2022, "We will not give up anything. And we will fight for every meter of our land" (30 March 2022)
Zelensky’s speech at the UN General Assembly https://www.president.gov.ua/en/news/vistup-prezidenta-ukrayini-volodimira-zelenskogo-na-zagalnih-57477 (25 September 2019)
Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://www.warmech.ru/1941war/sher_4.html
Mekhlis in 1940. Quoted in The People Need a Tsar: The Emergence of National Bolshevism as Stalinist Ideology, 1931-1941, by D. L. Brandenberger & A. M. Dubrovsky, 1998
The wars of the past show us that even armies that had won brilliant victories for decades, in some cases were not only defeated but even disintegrated and ceased to exist. Such a fate, for example, befell the army of Napoleon, who for almost two decades kept the whole Europe under its boots. The army needs to instill a spirit of confidence in its power, but not in terms of boasting. Bragging about invincibility brings harm to the army.
Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://porto-fr.odessa.ua/index.php?art_num=art021&year=2008&nnumb=40
Speech at the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 14 March 1939 - quoted in Albert L. Weeks, Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941
Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.
As quoted in Literature of the American Indian (1973) by Thomas Edward Sanders and Walter W. Peek, p. 294
Context: My friend, I do not blame you for this. Had I listened to you this trouble would not have happened to me. I was not hostile to the white men. Sometimes my young men would attack the Indians who were their enemies and took their ponies. They did it in return. We had buffalo for food, and their hides for clothing and for our tepees. We preferred hunting to a life of idleness on the reservation, where we were driven against our will. At times we did not get enough to eat and we were not allowed to leave the reservation to hunt. We preferred our own way of living. We were no expense to the government. All we wanted was peace and to be left alone. Soldiers were sent out in the winter, they destroyed our villages. The "Long Hair" [Custer] came in the same way. They say we massacred him, but he would have done the same thing to us had we not defended ourselves and fought to the last. Our first impulse was to escape with our squaws and papooses, but we were so hemmed in that we had to fight. After that I went up on the Tongue River with a few of my people and lived in peace. But the government would not let me alone. Finally, I came back to the Red Cloud Agency. Yet, I was not allowed to remain quiet. I was tired of fighting. I went to the Spotted Tail Agency and asked that chief and his agent to let me live there in peace. I came here with the agent [Lee] to talk with the Big White Chief but was not given a chance. They tried to confine me. I tried to escape, and a soldier ran his bayonet into me. I have spoken.
“Anyone can deal with victory. Only the mighty can bear defeat.”
“When diplomacy ends, War begins.”
“Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”
Statement of advice on being presented the Radcliffe Medal, as quoted in "Honoring Ruth Bader Ginsburg" by Colleen Walsh, in The Harvard Gazette (29 May 2015) https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2015/05/honoring-ruth-bader-ginsburg/
2010s
Source: Song No Role Modelz
“We will not have peace by afterthought.”
Editorial (1956) on importance of preservation rather than breaches of world peace.
Saturday Review
“War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.”
Who Speaks for Man? (1953), p. 318.
"The Philippines: A Century Hence" in La Solidaridad (1889-90) - translated from the Spanish by Charles Derbyshire
1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed
