“Memory, I realize, can be an unreliable thing; often it is heavily coloured by the circumstances in which one remembers.”

Quoted in Brian Sherwin, "Art Space Talk: James Rosenquist," http://www.myartspace.com/blog/2008/04/art-space-talk-james-rosenquist.html myartspace.com (2008-04-04)

Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XLII: On Values

Source: Fall on Your Knees

Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, 256 (11 April 1842)
1840s
Context: That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill'; at another time He said, 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.' This is the principle on which the government of heaven is conducted— by revelation adapted to the circumstances in which the children of the kingdom are placed. Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is, although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.

"Amity Street", p. 1
The Youngest Science: Notes of a Medicine Watcher (1983)

Quote, 1914, from: Foreword
1970s, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)
Context: I do not wish to kill nor to be killed, but I can foresee circumstances in which both these things would be by me unavoidable. We preserve the so-called peace of our community by deeds of petty violence every day. Look at the policeman's billy and handcuffs! Look at the jail! Look at the gallows! Look at the chaplain of the regiment! We are hoping only to live safely on the outskirts of this provisional army. So we defend ourselves and our hen-roosts, and maintain slavery. I know that the mass of my countrymen think that the only righteous use that can be made of Sharp's rifles and revolvers is to fight duels with them, when we are insulted by other nations, or to hunt Indians, or shoot fugitive slaves with them, or the like. I think that for once the Sharp's rifles and the revolvers were employed in a righteous cause. The tools were in the hands of one who could use them.

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

The dominant note is always horror. Society, apparently, cannot get along without capital punishment—for there are some people whom it is simply not safe to leave alive—and yet there is no one, when the pinch comes, who feels it right to kill another human being in cold blood. I watched a man hanged once. There was no question that everybody concerned knew this to be a dreadful, unnatural action. I believe it is always the same—the whole jail, warders and prisoners alike, is upset when there is an execution. It is probably the fact that capital punishment is accepted as necessary, and yet instinctively felt to be wrong, that gives so many descriptions of executions their tragic atmosphere. They are mostly written by people who have actually watched an execution and feel it to be a terrible and only partly comprehensible experience which they want to record; whereas battle literature is largely written by people who have never heard a gun go off and think of a battle as a sort of football match in which nobody gets hurt.
"As I Please" column in The Tribune (3 November 1944)^{http://alexpeak.com/twr/oocp/}
As I Please (1943–1947)