Quotes about sword
page 9

Thomas Jefferson photo

“About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you, it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations. Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies; the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad; a jealous care of the right of election by the people -- a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided; absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war till regulars may relieve them; the supremacy of the civil over the military authority; economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened; the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith; encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid; the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason; freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

1800s, First Inaugural Address (1801)

Karl Kautsky photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“Look at the manner in which the aborigines are swept away from continent after continent by the sword and beverage of the Aryans. See how the red children of America have been cheated and debauched and driven from homes where they and their fathers had lived from immemorial generations. When the banner of Castile first furled in Bahama breezes, America was inhabited by a noble, magnanimous, and happy people. They were not like the sodden, suspicious, revengeful remnants that to-day huddle on barricaded reserves, the vindictive survivors of four centuries of injustice. They were kind and generous. They came to the invading Europeans as children, with minds of wonder and with hands filled with presents. They were treated by the invaders like refuse. They were plundered, and their outstretched hands cut off and fed to Spanish hounds. They are gone from the valleys where once their camp-smokes curled to heaven, and their quaint canoes ruffle the moonlight of the rivers no more. They that remain are too weak to rise in warlike challenge to the aggressions of the mighty white. But the story of the meeting of the pale and the red, and of the wrongs of the vanquished red, will remain as one of the mournful tales of this world when the kindred of Lo, like fleecy clouds, have melted into the infinite azure of the past.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Preponderance of Egoism, p. 133–134

Calvin Coolidge photo

“There are only two main theories of government in the world. One rests on righteousness, the other rests on force. One appeals to reason, the other appeals to the sword. One is exemplified in a republic, the other is represented by a despotism. …”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Unveiling of Equestrian Statue of Bishop Francis Asbury, (Oct. 15, 1924)

Peter Kropotkin photo
Georges Sorel photo
Étienne de La Boétie photo
Edmund Burke photo

“Arms are not yet taken up; but virtually, you are in a civil war. You are not people of differing opinions in a public council;—you are enemies, that must subdue or be subdued, on the one side or the other. If your hands are not on your swords, their knives will be at your throats. There is no medium,—there is no temperament,—there is no compromise with Jacobinism.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to William Windham (30 December 1794), quoted in R. B. McDowell (ed.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VIII: September 1794–April 1796 (Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 104
1790s

Robert E. Lee photo

“Mr. Blair, I look upon secession as anarchy. If I owned the four millions of slaves in the South, I would sacrifice them all to the Union; but how can I draw my sword upon Virginia, my native State?”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Life and Campaigns of General Robert E. Lee https://books.google.com/books?id=BDkDAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1866) page 30. Responding to Francis Preston Blair relayed an offer to make him major-general to command the defense of Washington D.C.
1860s

Seneca the Younger photo
Annie Besant photo
Helmuth von Moltke the Younger photo

“If we again slink out of this affair with our tail between our legs, if we cannot pull ourselves together to present demands which we are prepared to enforce by the sword, then I despair of the future of the German Reich.”

Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848–1916) Chief of the German General Staff

Letter to his wife during the Agadir Crisis (1911), quoted in L. C. F. Turner, 'The Significance of the Schlieffen Plan', in Paul Kennedy (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 211

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Bhagat Singh photo

“Bombs and pistols do not make a revolution. The sword of revolution is sharpened on the whetting-stone of ideas.”

Bhagat Singh (1907–1931) Indian revolutionary

Quotations by 60 Greatest Indians, Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology http://resourcecentre.daiict.ac.in/eresources/iresources/quotations.html,

Al-Biruni photo
Robert Spencer photo
Iain Banks photo

“See if you can hold off this pack of blood-sucking scavengers. Here’s my duelling sword.”

The King handed me his own sword! “You have full permission to use it on anyone who looks remotely like a physician.”
Source: Culture series, Inversions (1998), Chapter 3 (p. 47)

John Marshall photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo

“Generally, I dislike fixedness in both long swords and hands. Fixedness means a dead hand. Pliability is a living hand. You must bear this in mind.”

Miyamoto Musashi (1584–1645) Japanese martial artist, writer, artist

Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book

Khalil Gibran photo

“My face and your faces shall not be masked; our hand shall hold neither sword nor sceptre, and our subjects shall love us in peace and shall not be in fear of us.”

