Martyr Quotes

The ego is often deeply involved in the desire to help others. If you do not want your ego to be involved in this way, do not be available for others unless you really want to be available. Do not feel that you should be available. Don't sacrifice yourself in any way. Don't go against your true feelings. Don't carry the cross for anyone else. Make sure that there's no sense that helping others makes you a better person or that it will gain you easy access into Heaven. Don't be a martyr. ~ Leonard Jacobson

God discovers the martyr and confessor without the trial of flames and tortures, and will hereafter entitle many to the reward of actions which they had never the opportunity of performing. ~ Joseph Addison

Stand like a beaten anvil. ~ Ignatius Bishop And Martyr

We expect to receive again our own bodies, though they be dead and cast into the earth, for we maintain that with God nothing is impossible. ~ Justin Martyr

[A pariah is] something like a martyr with more suffering and less class. ~ Rita Mae Brown

In that we say he [Christ] made whole the lame, the paralytic, and those born blind, we seem to say what is very similar to the deeds said to have been done by Esculapius. ~ Justin Martyr

What do you call the animal that, finding the hunter, offers itself to be eaten? A martyr? A weakling? No, a beast gaining the rare agency to stop. Yes, the period in the sentence - it's what makes us human, Ma, I swear. It lets us stop in order to keep going.
Because submission, I soon learned, was also a kind of power. To be inside of pleasure, Trevor needed me. I had a choice, a craft,
whether he ascends or falls depends on my willingness to make room for him, for you cannot rise without having something to rise
over. ~ Ocean Vuong

This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them. ~ Yasser Arafat

It belongs among the refinements of totalitarian government in our century that they don't permit their opponents to die a great, dramatic martyr's death for their convictions. ~ Hannah Arendt

I wish to be a martyr, and I don't fear death. ~ Muqtada Al Sadr

It is even possible to be a martyr for the Faith and yet not love Jesus Christ. ~ Oswald J. Smith

The martyrs shook the powers of darkness with the irresistible power of weakness. ~ John Milton

To die a martyr is to inject blood into the veins of society ~ Marjane Satrapi

Lenny's head pounds, in time with the truck's jolts, the women's mouths, the metallic hard-on. The shouts of hate, which he knows in his immortal dove soul are really love, love, love. ~ Laura Elizabeth Woollett

A friend asks if I know the difference between a saint and a martyr: A saint is someone who radiates goodness and bears no faults. A martyr is someone who lives with a saint. ~ Michael Novak

This is woman's great benevolence, that she will become a martyr for beauty, so that the world may have pleasure. ~ Robert Wilson Lynd

All the martyrs in the history of the world are not sufficient to establish the correctness of an opinion. Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, - never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. Truth cannot be affected by opinions; it cannot be changed, established, or affected by martyrdom. An error cannot be believed sincerely enough to make it a truth. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Another bottle was brought out and poured into the reservoir. Once more I climbed inside the car and pressed the spurter button. Once more nothing happened--and once more, when we looked inside the reservoir, we found it empty.
"Two litres!" I said. "Where has it all gone?"
They'd vaporized, evaporated. And do you know what? It felt wonderful. Don't ask me why: it just did. It was as though I'd just witnessed a miracle: matter--these two litres of liquid--becoming un-matter--not surplus matter, mess or clutter, but pure, bodiless blueness. Transubstantiated. I looked up at the sky: it was blue and endless. I looked back at the boy. His overalls and face were covered in smears. He'd taken on these smears so that the miracle could happen, like a Christian martyr being flagellated, crucified, scrawled over with stigmata. I felt elated--elated and inspired.
"If only..." I started, but paused.
"What?" he asked.
"If only everything could..."
I trailed off. I knew what I meant. I stood there looking at his grubby face and told him:
"Thank you."
Then I got into the car and turned the ignition key in its slot. The engine caught--and as it did, a torrent of blue liquid burst out of the dashboard and cascaded down. It gushed from the radio, the heating panel, the hazard-lights switch and the speedometer and mileage counter. It gushed all over me: my shirt, my legs, my groin. ~ Tom McCarthy

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets. ~ George Eliot

The Prelude to Tristan and Isolde reminds me of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel. ~ Eduard Hanslick

