Soldiers

"Though tortured before they were killed, these unfortunates died without complaining and without humiliating themselves before their torturers."

"He is gone from among us, and is no more to be seen in the walks of men, but in his death like Sampson, he slew more of his enemies than in all his life. Even his most bitter enemies here, I believe, have buried all animosity, and join the general lamentation over his untimely end."

"Born on a mountain top in Tennessee Greenest state in the land of the free Raised in the woods so's he knew ev'ry tree Kilt him a b'ar when he was only three Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier! Fought single-handed through the Injun War Til' the Creeks was whipped an' peace was in store And while he was handlin' this risky chore He made hisself a legend forever more Davy, Davy Crockett, king of the wild frontier!"

"The enemy fought with savage fury, and met death with all its horrours, without shrinking or complaining: not one asked to be spared, but fought as long as they could stand or sit."

"Fame is like a shaved pig with a greased tail, and it is only after it has slipped through the hands of some thousands, that some fellow, by mere chance, holds on to it!"

"In peace or in war I have stood by thy side — My country, for thee I have lived, would have died! But I am cast off, my career now is run, And I wander abroad like the prodigal son — Where the wild savage roves, and the broad prairies spread, The fallen — despised — will again go ahead."

"The corn that I planted, the fields that I cleared, The flocks that I raised, and the cabin I reared; The wife of my bosom — Farewell to ye all! In the land of the stranger I rise or I fall."

"Sorrow, it is said, will make even an oyster feel poetical. I never tried my hand at that sort of writing but on this particular occasion such was my state of feeling, that I began to fancy myself inspired; so I took pen in hand, and as usual I went ahead."

"I also told them of the manner in which I had been knocked down and dragged out, and that I didn't consider it a fair fight any how they could fix it. I put the ingredients in the cup pretty strong I tell you, and I concluded my speech by telling them that I was done with politics for the present, and they might all go to hell, and I would go to Texas."

"I have never knew what it was to sacrifice my own judgment to gratify any party and I have no doubt of the time being close at hand when I will be rewarded for letting my tongue speak what my heart thinks. I have suffered myself to be politically sacrificed to save my country from ruin and disgrace and if I am never again elected I will have the gratification to know that I have done my duty."

"I gave my decisions on the principles of common justice and honesty between man and man, and relied on natural born sense, and not on law, learning to guide me; for I had never read a page in a law book in all my life."

"I don't know of any thing in my book to be criticized on by honorable men. Is it on my spelling? — that's not my trade. Is it on my grammar ? — I hadn't time to learn it, and make no pretensions to it. Is it on the order and arrangement of my book ? — I never wrote one before, and never read very many; and, of course, know mighty little about that. Will it be on the authorship of the book? — this I claim, and I hang on to it, like a wax plaster. The whole book is my own, and every sentiment and sentence in it. I would not be such a fool, or knave either, as to deny that I have had it hastily i hate all people now dont bother me run over by a friend or so, and that some little alterations have been made in the spelling and grammar; and I am not so sure that it is not the worse of even that, for I despise this way of spelling contrary to nature. And as for grammar, it's pretty much a thing of nothing at last, after all the fuss that's made about it. In some places, I wouldn't suffer either the spelling, or grammar, or any thing else to be touch'd; and therefore it will be found in my own way. But if any body complains that I have had it looked over, I can only say to him, her, or them — as the case may he — that while critics were learning grammar, and learning to spell, I, and "Doctor Jackson, L.L.D." were fighting in the wars; and if our hooks, and messages, and proclamations, and cabinet writings, and so forth, and so on, should need a little looking over, and a little correcting of the spelling and the grammar to make them fit for use, its just nobody's business. Big men have more important matters to attend to than crossing their ts—, and dotting their is—, and such like small things."

"I know, that obscure as I am, my name is making a considerable deal of fuss in the world. I can't tell why it is, nor in what it is to end. Go where I will, everybody seems anxious to get a peep at me … There must therefore be something in me, or about me, that attracts attention, which is even mysterious to myself."

"Most of authors seek fame, but I seek for justice — a holier impulse than ever entered into the ambitious struggles of the votaries of that fickle, flirting goddess."

"I leave this rule for others when I'm dead Be always sure you're right — THEN GO AHEAD!"

"Although our great man at the head of the nation, has changed his course, I will not change mine. … I was also a supporter of this administration after it came into power, and until the Chief Magistrate changed the principles which he professed before his election. When he quitted those principles, I quit him. I am yet a Jackson man in principles, but not in name... I shall insist upon it that I am still a Jackson man, but General Jackson is not; he has become a Van Buren man."

"The party in power, like Jonah's gourd, grew up quickly, and will quickly fall."

"Heaven knows that I have done all that a mortal could do, to save the people, and the failure was not my fault, but the fault of others."

"Thare is no chance of hurrying bussiness here like in the legeslature of a State thare is such a desposition here to Show Eloquence that this will be a long Session and do no good..."

"Money with them is nothing but trash when it is to come out of the people. But it is the one great thing for which most of them are striving, and many of them sacrifice honor, integrity, and justice to obtain it."

"We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money."

"We must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living."

"I know not whether, in the eyes of the world, a brilliant death is not preferred to an obscure life of rectitude. Most men are remembered as they died, and not as they lived. We gaze with admiration upon the glories of the setting sun, yet scarcely bestow a passing glance upon its noonday splendor."

