It is better to die well than to live ill. […] He who fears death loses the joy of life. Above all else truth triumphs. He conquers who dies because no adversity can hurt the one over whom iniquity holds not sway.
[Melius est bene mori, quam male vivere […] Qui mortem metuit, amittit gaudia vitae; super omnia vincit veritas, vincit, qui occiditur, quia nulla ei nocet adversitas, si nulla ei dominatur iniquitas.]
Jan Hus (c. 1370-1415) Czech priest, theologian, philosopher, Church reformer [John Huss, etc.]
Letter to Christian of Prachaticz (>1413-04) [tr. Schaff (1915)]
(Source)
Written while in exile from Prague. "Truth triumphs" was adopted as a motto by Hussite fighters, and is inscribed (in Czech, "Pravda vítězí") the banner of the President of the Czechia.
(Source (Latin)). Alternate translation:
It is better to die well than to live badly. [...] He that fears death, loses the joys of life. Above all else, truth is conqueror. He conquers, who is slain: for no adversity hurts him if no iniquity hath dominion over him.
[tr. Pope (1904)]
The following translation is often mis-cited to Schaff; an examination of Schaff's book shows the above translation instead. I cannot find an original for this translation.
It is better to die well, than to live wrongly [...] Who is afraid of death loses the joy of life; truth prevails all, prevails who is killed, because no adversity can harm him, who is not dominated by injustice.
Quotations about:
martyrdom
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
Didn’t Woody Allen say that all literature was a footnote to Faust? Perhaps all adolescence is a dialogue between Faust and Christ. We tremble on the brink of selling that part of ourselves that is real, unique, angry, defiant and whole for the rewards of attainment, achievement, success and the golden prizes of integration and acceptance; but we also in our great creating imagination, rehearse the sacrifice we will make: the pain and terror we will take from others’ shoulders; our penetration into the lives and souls of our fellows; our submission to willingness to be rejected and despised for the sake of truth and love and, in the wilderness, our angry rebuttals of the hypocrisy, deception and compromise of a world which we see to be so false. There is nothing so self-righteous nor so right as an adolescent imagination.
Stephen Fry (b. 1957) British actor, writer, comedian
Moab Is My Washpot, “Falling In,” ch. 6 (1997)
(Source)
If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.
Timothy Snyder (b. 1969) American historian, author
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century (2017)
(Source)
But if physical death is the price that a man must pay to free his children and his white brethren from a permanent death of the spirit, then nothing could be more redemptive. This is the type of soul force that I am convinced will triumph over the physical force of the oppressor.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“The Rising Tide of Racial Consciousness,” Speech, National Urban League, New York (6 Sep 1960)
(Source)
We will match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws because non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. And so put us in jail, and we will go in with humble smiles on our faces, still loving you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit morally, culturally, and otherwise for integration. And we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hours, and drag us out on some wayside road and beat us and leave us half dead, and we will still love you. But be assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to suffer.
And one day we will win our freedom, but not only will we win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process. And our victory will be a double victory.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
“Loving Your Enemies,” sermon, Detroit Council of Churches Noon Lenten Services (1961-03-07)
(Source)
Reprinted in edited form in King, Strength to Love, ch. 5 "Loving Your Enemies," sec. 2 (1963). In the preface he notes this sermon was originally written while in jail in Georgia.
See Gandhi.
Sure, there are differences in degree, but we’ve got to stop comparing wounds and go out after the system that does the wounding.
Florynce "Flo" Kennedy (1916-2000) American lawyer, feminist, civil rights activist
(Attributed)
Quoted in Gloria Steinem, "The Verbal Karate of Florynce R. Kennedy, Esq.," Ms. (Mar 1973).
What sort of a lover am I to think so much about my affliction and so much less about hers? Even the insane call, ‘Come back,’ is all for my own sake. I never even raised the question whether such a return, if it were possible, would be good for her. I want her back as an ingredient in the restoration of my past. Could I have wished her anything worse? Having got once through death, to come back and then, at some later date, have all her dying to do over again? They call Stephen the first martyr. Hadn’t Lazarus the rawer deal?
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
A Grief Observed (1961)
I shall stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.
John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer, preacher
(Attributed)
Quoted in M. L. King, Jr., "Letter from Birmingham City Jail" (16 Apr 1963).
Reforms and discoveries are like offenses; they must needs come, but woe unto that man through whom they come.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
Further Extracts from the Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 (1934)
Gentlemen, you can never make me believe — no statute can ever convince me, that there is any infinite Being in this universe who hates an honest man. It is impossible to satisfy me that there is any God, or can be any God, who holds in abhorrence a soul that has the courage to express his thought. Neither can the whole world convince me that any man should be punished, either in this world or in the next, for being candid with his fellow-men. If you send men to the penitentiary for speaking their thoughts, for endeavoring to enlighten their fellows, then the penitentiary will become a place of honor, and the victim will step from it — not stained, not disgraced, but clad in robes of glory.
Robert Green Ingersoll (1833-1899) American lawyer, agnostic, orator
Trial of C.B. Reynolds for blasphemy (May 1887)
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