“I believe in the value of the book, which keeps something irreplaceable, and in the necessity of fighting to secure its respect.”

Usenet signatures

Source: Dubliners

Introduction to The Path (1999), based on ideas presented in Thinking and Destiny (1946) by Harold W. Percival, p. 12
Context: Our world is in profound danger. Mankind must establish a set of positive values with which to secure its own survival.
This quest for enlightenment must begin now.
It is essential that all men and women become aware of what they are, why they are here on Earth and what they must do to preserve civilization before it is too late.

Source: The Mad Ship

Variant: And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know.
Source: Mein Kampf

2010s, 2016, August, Speech in Jackson, Mississippi (August 24, 2016)

Siwati Memorial Lecture, Honiara, Solomon Islands, 24 September 2004 http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0409/S00253.htm.

Speech at Monash University (1981 Sir Robert Menzies Lecture) (6 October 1981) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104712
First term as Prime Minister
Context: I count myself among those politicians who operate from conviction. For me, pragmatism is not enough. Nor is that fashionable word “consensus”. When I asked one of my Commonwealth colleagues at this Conference why he kept saying that there was a “consensus” on a certain matter, another replied in a flash “consensus is the word you use when you can't get agreement”! To me consensus seems to be—the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no-one believes, but to which no-one objects.—the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner “I stand for consensus”?