Patrick Pearse quote: “Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more desirable than anything in the world. If you strike us…”

“When I was a child of ten, I went on my bare knees by my bedside one night and promised God that I should devote my Life to an effort to free my country. I have kept the promise. I have helped to organise, to train, and to discipline my fellow-countrymen to the sole end that, when the time came, they might fight for Irish freedom. The time, as it seemed to me, did come, and we went into the fight. I am glad that we did. We seem to have lost; but we have not lost. To refuse to fight would have been to lose; to fight is to win. We have kept faith with the past, and handed on its tradition to the future. I repudiate the assertion of the Prosecutor that I sought to aid and abet England’s enemy. Germany is no more to me than England is. I asked and accepted German aid in the shape of arms and an expeditionary force; we neither asked for nor accepted German gold, nor had any traffic with Germany but what I state. My object was to win Irish freedom. We struck the first blow ourselves, but I should have been glad of an ally’s aid. I assume that I am speaking to Englishmen who value their freedom, and who profess to be fighting for the freedom of Belgium and Serbia. Believe that we too love freedom and desire it. To us it is more than anything else in the world. If you strike us down now, we shall rise again, and renew the fight. You cannot conquer Ireland; you cannot extinguish the Irish passion for freedom. If our deed has not been sufficient to win freedom, then our children will win it by a better deed.”

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

Patrick Pearse at his court-martial.Publish by the 75th Anniversary Committee, Dublin, 1991.

“We fought that last war to make the world safe for democracy, and we did — for a while. The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once — and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them, and then keep fighting eternally to hold them. By our victory in the last war, we won a lease on liberty, not a deed to it. Now, after 23 years, Adolf Hitler tells us that lease is expiring, and after the manner of all leases, we have the privilege of renewing it, or letting it go by default.”

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

Address on Memorial Day ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (30 May 1941), as recorded in Congressional Record, 77th Congress, First Session, Appendix, Vol. 87, Pt. 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=cm64vikAjIMC&pg=SL1-PA2692

“We fought that last war to make the world safe for democracy, and we did — for a while. The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once — and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them, and then keep fighting eternally to hold them. By our victory in the last war, we won a lease on liberty, not a deed to it. Now, after 23 years, Adolf Hitler tells us that lease is expiring, and after the manner of all leases, we have the privilege of renewing it, or letting it go by default.”

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

Address on Memorial Day ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (30 May 1941), as recorded in Congressional Record, 77th Congress, First Session, Appendix, Vol. 87, Pt. 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=cm64vikAjIMC&pg=SL1-PA2692

“They won't break me because the desire for freedom, and the freedom of the Irish people, is in my heart. The day will dawn when all the people of Ireland will have the desire for freedom to show. It is then we'll see the rising of the moon.”

Bobby Sands (1954–1981) Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army

Diary entry, (17 March 1981), translated from the original Irish, in Skylark Sing your Lonely Song : An Anthology of the Writings of Bobby Sands (1991)
Other writings

“To our most bitter opponents we say: "We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail and we shall still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer. One day we shall win freedom but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process and our victory will be a double victory."”

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

1950s, Loving Your Enemies (Christmas 1957)

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything - anger, anxiety, or possessions - we cannot be free.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy, and Liberation

“Our freedom is our own—civil and religious. We are so accustomed to it, as to the air we breathe, that we take it for granted…And that freedom did not drop down on us like the manna from Heaven: it has been fought for from the beginning of our history, and the blood of men far better than ourselves has been shed to obtain it. It is the result of centuries of resistance to the power of the executive, and it has brought us an equal justice and trial by jury, and freedom of worship, and freedom of opinion—religious and political.”

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

Broadcast from London (6 March 1934); published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 17.
1934

“It is our duty to fight for our freedom.
It is our duty to win.
We must love each other and support each other.
We have nothing to lose but our chains.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

To My People (July 4, 1973)
Source: Assata: An Autobiography

“This enemy attacked not just our people, but all freedom-loving people everywhere in the world. The United States of America will use all our resources to conquer this enemy. We will rally the world. We will be patient, we will be focused, and we will be steadfast in our determination. This battle will take time and resolve. But make no mistake about it: we will win.”

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

2000s, 2001, Freedom and Democracy Are Under Attack (September 2001)

“We are called to honor our own words of reverent prayer with resolution in the deeds we must perform to preserve peace and the hope of freedom. We keep a vigil of peace around the world. Until the world knows no aggressors, until the arms of tyranny have been laid down, until freedom has risen up in every land, we shall maintain our vigil to make sure our sons who died on foreign fields shall not have died in vain.”

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

1960s, Memorial Day speech (1963)

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