Tacitus
- Calgacus's speech against the Romans
They have pillaged the world: when the land has nothing left for men who ravage everything, they scour the sea. If an enemy is rich, they are greedy, if he is poor, they crave glory. Neither East nor West can sate their appetite. They are the only people on earth to covet wealth and poverty with equal craving. They plunder, they butcher, they ravish, and call it by the lying name of empire. They make a desert and call it peace.
W. Somerset Maugham
- The Razor's Edge
For men and women are not only themselves; they are also the region in which they were born, the city, apartment, or the farm in which they learnt to walk, the games they played as children, the old wives' tales they overheard, the food they ate, the schools they attended, the sports they followed, the poets they read, and the God they believed in.
John Steinbeck
- The Grapes of Wrath
Let a man get property he doesn't see, or can't take time to get his fingers in, or can't be there to walk on it - why, then the property is the man. He can't do what he wants, he can't think what he wants. The property is the man, stronger than he is. And he is small, not big. Only his possessions are big - and he's the servant of his property.
John Steinbeck
- Érik a gyümölcs
Ha olyan birtoka van az embernek, amit nem lát, vagy nem ér rá, hogy a maga kezével művelje, vagy nem lehet ott, hogy járjon rajta, hát akkor a birtok az úr. Az ember nem teheti azt, amit akar, nem gondolhatja azt, amit akar. A birtok az úr, erősebb a gazdájánál. S a gazda kisebb lesz, nem nagyobb. Csak a birtok a nagy, ő pedig szolgája a birtokának.
Tacitus
- Calgacus beszéde a rómaiak ellen
Ragadozói a világnak, miután mindent feldúltak, és már nincs számukra föld, most a tengert kutatják; ha gazdag az ellenség, telhetetlenségből, ha szegény, becsvágyból; sem Kelet, sem Nyugat nem lakatta jól őket: egyedüliek a világon, akik a kincseket és a nincstelenséget egyforma szenvedéllyel áhítozzák. Elhurcolni, gyilkolni, rabolni - hazug névvel ezt mondják birodalomnak, és ahol pusztaságot teremtenek, békének.
Frederick Douglass
Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
W. Somerset Maugham
- The Moon and Sixpence
I forget who it was that recommended men for their soul's good to do each day two things they disliked: it was a wise man, and it is a precept that I have followed scrupulously; for every day I have got up and I have gone to bed.
Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver utazásai
Atyja, a császár, ekkor rendeletet adott ki, mely szigoru büntetés terhe alatt megtiltotta a népnek, hogy a tojást vastagabb felén törje fel. A népet annyira felbőszítette e rendelet, hogy hat izben lázadás tört ki. E forradalmak folyamán egyik császárunk életét, másik trónját vesztette... Feljegyezték, hogy tizenegyezer ember szenvedett inkább kinhalált, semhogy a hagyományok ellenére a vékonyabb felén törje fel a tojást.
George Orwell
- 1984 - Winston's mother
She had possessed a kind of nobility, a kind of purity, simply because the standards that she obeyed were private ones. Her feelings were her own, and could not be altered from outside. It would not have occurred to her that an action which is ineffectual thereby becomes meaningless. If you loved someone, you loved him, and when you had nothing else to give, you still gave him love.
P. G. Wodehouse
- The Long Arm of Looney Coote
In addition to adenoids, the Right Hon. the Marquess of Cricklewood had - or seemed to have - a potato of the maximum size and hotness in his mouth, and he had learned his elocution in one of those correspondence schools which teach it by mail. I caught his first sentence - that he would only detain us a moment - but for fifteen minutes after that he baffled me completely. That he was still speaking I could tell by the way his Adam's apple wiggled, but what he was saying I could not even guess.
William Styron
- Darkness Visible
In depression this faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute. If there is mild relief, one knows that it is only temporary; more pain will follow. It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul... One does not abandon, even briefly, one's bed of nails, but is attached to it wherever one goes.
Jawaharlal Nehru
- Speech after Gandhi's assassination
Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere. I do not know what to tell you and how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the Father of the Nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that. Nevertheless, we will never see him again as we have seen him for these many years. We will not run to him for advice and seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not to me only, but to millions and millions in this country.
George Orwell
- The Lion and the Unicorn
As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me. They do not feel any enmity against me as an individual, nor I against them. They are 'only doing their duty', as the saying goes. Most of them, I have no doubt, are kindhearted, law-abiding men who would never dream of committing murder in private life.
Jonathan Swift
- Gulliver's Travels
Whereupon the Emperor published an edict, commanding all his subjects, upon great penalties, to break the smaller end of the eggs. The people so highly resented this law, that our histories tell us, there have been six rebellions raised on that account; wherein one emperor lost his life, and another his crown... It is computed, that eleven thousand persons have, at several times, suffered death, rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
Irwin Shaw
- The Young Lions
Kill, if you must, because in our weakness and in our error, we have found no other road to peace, but kill remorsefully, kill with a sense of sorrow, kill with economy for the immortal souls who leave this life in battle, carry mercy in your cartridge cases, forgiveness in your knapsacks, kill without revenge, because vengeance is not yours but the Lord's, kill, knowing that each life you spend makes yours much the poorer.
Primo Levi
- The Drowned and the Saved
There is no proportion between the pity that we feel and the extent of the pain by which the pity is aroused: one single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way; if we were capable of taking in all the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live.
Irwin Shaw
- The Young Lions
The enemy is more savage than the tiger, hungrier than the shark, crueler than the wolf; in honor and in defense of our moderate way of life, we stand up to him and combat him, but in doing so, we out-tiger him, out-shark the shark, over-wolf the wolf. Will we at the end of all this then pretend to ourselves that the victory is ours? The thing we defend perishes from our victory as it would never perish from our defeat.
Martin Luther King
- I Have a Dream
The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
Martin Luther King
- I Have a Dream
In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plain of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
Martin Luther King
On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, "Is it safe?" Expediency asks the question, "Is it politic?" And Vanity comes along and asks the question, "Is it popular?" But Conscience asks the question "Is it right?" And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must do it because Conscience tells him it is right.