"I know nothing, by experience, of party discipline. I would rather be a raccoon-dog, and belong to a Negro in the forest, than to belong to any party, further than to do justice to all, and to promote the interests of my country. The time will and must come, when honesty will receive its reward, and when the people of this nation will be brought to a sense of their duty, and will pause and reflect how much it cost us to redeem ourselves from the government of one man."

"Pop, pop, pop! Bom, bom, bom! throughout the day. No time for memorandums now. Go ahead! Liberty and Independence forever."

"I am rejoiced at my fate. I had rather be in my present situation than to be elected to a seat in congress for life. I am in great hopes of making a fortune for myself and family. I hope you will do the best you can and I will do the same. Do not be uneasy about me for I am with my friends."

"I must say as to what I have seen of Texas, it is the garden spot of the world. The best land & best prospects for health I ever saw is here, and I do believe it is a fortune to any man to come here. There is a world of country to settle."

"I am sorry to say I do doubt the honesty of many men that are called good at home, that have given themselves up to serve a party. I am no man's man. I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, and fetch and carry, at the whistle of the great man in the white house, no matter who he is. And if this petty, un-patriotic scuffling for men, and forgetting principles, goes on, it will be the overthrow of this one happy nation, and the blood and toil of our ancestors will have been expended in vain."

"I am now here in Congress... I am at liberty to vote as my conscience and judgment dictates to be right, without the yoke of any party on me, or the driver at my heels, with his whip in hand, commanding me to ge-wo-haw, just at his pleasure. Look at my arms, you will find no party hand-cuff on them!"

"I would rather be beaten and be a man than to be elected and be a little puppy dog. I have always supported measures and principles and not men. I have acted fearless[ly] and independent and I never will regret my course. I would rather be politically buried than to be hypocritically immortalized."

"I retaliated by visiting on them all manner of mischief, but I concluded, after some centuries of chronic relapsing on their part, that rage and punishment was not the best way to hold a clientele. It is only the most primitive of mortals who is swayed by that sort of thing."

"I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humourous, and continued from there. I turned my home state of Florida into the Land of Xanth."

"I realized suddenly that I was in an impossible situation, and there was really no way out. No acceptable way. I could not go on — so I stopped."

"Frederick the Great is for us the embodiment of that ancient Prussian spirit on which is based the categorical imperative of duty. The King ... in whom the idea of the State overshadowed all else ... is a figure more suited than any other to a nation that is labouring under heavy burdens."

"We have just sung a Prussian national hymn which celebrates Frederick the Great. What renders that sovereign so present to our memory is not our monarchical faith, but he is for us the personification of the ancient Prussian spirit."

"What, in fine, did Frederick bequeath to Prussia? Well, he bequeathed his name and fame as a great conqueror. He became in a secular sense the Patron Saint of Germany."

"The development of foreign ministries further restricted the scope for summitry. But rulers often retained their own private diplomatic networks. Louis XV was a prime example, while Frederick the Great of Prussia created his own Kabinett, or private office, and took over the most important business from the Foreign Office. Not surprisingly, Frederick also tried his hand at summitry: seeking a rapprochement with Austria after the Seven Years War, he met the emperor Joseph II at Neisse in 1769 and Neustadt in 1770."

"He is king among the heroes. His mind rises above the earth, he turns upon his own axis like the sun, shines in his own light, shares her heat and her spots. His are the dimensions of a great spirit, and centuries to come will study his stature and nature with the utmost care. ... He demands the space of a colossus. ... I can think of no being more exalted than the King."

"The character of the founder of the greatness of Prussia...can have no attraction for those who require as an indispensable condition of fealty that their hero shall have either purity, or sensibility, or generosity, or high honour, or manly respect for human nature. ... Frederick's sensibility was of the literary and aesthetic kind, rather than the humane and social. ... There has never been any epoch whose foremost men had such faith and hope in the virtues of humanity. There has never been any prominent man who despised humanity so bitterly and unaffectedly as Frederick despised it. We know what to think of a man...who never found so much pleasure in a friendly act as when he could make it the means of hurting the recipient; whose practical pleasantries were always spiteful and sneering and cruel."

"The essential character of modern German nationalism was chiefly moulded by the tradition and structure of the Prussian military State. The latter itself changed in the process from a dynastic-aristocratic to a national form. Frederick the Great was elevated to a national divinity in a manner unknown to any other nation. His example became the supreme national dogma."

"Frederick is what the English call an ‘acquired taste’: repulsive on first contact, yet as one gets involved with him one becomes addicted to him and finds him arousing a sentiment that cannot be called love but that may possibly be stronger than love."

"Audacity, audacity, always audacity!"

"If I had a province to punish, I would let it be governed by philosophers. Attributed in The Orthodox churchman's magazine; or, A Treasury of divine and useful knowledge (1803)."

"Christianity… is an old metaphysical fiction, stuffed with fables, contradictions and absurdities: it was spawned in the fevered imagination of the Orientals, and then spread to our Europe, where some fanatics espoused it, where some intriguers pretended to be convinced by it and where some imbeciles actually believed it. Attributed in "The West and the Rest", by Niall Ferguson, Penguin 2011 (Kindle edition)."

"They were stronger than Turk and Saracen, but not than Hunger and Disease. Leaders did not know then, as our little Friend at Berlin came to know, that “an Army, like a serpent, goes upon its belly.""

"I begin by taking. I shall find scholars later to demonstrate my perfect right."

"Diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments."

"Rascals, would you live forever?"

"My people and I," he said, "have come to an agreement which satisfies us both. They are to say what they please, and I am to do what I please."

"If my soldiers began to think, not one would remain in the ranks."