Thus spoke Jesus, and unto all the kingdoms of the earth I was blinded, and unto all the cities of walls and towers; and it was in my heart to follow the Master to His kingdom.
James The Son Of Zebedee: On The Kingdoms Of The World
Jesus, The Son of Man (1928)

John Steinbeck photo
Imru' al-Qais photo

“Thus the tears flowed down on my breast, remembering days of love;
The tears wetted even my sword-belt, so tender was my love.”

Imru' al-Qais (501–544) Arabic Poet

The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. 5, p. 20
Poetry, Couplets
Source: https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly05hornuoft/page/18/mode/2up

Victor Hugo photo

“History shows that voting is the sword that cuts through all injustice.”

at LCV Annual Gala https://www.lcv.org/article_category/blog/Speech

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences, instead of keeping large standing armies as they do in Europe.”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

As quoted in "International Arbitration" by W. H. Dellenback in The Commencement Annual, University of Michigan (30 June 1892) and in A Half Century of International Problems: A Lawyer's Views (1954) by Frederic René Coudert, p. 180

Bobby Sands photo
Billy Hughes photo

“Germany...deliberately appealed to the arbitrament of the sword. Now, when she is beginning to learn that the world is not a sheep to be butchered, but that it has both the means and the will to defend itself, she talks about a “League of Nations.””

Billy Hughes (1862–1952) Australian politician, seventh prime minister of Australia

Had she achieved world power, would our fate have differed from that of Russia or Rumania? Would she then have talked about a League of Nations?

Speech in the Free Trade Hall, Manchester (26 August 1918), quoted in The Times (27 August 1918), p. 8

Ray Bradbury photo
Ray Bradbury photo

“We clothe ourselves in flame
And trade new myths for old.
The Greek gods christen us
With ghosts of comet swords;
God smiles and names us thus:
Arise! Run! Fly, my Lords!”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

"We March Back to Olympus" in Where Robot Mice and Robot Men Run Round in Robot Towns (1977), p. 11

Bahadur Shah Zafar photo
Joyce Kilmer photo

“When Dawn strides out to wake a dewy farm
Across green fields and yellow hills of hay
The little twittering birds laugh in his way
And poise triumphant on his shining arm.
He bears a sword of flame but not to harm
The wakened life that feels his quickening sway
And barnyard voices shrilling "It is day!"”

Take by his grace a new and alien charm. </p><p> But in the city, like a wounded thing
That limps to cover from the angry chase,
He steals down streets where sickly arc-lights sing,
And wanly mock his young and shameful face;
And tiny gongs with cruel fervor ring
In many a high and dreary sleeping place.</p>
"Alarm Clocks"
Trees and Other Poems (1914)

Joyce Kilmer photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Petr Chelčický photo

“The Church of Rome has allied herself with the state, and now they both drink together the blood of Christ, one from a chalice, and the other from the ground where it was spilled by the sword…”

Source: The Net of Faith (c. 1443), Chapter 91, Interpretation of Romans 13:5-7 https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans%2013%3A5-7&version=NIV (Conclusion)

Paulo Coelho photo
Seneca the Younger photo
Frithjof Schuon photo
Otto von Bismarck photo

“Every state must be aware that its peace, its security rests on its own sword.”

Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) German statesman, Chancellor of Germany

All the King's Men' A search for the colonial ideas of some advisers and "accomplices" of Leopold II (1853-1892). (Hannes Vanhauwaert), 5. A prospectus by the military Chazal and Brialmont, The military centipede Henri-Alexis Brialmont (1821-1893) http://www.ethesis.net/leopold_II/leopold_II.htm#2.%20 CROKAERT, P. Brialmont, 183.
Undated

Hafez photo

“What necessity for a sword to slay the lover, when a glance can deprive him of half his life!”

Hafez (1326–1389) Persian poet

In A Century of Ghazels, or. a Hundred Odes, Selected and Translated from the Diwan of Hafiz (1875), p. 77; quoted with a slight change in Love: A Book of Quotations (2012), ed. Ann Braybrooks, p. 71

Poemen photo

“The first time flee; the second time, flee; and the third, become like a sword.”

Poemen (340–450) Egyptian monk and desert father

Saying 140

Patrick Kavanagh photo
Francois Rabelais photo