Speech at the 24th International Vegetarian Congress, India, 1977; quoted in The Vegetarians by Rynn Berry (Autumn Press, 1979), pp. 133-134.
“We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living.”
Speech in the US House of Representatives on April 2, 1828, as quoted in The Life of Colonel David Crockett (1884) by Edward Sylvester Ellis and in the January 1867 issue of Harper's magazine ("Davy Crockett's Electioneering Tours"), p. 606-611. Known as the "Not Yours to Give" speech. Though it may have expressed his attitudes on the issue, there has been dispute as to the authenticity of this speech as there is no known record of it prior to this 1884 work.
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Davy Crockett 29
American politician 1786–1836Related quotes
Letter to a friend, July 1981 cited in: "In Memoriam R. W. van Bemmelen," Geologie en Mijnbouw, Vol 63, No. 1 (1984); Reprinted online at Tectonics and Sedimentation of Indonesia http://fosi.iagi.or.id/tecsed/tecsed-inmemoriam.htm website, 1999.


The Ballot or the Bullet (1964), Speech in Detroit, Michigan (12 April 1964)

Part I : Ambiguity and Freedom
The Ethics of Ambiguity (1947)
Variant: Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting
Context: In spite of so many stubborn lies, at every moment, at every opportunity, the truth comes to light, the truth of life and death, of my solitude and my bond with the world, of my freedom and my servitude, of the insignificance and the sovereign importance of each man and all men. There was Stalingrad and there was Buchenwald, and neither of the two wipes out the other. Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us therefore try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting [C'est dans la connaissance des conditions authentiques de notre vie qu'il nous faut puiser la force de vivre et des raisons d'agir].
11 How. St. Tr. 1204.
Trial of Sir Edward Hales (1686)

At A Child's Grave (1882)
Context: The dead do not suffer. And if they live again, their lives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all children of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all.
We, too, have our religion, and it is this: Help for the living, hope for the dead.

Source: Together is Better: A Little Book of Inspiration