“The golden toad was the first documented victim of global warming. We had killed it with our profligate use of coal-fired electricity and our oversize cars just as surely as if we had flattened its forest with bulldozers. It was as if, having experienced it, we did not recognize what happiness was.”

All tyrants, past, present and future, are powerless to bury the truths in these declarations, no matter how extensive their legions, how vast their power and how malignant their evil.
1960s, Emancipation Proclamation Centennial Address (1962)

Source: Mad Cowboy (1998), Ch. 4: From the Farm to the Capital, pp. 80-81

Bill signing ceremony for California's strict anti-emissions law (26 September, 2006) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15029070/.
2000s

Upon slaughtering some dogs to feed other dogs and themselves
Sydpolen (The South Pole) (1912)

A brief account of the attack that left him scarred from a spearhead that entered one side of his face and exited the other, in "Narrative of a Trip to Harar" (11 June 1855); published in The Journal of the Royal Geographical Society <!-- Vol. 25, pp.136-150 --> (June 1855)
Context: Presently our fire being exhausted, and the enemy pressing on with spear and javelin, the position became untenable; the tent was nearly battered down by clubs, and had we been entangled in its folds, we should have been killed without the power of resistance. I gave the word for a rush, and sallied out with my sabre, closely followed by Lieut. Herne, with Lieut. Speke in the rear. The former was allowed to pass through the enemy with no severer injury than a few hard blows with a war club. The latter was thrown down by a stone hurled at his chest and taken prisoner, a circumstance which we did not learn till afterwards. On leaving the tent I thought that I perceived the figure of the late Lieut. Stroyan lying upon the ground close to the camels. I was surrounded at the time by about a dozen of the enemy, whose clubs rattled upon me without mercy, and the strokes of my sabre were rendered uncertain by the energetic pushes of an attendant who thus hoped to save me. The blade was raised to cut him down: he cried out in dismay, and at that moment a Somali stepped forward, threw his spear so as to pierce my face, and retired before he could be punished. I then fell back for assistance, and the enemy feared pursuing us into the darkness. Many of our Somalis and servants were lurking about 100 yards from the fray, but nothing would persuade them to advance. The loss of blood causing me to feel faint, I was obliged to lie down, and, as dawn approached, the craft from Aynterad was seen apparently making sail out of the harbour.

On how he came to be known as "Sergeant York" when he was still technically only a corporal, as quoted in Sergeant York And His People (1922) http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/19117 by Sam K. Cowan, Ch. I : A Fight In The Forest Of The Argonne.
Context: You know we were in the Argonne Forest twenty-eight days, and had some mighty hard fighting in there. A lot of our boys were killed off. Every company has to have so many sergeants. They needed a sergeant; and they jes' took me.

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 6

1980s, Second term of office (1985–1989), Farewell Address (1989)

"Vestigial Instincts in Man", pp. 127–128
Savage Survivals (1916), Savage Survivals in Higher Peoples (Continued)