Thomas Becket Quotes

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves.

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.

You give me electric chair. I no afraid of that chair! You're one of capitalists. You is crook man too. Put me in electric chair. I no care!

We have not forgotten the occupier. We remain a resistance.

Dissidents can't be dissidents forever; we are dissidents because we don't want to be dissidents.

I have loved justice and hated iniquity: therefore I die in exile.

Denounce me for advocating freedom if you can, and I will bear your curse with a better resignation.

For we went, changing our country more often than our shoes In the class war, despairing When there was only injustice and no resistance

The people's flag is deepest red; It shrouded oft our martyred dead .... Then raise the scarlet standard high. Within its shade we'll live or die. Tho' cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here.

The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries.

And do not acquiesce to the unjust …

I own frankly now that I am to engage, that what I may do may be reckoned and will be reckoned desperate. All appearances seem to be against me. Interest, prudence, and the obligations to you which I lie under, will prevent most people in my situation from taking a resolution that may probably end in my utter ruin. My life, my fortune, my expectations, the happiness of my wife and children are all at stake …, and yet a principle (what seems to me) honour, and my duty to King and Country, outweighs everything.

I shall order the men to disregard your order, to stand fast. I shall then walk to the largest window in the plant, open it, divest myself of my outer reinments, remove my shirt and bare my bosom. Then when you order your troops to fire, mine will be the first breast those bullets will strike!

The law under which I suffer is surely a severe one— may the makers and promoters of it be justified in the integrity of their motives, and the purity of their own lives! By that law I am stamped a felon, but my heart disdains the imputation…. I trust that all my virtuous countrymen will bear me in their kind remembrance, and continue true and faithful to each other, as I have been to all of them. With this last wish of my heart nothing doubting of the success of that cause for which I suffer. My comfortable lot, and industrious course of life, best refute the charge of being an adventurer for plunder; but if to have loved my country—to have known its wrongs —to have felt the injuries of the persecuted Catholics and to have united with them and all other religious persuasions in the most orderly and least sanguinary means of procuring redress — if those be felonies, I am a felon, but not otherwise.

I, being an honorable woman, would sooner die than give a declaration of fidelity to King George or the British Empire.

I hsve been called a traitor many times in my career, and it is a badge that I wear with great honor.

A modern hero is very ambiguous. I went through some very rough times in Czechoslovakia - the occupation by the Germans at the end of the war. We had people going against their tanks with brooms. Are they nuts, or are they heroes?

I'm challenging the powers that be.

There are men put on this earth to make laws designed to break the spirits of men. There are those put here to have their spirits broken by those put here to break them. Then there are those who are here to break the laws that break the men who break the spirits of other men. I am one of those men. - Harry West

I don't fear death; I fear remaining silent in the face of injustice. I am young and I want to live. But I say to those that would eliminate my voice: I am ready, wherever and whenever you might strike. You can cut down the flower, but nothing can stop the coming of the spring.

One had better die fighting against injustice than die like a dog or a rat in a trap.

Why does any martyr cooperate with his judases?...We see a game beyond the endgame...As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

I fight authority and authority always wins.

The only way I can pay back for what fate and society have handed me is to try, in minor totally useless ways, to make an angry sound against injustice.

Nevertheless, to the persecution and tyranny of his cruel ministry we will not tamely submit - appealing to Heaven for the justice of our cause, we determine to die or be free . . . .