Whoever writes about his childhood must beware of exaggeration and self-pity. I do not want to claim that I was a martyr or that Crossgates was a sort of Dotheboys Hall. But I should be falsifying my own memories if I did not record that they are largely memories of disgust. ~ George Orwell

Beyond all the other reasons not to do it, free speech assaults always backfire: they transform bigots into martyrs. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Suffering is the ancient law of love; there is no quest without pain; there is no lover who is not also a martyr. ~ Henry Suso

Like any overt school of mysticism, a movement seeking to achieve a vicious goal has to invoke the higher mysteries of an incomprehensible authority. An unread and unreadable book serves this purpose. It does not count on men's intelligence, but on their weaknesses, pretensions and fears. It is not a tool of enlightenment, but of intellectual intimidation. It is not aimed at the reader's understanding, but at his inferiority complex.
An intelligent man will reject such a book with contemptuous indignation, refusing to waste his time on untangling what he perceives to be gibberish - which is part of the book's technique: the man able to refute its arguments will not (unless he has the endurance of an elephant and the patience of a martyr). A young man of average intelligence - particularly a student of philosophy or of political science - under a barrage of authoritative pronouncements acclaiming the book as "scholarly," "significant," "profound," will take the blame for his failure to understand. More often than not, he will assume that the book's theory has been scientifically proved and that he alone is unable to grasp it; anxious, above all, to hide his inability, he will profess agreement, and the less his understanding, the louder his agreement - while the rest of the class are going through the same mental process. Most of them will accept the book's doctrine, reluctantly and uneasily, and lose their intellectual integrity, condemning themselves to a chronic fog of ~ Ayn Rand

Unspoken was the fact that he could just go. He could walk out the door and catch a cab to the airport and still make it to Springfield in time to vote. He could leave his sick daughter and fretting wife halfway across the Pacific and go join his colleagues. It was an option. But I wasn't going to martyr myself by suggesting it. ~ Michelle Obama

Men are prostrated by misfortune; women bend, but do not break, and martyr-like live on. ~ Anna Cora Mowatt

Why be a saint unless you could also be a martyr? ~ Louise Penny

He who leaves his home in search of knowledge walks in the path of God ... and the ink of the scholar is holier than the blood of the martyr; ~ Will Durant

[I]n the years that followed the persecutions, Christianity came to see itself, with great pride, as a persecuted Church. Its greatest heroes were not those who did good deeds but those who died in the most painful way. If you were willing to die an excruciating end in the arena then, whatever your previous holiness or lack thereof, you went straight to heaven: martyrdom wiped out all sins on the point of death.
As well as getting there faster, martyrs enjoyed preferential terms in paradise, getting to wear the much-desired martyr's crown. Tempting celestial terms were offered: it was said that the scripture promised 'multiplication, even to a hundred times, of brothers, children, parents, land and homes'. Precisely how this celestial sum had been calculated is not clear but the general principle was: those who died early, publicly and painfully would be best rewarded. In many of the martyr tales the driving force is less that the Romans want to kill – and more that the Christians want to die. Why wouldn't they? Paradoxically, martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to take it on. One was its egalitarian entry qualifications. As George Bernard Shaw acidly observed over a millennium later, martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.
More than that, in a socially and sexually unequal era it was a way in which women and even slaves might shine. Unlike most positions of power in the highly socially stratified late Roman Empire, this ~ Catherine Nixey

Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

God's command 'Go ye, and preach the gospel to every creature' was the categorical imperative. The question of personal safety was wholly irrelevant. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

Dead anarchists make martyrs, you know, and keep living for centuries. But absent ones can be forgotten. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Not every clocktick needs a martyr. ~ John Woods

No militia or political leader is so powerful - his name never so influential - as when he is dead, enshrined on wall posters and gateposts amid naively painted clusters of tulips and roses, the final artistic accolade of every armed martyr in Lebanon. ~ Robert Fisk

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy, but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all His mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump", and it jumps but I don't love, I'm nothing.
If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.
So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.
(1 Cornithians 13 : 1-7) ~ Anonymous

You have eternity in which to explain and only one night to be a martyr in the amphitheater Get out, darling, and let me see the lions eat you. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Prophet (PBUH) considered the ink of a scholar to be holier than the blood of a martyr. ~ Imran Khan

Compare two people, one of whom has been crippled by an accident, the other by an early environmental history which makes him lazy and, when criticized, mean. Both cause great inconvenience to others, but one dies a martyr, the other a scoundrel. ~ B.F. Skinner

Will Christians turn once again toward an approach that imposes its will on the rest of society? By doing so we would betray our founder, who resisted a temptation to authority over "all the kingdoms of the world," and who died a martyr at the hands of a powerful state. In the words of Miroslav Volf, "Imposition stands starkly at odds with the basic character of the Christian faith, which is at its heart about self-giving - God's self-giving and human self-giving - and not about self-imposing." Even ~ Philip Yancey

These martyrs of patriotism gave their lives for an idea. ~ Schuyler Colfax

[W]hen the martyr's righteous forebrain is exploded by the executioner's bullet and his mind disintegrates, what then? Can we safely assume that all those millions of neural circuits will be reconstituted in an immaterial state, so the conscious mind carries on? ~ E. O. Wilson

Martyrdom, as a rule, establishes the sincerity of the martyr, never the correctness of his thought. Things are true or false in themselves. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

The fanatic is incorruptible: if he kills for an idea, he can just as well get himself killed for one; in either case, tyrant or martyr, he is a monster. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Since the fact that pleasure is not a good thing is admitted from the fact that certain pleasures are evil, by this reason good appears evil, and evil good. And then, if we choose some pleasures and shun others, it is not every pleasure that is a good thing.

Similarly, also, the same rule holds with pains, some of which we endure, and others we shun. But choice and avoidance are exercised according to knowledge; so that it is not pleasure that is the good thing, but knowledge by which we shall choose a pleasure at a certain time, and of a certain kind. Now the martyr chooses the pleasure that exists in prospect through the present pain. If pain is conceived as existing in thirst, and pleasure in drinking, the pain that has preceded becomes the efficient cause of pleasure. But evil cannot be the efficient cause of good. Neither, then, is the one thing nor the other evil. ~ Clement Of Alexandria

Cabel regards Janie and sighs. 'I know you can handle it, Janie. You're such a damn martyr. It's tiring, really, having this same argument with you every time you've got shit happening. Just let it go. I'm not leaving.' He smiles faux-diplomatically. ~ Lisa McMann

The symbolic personage who focuses upon himself a social drama and the martyr may well be born during these days preceding the new moon. They are the incorporation of the need of their collectivity for a new birth of spirit. They call down the creative spirit; they summon forth the future-even if it be through their own death ~ Dane Rudhyar

Life is about discovering things worth dying for. ~ Criss Jami

A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Martyr More,' he says. 'The word is in Rome that he and Fisher are to be made saints. ~ Hilary Mantel

Mothers have martyred themselves in their children's names since the beginning of time. We have lived as if she who disappears the most, loves the most. We have been conditioned to prove our love by slowly ceasing to exist.

What a terrible burden for children to bear - to know that they are the reason their mother stopped living. What a terrible burden for our daughters to bear - to know that if they choose to become mothers, this will be their fate, too. Because if we show them that being a martyr is the highest form of love, that is what they will become. They will feel obligated to love as well as their mothers loved, after all. They will believe they have permission to live only as fully as their mothers allowed themselves to live.

If we keep passing down the legacy of martyrdom to our daughters, with whom does it end? Which woman ever gets to live? And when does the death sentence begin? At the wedding altar? In the delivery room? Whose delivery room - our children's or our own? When we call martyrdom love we teach our children that when love begins, life ends. This is why Jung suggested: There is no greater burden on a child than the unlived life of a parent. ~ Glennon Doyle

Playing the martyr doesn't suit you, Leila.'
'Maybe not, but playing the complete and utter bastard clearly suits you. ~ Lindsay J. Pryor

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions. ~ Hannah More

I don't want a martyr in my bed," he drawled lightly, "so cease pretending that you don't burn for me the way I burn for you. ~ Sarah Morgan

God called Abraham and commanded him to go out from the country where he was living. With this call God has roused us all, and now we have left the state. We have renounced all the things the world offers ... The gods of the nations are demons. ~ Justin Martyr

