Allegedly these were among General John Sedgwick's final words. He was serving as a Union commander in the American Civil War, and was hit by a sharpshooter's fire a few minutes after saying them, at the battle of Spotsylvania to his men who were ducking for cover, on May 9, 1864. The words have often been portrayed as if they were absolutely his last statement, with the sentence being presented as if he did not even finish it, and altered into the form: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist..." . Though it may be a slightly more striking version of events, it is unlikely to be true.
Civil War Home site: eye-witness account http://www.civilwarhome.com/sedgwickdeath.htm
“The whole experience of being hit by a bullet is very interesting and I think worth describing in detail.”
Source: Homage to Catalonia
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George Orwell 473
English author and journalist 1903–1950Related quotes
“One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.”
Shakespeare once more
Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890)
Pragmatism in Physics, in P. Weingartner, G. Schurz & G. Dorn (Eds.), The Role of Pragmatics in Contemporary Philosophy. Vienna: Holder-Pichler-Tempsky (1998), p. 245, ISSN=1026-9347.
“If you think too much about being re-elected, it is very difficult to be worth re-electing.”
Rededication and restoration of Congress Hall http://books.google.com/books?id=w0IOAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA30&dq=%22If+you+think+too+much%22, Philadelphia (25 October 1913)
1910s
“I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”
Stated http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbIX1CP9qr4 on CBS's 60 Minutes (May 12, 1996) in reply to Lesley Stahl's question "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?" Albright was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations at the time.
1990s
On "The Heart is a Drum Machine" Documentary
“I don't think the thing is to be well known, but being worth knowing.”
Robert Fulghum : Philosopher King
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XIV.
Context: The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and magical power, to which I would exclusively appropriate the name of Imagination.
Attributed to James Watt in: Joel Mokyr, The lever of riches: Technological creativity and economic progress. Oxford University Press, 1992. p, 245