Marcus Tullius Cicero Quotes
When time and need require, we should resist with all our might, and prefer death to slavery and disgrace.
Cicero, Marcus Tullius. De Officiis. Translated by Walter Miller, Harvard University Press, 1913, p. 85.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt used the phrase in his Third Inaugural Address {32529}. But the earliest expression that we have found is the Mexican leader Emiliano Zapata {46999} Franklin Delano Roosevelt later used the phrase in his Third Inaugural Address {32529}. But the earliest expression that we have found is the Mexican leader Emiliano Zapata {46999}. This was one of the great quotations to come out of the Spanish Revolution. It inspired freedom loving people the world over, then and through this day.
This line was used in the WPA Federal Theater Project. The play was closed down, because the State Department was distressed that the Federal Theater quoting heads of State might be insulting to the world leaders. Mussolini was another character in the play and he was depicted as the boorish thug that he turned out to be. It was that which offended the government officials who closed the show before it could open. FDR used a similar line 6 years later. See {32529} . Dolores Ibarruri in the Spanish Civil War is quoted with a similar phrase at about the same time. See {604321}
At that point the Japanese were losing the war on every front. It is not clear whether Hirohito would actually have done such and not tried to escape in the end, however he certainly expected his subjects, military and civilian to do so. That expectation and the behavior of the Japanese troops fighting to the death on many islands was a powerful factor in leading Truman, Marshall and other key American leaders to use the Atomic Bomb. See Marshall: {641063}
Soon after, he led 960 men, women and children in a mass suicide at Masada.
Most Canadians supported the English despite the letter.
See Joseph Addison which may have been the inspiration for this famous quote: {613374}.
This leading “conductor” of the Underground Railroad carried a loaded pistol which she brandished if escaping slaves would get discouraged and not follow instructions endangering the others or the organization itself. The Underground Railroad referred to the clandestine method that Tubman and other “conductors” would risk their own lives by going down South and guiding escaped slaves through a series of safe houses and locations “stations” until they reached Canada where slaves could not be legally recaptured.
Marcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman statesman, orator, lawyer and philosopher, who served as consul in the year 63 BC. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the Roman equestrian order, and is considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.