Where is everybody?"
"Hiding," she said. "Except for Doolittle. He was excused from the chewing-out due to having been kidnapped. He's napping now like he doesn't have a care in the world. I got to hear all sorts of interesting stuff through the door."
"Give."
She shot me a sly smile. "First, I got to listen to Jim's 'it's all my fault; I did it all by myself' speech. Then I got to listen to Derek's 'it's all my fault and I did it all by myself' speech. Then Curran promised that the next person who wanted to be a martyr would get to be one. Then Raphael made a very growling speech about how he was here for a blood debt. It was his right to have restitution for the injury caused to the friend of the boudas; it was in the damn clan charter on such and such page. And if Curran wanted to have an issue with it, they could take it outside. It was terribly dramatic and ridiculous. I loved it."
I could actually picture Curran sitting there, his hand on his forehead above his closed eyes, growling quietly in his throat.
"Then Dali told him that she was sick and tired of being treated like she was made out of glass and she wanted blood and to kick ass."
That would do him in. "So what did he say?"
"He didn't say anything for about a minute and then he chewed them out. He told Derek that he'd been irresponsible with Livie's life, and that if he was going to rescue somebody, the least he could do is to have a workable plan, instead of a poorly thought-ou ~ Ilona Andrews

The identity of the model for the Syra-Cusa has been debated. Terrance Killeen, in an article in the Irish Times, thought her to be Nancy Canard, but Knowlson considered Lucia Joyce more likely.
...

The most profound "clue" is simply the character's name, for Lucia Joyce had been named for Lucia, martyr of Syracuse, patron saint of eyes, light, and lucidity. ~ Carol Loeb Shloss

His head was boiled, impaled upon a pole and raised above London Bridge. So ended the life of Thomas More, one of the few Londoners upon whom sainthood has been conferred and the first English layman to be beatified as a martyr. ~ Peter Ackroyd

Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians. ~ Sarah Moore Grimke

Martyrs, martyrs, martyrs, ... we want a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem. ~ Yasser Arafat

There is nothing glorious in the death of a soldier - it's only a disgusting reminder of our petty and primitive self-centeredness, that keeps separating us from our own kind, simply because of some illusory borders created by illusory governments. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Disagreements over the interpretation of Genesis 1 are not new. Early church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Augustine wrestled with this issue hundreds of years ago. However, the debate within Christian circles over the age of creation has intensified during the last 150 years, largely in response to the Darwinian theory of evolution. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

That night, I asked the Mother of God what was to become of me, a Child of Faith. Then she came to me holding two crowns, one white, the other red. She asked me if I was willing to accept either of these crowns. The white one meant that I should persevere in purity, and the red that I should become a martyr. I said that I would accept them both. ~ Maximilian Kolbe

A mighty fortress is our God, and in Him we are safe for time and for eternity. Shall we murmur if we have less of time than we expected? The less of time, the more of heaven. The briefer life, earlier mortality. ~ Edith E. Searell

Nothing says romance like hobos, martyrs and decapitations. ~ Craig Ferguson

Valys also didn't think I was good enough for him. He made that clear every time he acted like a martyr forced to settle. But what he didn't understand was that if he thought I might not be good enough for him, he definitely wasn't good enough for me. I was well aware of my flaws, but I knew my merits, too; I shouldn't have to be anyone's second-best. Least of all, his. ~ Nenia Campbell

You can either be angry or be a martyr, or you can say, 'You've got lemons? Let's make lemonade. ~ Jennifer Aniston

Ascetics and fakirs come to mitigate human suffering; to heal us and lead us on the path. They put up with criticism; they go through many worldly trials. Some of them have even become martyrs for our sake. But they have done all this with a smile and with gratitude to God. Hence sacrifice is a great virtue. ~ Sadhu Vaswani

Well ... you're a martyr and I'm a patron saint-I can't think of anyone better! ~ Neal Shusterman

Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action; it inspires no enthusiasm; it has no missionaries, no crusades, no martyrs. ~ Thomas B. Macaulay

I swear to God, I will see [the Palestinian state], whether as a martyr or alive. Please, God, give me the honor of becoming a martyr in the fight for Jerusalem. ~ Yasser Arafat

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Happiness consists not of having, but of being; not of possessing, but of enjoying. It is a warm glow of the heart at peace with itself. A martyr at the stake may have happiness that a king on his throne might envy. Man is the creator of his own happiness. It is the aroma of life, lived in harmony with high ideals. For what a man has he may be dependent upon others; what he is rests with him alone. ~ David O. McKay

Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. ~ Iain Pears

The best of men are only men at their very best. Patriarchs, prophets, and apostles, - martyrs, fathers, reformers, puritans, - all are sinners, who need a Savior: holy, useful, honorable in their place - but sinners after all. ~ J.C. Ryle

I'm fighting so I can die a martyr and go to heaven to meet God. Our fight now is against the Americans. ~ Osama Bin Laden

I am startled by how resistant people are to doing anything nice or nurturing for themselves, especially women. They fear being selfish. This intense clinging to a martyr role doesn't serve anyone. It makes you brittle, not resilient. ~ Annette Vaillancourt

Russian people, like their Chinese comrades, are well aware of what is going on. And there are tens of millions of their martyrs who are reminding them what is to be expected from the West. ~ Andre Vltchek

You said how Michelangelo was a manic-depressive who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his painting. Henri Matisse gave up being a lawyer because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann only began composing after his right hand became paralyzed and ended his career as a concert pianist. (...) You talked about Nietzsche and his tertiary syphilis. Mozart and his uremia. Paul Klee and the scleroderma that shrank his joints and muscles to death. Frida Kahlo and the spina bifida that covered her legs with bleeding sores. Lord Byron and his clubfoot. The Bronte sisters and their tuberculosis. Mark Rothko and his suicide. Flannery O'Connor and her lupus. Inspiration needs disease, injury, madness.

"According to Thomas Mann," Peter said, "'Great artists are great invalids. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

While I'm always up for a good scrap, and don't even mind racking up a few bumps and bruises along the way, I'm not really the martyr type. I have sensitive skin and there's nothing that irritates more than nails being driven through it. ~ Tim Marquitz

It is better to say one Our Father fervently and devoutly than a thousand with no devotion and full of distraction. ~ Edmund The Martyr

Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how! ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

My future chef was an oversized, hysterical hedgehog with a martyr complex. ~ Ilona Andrews

[Cannery Row's] inhabitants are, as the man once said, 'whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches,' by which he meant everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, 'saints and angels and martyrs and holy men,' and he would have meant the same thing. ~ John Steinbeck

"Gospel preachers nowadays preach the gospel of the Crucifixion, the Apostles preached the gospel of the Resurrection as well. The Crucifixion loses its meaning without the Resurrection. Without the Resurrection the death of Christ was only the heroic death of a noble martyr; with the Resurrection it is the atoning death the Son of God. It shows that death to be of sufficient value to cover our sins, for it was the sacrifice of the Son of God." ~ R.A. Torrey

I will not go so far as to say, with a living poet, that the world knows nothing of its greatest men; but there are forms of greatness, or at least of excellence, which "die and make no sign"; there are martyrs that miss the palm, but not the stake; heroes without the laurel, and conquerors without the triumph. ~ George Augustus Henry Sala

We made mad love
shadow love
random love
and abandoned love.
Accidentally like a martyr.
The hurt gets worse, and the heart gets harder. ~ Warren Zevon

You think I should be as forgiving as you are? We can't all be saints and martyrs. ~ Stephenie Meyer

We, who are the living, possess the past. Tomorrow is for our martyrs. ~ James L. Farmer, Jr.

The victim to too severe a law is considered as a martyr rather than a criminal. ~ Charles Caleb Colton

By examining the tongue of the patient, physicians find out the diseases of the body, and philosophers the diseases of the mind. ~ Justin Martyr

God has given me the bread of adversity and the water of trouble ... ~ Anne Askew

All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves. ~ Jean Vanier

Do you know the difference between a hero and a martyr?" Quentin shook his head. "A hero is alive," Father Harry said. "A martyr is not. ~ Scott Sigler

I am no martyr upon cross, but I would gladly give my life so that those more deserving may live. ~ Gannicus

The Martyr finds her way to self-knowledge through pain, suffering, and surrender. ~ Paulo Coelho

In the primitive church, it was customary for the Holy Eucharist to be celebrated on the anniversary of the death of a martyr - if possible, on his tomb. ~ Sabine Baring-Gould

It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait. ~ Erica Jong

Be dead in life, and you will not live in death. Let your soul die strenuously, and not live in weakness. Not only those who suffer death for the sake of faith in Christ are martyrs; but also those who die because of their observance of His commandments. ~ Isaac Of Nineveh

It is so little true that martyrs offer any support to the truth of a cause that
I am inclined to deny that any martyr has ever had anything to do with the
truth at all. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche