associated Press interview (26 January 2004) http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/TV/01/26/tv.dennismiller.ap/, The Toronto Star (13 June 2004) http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagenamethestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&cArticle&cid1086991811111&call_pageid968867495754

People , Country

“The Marques' thought he had the Rifleman beaten, but all he had done was to make the Rifleman fight. This no longer looked like a duel to d'Alembord; it looked like a brawl leading to slaughter.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Captain Peter d'Alembord, p. 65
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Honor (1985)

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love , Life , Wisdom , War

“I noticed the bushes all around where I stood in my fight with the machine guns were all cut down. The bullets went over my head and on either side. But they never touched me.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Account of 8 October 1918.
Diary of Alvin York

“There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won.”

Will Durant book The Story of Civilization

Source: The Story of Civilization (1935–1975), III - Caesar and Christ (1944), Chapter 30, part 1, p. 652.

Hope , History , Success , Christ

“I said I could to get the part. It made me go slightly mad, because my brain would be spinning all night. But after my big fight scene, where it was just kick, kick, kick, turn, in a freezing graveyard at 5am, I remember coming home on fire, because my brain hadn't kicked in once. Which was really, really a relief.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

FILM: Beauty and the Beasts Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040312/ai_n12769890/pg_1. The London Independent. March 12, 2004.
Guillory speaks about Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

Home , Parting , Madness , Night

“I want the ability to do whatever I want without a whole fleet of lawyers and record companies analyzing it and telling me what to do. It's like the success of doing it that way doesn't mean enough to me as an artist or a person for me to fight about it. I'm not going to fight anymore I'm just going to do it the way I want to do it. Why am I going to do it that way and be so obstinate? Because I don't care enough about it to spend that much time on it.”

Devin Townsend (1972) Canadian musician

Blabbermouth.net: DEVIN TOWNSEND Discusses Decision To Put STRAPPING YOUNG LAD To Rest http://www.roadrunnerrecords.com/blabbermouth.net/news.aspx?mode=Article&newsitemID=72994

Way , Time , Success , Personality

“The King asked the knight, whose name was Sir Thomas of Norwich: "Is my son dead or stunned, or so seriously wounded that he cannot go on fighting?" "No, thank God," replied the knight, "but he is very hard pressed and needs your help badly." "Sir Thomas," the King answered, "go back to him and to those who have sent you and tell them not to send for me again today, as long as my son is alive. Give them my command to let the boy win his spurs, for if God has so ordained it, I wish the day to be his and the honour to go to him and to those in whose charge I have placed him."”

Jean Froissart (1337–1405) French writer

Lors respondi li rois et demanda au chevalier, qui s'appelloit messires Thumas de Nordvich: "Messires Thumas, mes filz est il ne mors ne atierés, ou si bleciés qu'il ne se puist aidier?" Cilz respondi: "Nennil, monsigneur, se Dieu plaist; mais il est en dur parti d'armes: si aroit bien mestier de vostre ayde."
"Messire Thumas, dist li rois, or retournés devers lui et devers chiaus qui ci vous envoient, et leur dittes de par moy qu'il ne m'envoient meshui requerre pour aventure qui leur aviegne, tant que mes filz soit en vie. Et dittes leur que je leur mande que il laissent à l'enfant gaegnier ses esporons; car je voel, se Diex l'a ordonné, que la journée soit sienne, et que li honneur l'en demeure et à chiaus en qui carge je l'ai bailliet."
Book 1, p. 92.
Chroniques (1369–1400)

God , Boy , Help , Dead