Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.23
Statement attributed to Vanzetti by Philip D. Stong, http://www.powys-lannion.net/Powys/America/S_V.htm a reporter for the North American Newspaper Alliance who visited Vanzetti in prison in May of 1927 shortly before he and Sacco were executed. <br class="br">Context: If it had not been for these things, I might have lived out my life talking at street corners to scorning men. I might have died, unmarked, unknown, a failure. Now we are not a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man's understanding of man as now we do by accident. Our words — our lives — our pains — nothing! The taking of our lives — lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish-peddler — all! That last moment belongs to us — that agony is our triumph.
Maimónides book The Guide for the Perplexed
Source: Guide for the Perplexed (c. 1190), Part III, Ch.23
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousnes (1960)
Darko Miličić (1985) Serbian basketball player
As quoted in "Darko Responds To Carmelo About '03 Draft: 'Not Necessary To Ridicule'" https://971theticket.radio.com/articles/news/darko-responds-to-carmelo-not-necessary-to-ridicule (31 March 2020), 97.1 The Ticket <br class="br">2020s
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu (1899–1938) Romanian politician
For My Legionaries: The Iron Guard (1936), Nation and Culture
Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher
The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), II : The Starting-Point
Context: The truth is sum, ergo cogito — I am, therefore I think, although not everything that is thinks. Is not consciousness of thinking above all consciousness of being? Is pure thought possible, without consciousness of self, without personality? Can there exist pure knowledge without feeling, without that species of materiality which feelings lends to it? Do we not perhaps feel thought, and do we not feel ourselves in the act of knowing and willing? Could not the man in the stove [Descartes] have said: "I feel, therefore I am"? or "I will, therefore I am"? And to feel oneself, is it not perhaps to feel oneself imperishable?
Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright
The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 17
Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America
2009, Nobel Prize acceptance speech (December 2009)
Context: We can acknowledge that oppression will always be with us, and still strive for justice. We can admit the intractability of deprivation, and still strive for dignity. Clear-eyed, we can understand that there will be war, and still strive for peace. We can do that — for that is the story of human progress; that's the hope of all the world; and at this moment of challenge, that must be our work here on Earth.
Paul Goodman book Growing Up Absurd
Source: Growing Up Absurd (1956), p. 153.