Martyr Quotes - Page 12

• And, in the future, while the dumb show of bohemianism plays itself out in the cookie cutter shape of the politically correct martyr/victim, aesthetic terrorists will not involve themselves in the dubious rewards of celebrity. The best of them will work alone, already a part of the enemy camp, and in chameleon-like style master the fifth-column algorithms to subvert the ancient regime. We won't know them by their name but their compensation will be to affect the outcome of the planet. Until then, there's a lot of work to be done.

  Adam Parfrey

  Play, Names, Dumb

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• Sometimes the most difficult decision is to not martyr yourself for someone, but instead to choose to live for them. Because of them.

  Chuck Hogan

  Decision, Sometimes, Difficult

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• I nursed men back to sanity who were driven to despair. I solicited clothes for the ragged children, for the desperate mothers. I laid out the dead, the martyrs of the strike.

  Mother Jones

  Mother, Children, Men

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• If you remove the English Army tomorrow and hoist the green flag over Dublin Castle., unless you set about the organization of the Socialist Republic your efforts will be in vain. England will still rule you. She would rule you through her capitalists, through her landlords, through her financiers, through the whole array of commercial and individualist institutions she has planted in this country and watered with the tears of our mothers and the blood of our martyrs

  James Connolly

  Mother, Country, Army

  James Connolly (1973). “Quotations from James Connolly: An Anthology in Parts”

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• The Young Soldier It is not death Without hereafter To one in dearth Of life and its laughter, Nor the sweet murder Dealt slow and even Unto the martyr Smiling at heaven: It is the smile Faint as a (waning) myth, Faint, and exceeding small On a boy's murdered mouth.

  Wilfred Owen

  Life, Sweet, Laughter

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• Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Stars, Selfish, Destiny

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• Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Inspire, Infidelity, World

  "Ranke's History of the Popes" by Thomas B. Macaulay, "Edinburgh Review", October, 1840.

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• That night, I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me, a Child of Faith. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both.

  Maximilian Kolbe

  Mother, Children, Night

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• On my license, it says I'm an organ donor, but the truth is I'd consider being an organ martyr. I'm sure I'm worth a lot more dead than alive - the sum of the parts equal more than the whole. I wonder who might wind up walking around with my liver, my lungs, even my eyeballs. I wonder what poor asshole would get stuck with whatever it is in me that passes for a heart.

  Jodi Picoult

  Heart, Wind, Alive

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper: A Novel”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

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• If you outlaw half a million people you make martyrs of them. For example, if you outlaw Robin Hood, it is all very well, but if you outlaw a whole group of people around Robin Hood, then Robin Hood and his merry men become legends.

  Baldur von Schirach

  Men, People, Robins

  "The Nuremberg Interviews: Conversations with the Defendants and Witnesses". Book by Leon Goldensohn, Random House, p. 237 (To Leon Goldensohn, March 10, 1946), 2010.

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• Without chemical slaughterhouses, without a systematic mass murder, the tragedy of the Jews is just one out of the numerous tragedies that befell the nations of Europe during the Second World War. The Jewish people thus loses its martyr status, and the State of Israel, whose establishing was approved by the world under the impression of an alleged 'unparalleled genocide,' would lose its legitimacy.

  Jurgen Graf

  War, Israel, Europe

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• The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.

  David Ebershoff

  Pain, Loss, Men

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• Feast of Stephen, Deacon, First Martyr, the man who will not act until he knows all will never act at all.

  Jim Elliot

  Men, Laziness, Firsts

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• Ease off the martyr throttle.

  Jim Butcher

  Ease, Throttle

  Jim Butcher (2008). “Grave Peril: Book three of The Dresden Files”, p.189, Penguin

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• Education must have two foundations --morality as a support for virtue, prudence as a defense for self against the vices of others. By letting the balance incline to the side of morality, you only make dupes or martyrs; by letting it incline to the other, you make calculating egoists.

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Education, Self, Two

  Sébastien-Roch-Nicolas Chamfort (1902). “The Cynic's Breviary: Maxims and Anecdotes from Nicolas de Chamfort”

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• The martyr endured tortures to affirm his belief in truth but he never asserted his disbelief in torture.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Belief, Torture, Disbelief

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• Everyone hates a martyr; it's no wonder martyrs were burned at the stake.

  E. W. Howe

  Hate, Wonder, Stakes

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• Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone.

  David O. McKay

  Kings, Heart, Character

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• The Law waits for you to stumble on a mode of being, a soul different from the FDA-approved purple-stamped standard dead meat - & as soon as you begin to act in harmony with nature the Law garottes & strangles you - so don't play the blessed liberal middleclass martyr - accept the fact that you're a criminal & be prepared to act like one.

  Hakim Bey

  Blessed, Fda, Law

  Hakim Bey (2003). “T.A.Z.: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism”, p.21, Autonomedia

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• Hollywood's martyr-mythology leaves out the fact that the famed Hollywood Ten, for example, were in fact members of the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in violation of the Smith Act and which took orders directly from Moscow.

  Jonah Goldberg

  Party, Government, Order

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• Behind every terrorist stand dozens of men and women, without whom he could not engage in terrorism. They are all enemy combatants, and their blood shall be on all their heads. Now this also includes the mothers of the martyrs, who send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They should follow their sons, nothing would be more just. They should go, as should the physical homes in which they raised the snakes. Otherwise, more little snakes will be raised there.

  Ayelet Shaked

  Mother, Women, Flower

  "Letter from America: Israeli Jews, Hate Crime and Hate Speech" by Dr. Habib Siddiqui, asiantribune.com. July 27, 2014.

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• Suffering has as much right to be expressed as a martyr has to cry out. So it may have been false to say that writing poetry after Auschwitz is impossible.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Writing, Suffering

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• No man has a right perception of any truth, who has not been reacted on by it, so as to be ready to be its martyr.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Truth, Men, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2008). “The Spiritual Emerson: Essential Works by Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.86, Penguin

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• You talk of our having an idea; we do not have an idea. The idea has us, and martyrs us, and scourges us, and drives us into the arena to fight and die for it, whether we want to or not.

  Heinrich Heine

  Writing, Fighting, Ideas

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• The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, suffering, and surrender.

  Paulo Coelho

  Pain, Self, Suffering

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