A Quote by Ernest Renan
The greatest men of a nation are those it puts to death.
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We are not a nation that says, 'Don’t ask, don’t tell.' We are a nation that says, 'Out of many, we are one.' We are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot. We are a nation that believes that all men and women are created equal. Those are the ideals that generations have fought for. Those are the ideals that we upheld today.
No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew it was the greatest of evils.
Nationality is the aggregated individuality of the greatest men of the nation.
America is the greatest nation ever founded. The ideals are the greatest ever espoused in human history, and we just need the country to live up to them. But what I worry about are the 1 million black men in the prison system.
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?
Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death--that is, they attempt suicide--twice as often as men, though men are more "successful" because they use surer weapons, like guns.
In current times, our moral uproar is best reserved for those who aspire to stone men or women to death, not those who consensually watch women - or men, for that matter - dance.
The best soldiers are not warlike; the best fighters do not lose their temper. The greatest conquerors are those who overcome their enemies without strife. The greatest directors of men are those who yield place to others. This is called the Virtue of not striving, the capacity for directing mankind; this is being the compeer of Heaven. It was the highest goal of the ancients.
Broadly speaking, human beings may be divided into three classes: those who are billed to death, those who are worried to death, and those who are bored to death.
History calls those men the greatest who have ennobled themselves by working for the common good; experience acclaims as happiest the man who has made the greatest number of people happy.
That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.
Of this I am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par with the shortest... And of what consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a second time? They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them.
Men are not therefore put to death, or punished for that their theft proceedeth from election; but because it was noxious and contrary to men's preservation, and the punishment conducing to the preservation of the rest, inasmuch as to punish those that do voluntary hurt, and none else, frameth and maketh men's wills such as men would have them.
The greatest asset of any nation is the spirit of its people, and the greatest danger that can menace any nation is the breakdown of that spirit-the will to win and the courage to work.
It is with men as with other things. The mullein needs only a year, but the oak a century, and the greatest men are those who have continued to grow as long as they have lived.
Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.
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