“Our country is supposed to be of the people, by the people and for the people, and if that's not worth fighting for I don't know what is.”

Source: By the Time You Read This, I'll Be Dead

Source: The world goes crazy for Lady Gaga (2009)
Context: I have found that my work has to be both deep and shallow … All of my songs have meaning, all of my clothing has iconography buried into it. But by the same token, it's just as special if you look at it in its shallowest form. A quick moment of melody, a beautiful dress. People think, "Gaga's so sweet", or "Gaga sucks". The point is that it's memorable. For commercial art to be taken seriously as fine art is a very unusual and difficult task. I think that a lot of people don't get it and a lot of people don't know what to make of me. And, you know what? I'm OK with that.

Prelude Stanza 3.
Departmental Ditties and other Verses (1886)

Exclusive — Robert Wilkie: Democrats Want to Rewrite VA Motto to Remove Language from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural https://www.breitbart.com/radio/2021/05/31/va-robert-wilkie-abraham-lincoln-second-inaugural-veterans-affairs/ (31 May 2021)

Comments to Prof. David F. Boyd at the Louisiana State Seminary (24 December 1860), as quoted in The Civil War : A Book of Quotations (2004) by Robert Blaisdell. Also quoted in The Civil War: A Narrative (1986) by Shelby Foote, p. 58.
1860s, 1860
Context: You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.

Source: The Jewels of Aptor (1962), Chapter X (p. 133)
Context: Dictators during the entire history of this planet have used similar techniques. By not letting the people of their country know what conditions existed outside their boundaries, they could get the people to fight to stay in those conditions. It was the old adage: Convince a slave that he’s free, and he will fight to maintain his slavery.

After phone talks with Hungary's prime minister, Viktor Orbán, on 19 November 2018. Jair Bolsonaro says Brazilians 'still don't know what dictatorship is' https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/20/jair-bolsonaro-says-brazilians-still-dont-know-what-dictatorship-is. The Guardian (20 November 2018).

Patrick Dalroy in The Flying Inn (1914), p 295

Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 1: Puberty
Context: During the 60's, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered. I think that once you see emotions from a certain angle you can never think of them as real again. That's what more or less has happened to me. I don't really know if I was ever capable of love, but after the '60's I never thought in terms of "love" again.