“My only regrets were for poor tactics, not for faulty principles.”

Sound Socialist Tactics (1912)

2011-01-20
Glenn Beck
Television
Fox News
24-Hour Nazi Party People
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Comedy Central
Television
2011-01-24
05:10
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/mon-january-24-2011/24-hour-nazi-party-people
2010s, 2011

As quoted in Liberalism is a Mental Disorder : Savage Solutions‎ (2005) by Michael Savage, Ch. 1 : More Patton, Less Patent Leather, p. 4

At a King's College college feast, as quoted in 1949, John Maynard Keynes, 1883-1946, Fellow and Bursar, (A memoir prepared by direction of the Council of King’s College, Cambridge University, England), Cambridge University Press, 1949, page 37. This in turn quoted in Quote Investigator, " My Only Regret Is That I Have Not Drunk More Champagne In My Life https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/07/11/more-champagne/", 2013-07-11
Attributed

The Point of View of My Work as an Author (1848, 1851, 1859)<!-- Lowrie 1939, 1962 --> p. 153-155
1840s
Context: I have never fought in such a way as to say: I am the true Christian, others are not Christians. No, my contention has been this: I know what Christianity is, my imperfection as a Christian I myself fully recognize — but I know what Christianity is. And to get this properly recognized must be, I should think, to every man’s interest, whether he be a Christian or not, whether his intention is to accept Christianity or to reject it. But I have attacked no one as not being a Christian, I have condemned no one. Indeed, the pseudonym Johannes Climacus, who sets the problem ‘about becoming a Christian’, does exactly the opposite: he denies that he is a Christian and concedes this claim to the others — the remotest possible remove, surely, from condemning others! And I myself have from the first clearly asserted, again and again repeated, that I am ‘without authority’. My tactics were, by God’s aid, to employ every means to make it clear what the requirement of Christianity truly is — even though not one single person should be induced to enter into it, and though I myself might have to give up being a Christian (in which case I should have felt obliged to make open admission of the fact). On the other hand, my tactics were these: instead of giving the impression, in however small a degree, that there are such difficulties about Christianity that an apology for it is needed if men are to be persuaded to enter into it, rather to represent it as a thing so infinitely lofty, as in truth it is, that the apology belongs in another place, is required, that is to say, of us for the fact that we venture to call ourselves Christians, or it transforms itself into a contrite confession that we have God to thank if we merely assume to regard ourselves as a Christian. But neither must this ever be forgotten: Christianity is just as lenient as it is austere, just as lenient, that is to say, infinitely lenient. When the infinite requirement is heard and upheld, heard and upheld in all its infinitude, then grace is offered, or rather grace offers itself, and to it the individual, each for himself, as I also do, can flee for refuge.

Final television interview with Melvyn Bragg (5 April 1994)

Journal found in his car

Last words before being hanged by the British as a spy, (September 22, 1776), according to the account by William Hull based on reports by British Captain John Montresor who was present and who spoke to Hull under a flag of truce the next day:
‘On the morning of his execution,’ continued the officer, ‘my station was near the fatal spot, and I requested the Provost Marshal to permit the prisoner to sit in my marquee, while he was making the necessary preparations. Captain Hale entered: he was calm, and bore himself with gentle dignity, in the consciousness of rectitude and high intentions. He asked for writing materials, which I furnished him: he wrote two letters, one to his mother and one to a brother officer.’ He was shortly after summoned to the gallows. But a few persons were around him, yet his characteristic dying words were remembered. He said, ‘I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.’
Some speculation exists that Hale might have been repeating or paraphrasing lines from Joseph Addison's play Cato, Act IV, Scene IV:
How beautiful is death when earned by virtue.
Who would not be that youth? What pity is it
that we can die but once to serve our country.
See George Dudley Seymour, Captain Nathan Hale, Major John Palsgrave Wyllys, A Digressive History, (1933), p. 39.
Another early variant of his last words exists, as reported in the Independent Chronicle and the Universal Advertiser (17 May 1781):
I am so satisfied with the cause in which I have engaged, that my only regret is, that I have not more lives than one to offer in its service.