Willing To Die Quotes

In the end, the judge ruled that no woman has "the right to copulate with a feeling of security that there will be no resulting conception": if a woman isn't willing to die in childbirth, she shouldn't have sex. ~ Jill Lepore

I said
"I love you so much it's killing me"
and you kept saying sorry
so I stopped explaining
for it never made sense to you
what always did to me
to let what you love
kill you
and never regret.
As Romeo is dying Juliet says
"I am willing to die to remain by your side"
and love was never a static place of rest
but the last second of euphoria
while throwing yourself out from a 20 store window
to be able to say
"I flew before I hit the ground",
and it was glorious.
Don't be sorry.
The fall was beautiful, dear.
The crash was beautiful. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

How is it, I wondered, that so many people are willing to die for financial or humanitarian reasons while many Christian groups insist on waiting until it is safe to obey Jesus' command to "Go" into all the world? ~ Nik Ripken

Old men's prayers for death are lying prayers, in which they abuse old age and long extent of life. But when death draws near, not one is willing to die, and age no longer is a burden to them. ~ Euripides

For the Athenians of that day did not look for an orator or a general who would enable them to live in happy servitude; they cared not to live at all, unless they might live in freedom. For every one of them felt that he had come into being, not for his father and his mother alone, but also for his country. And wherein lies the difference? He who thinks he was born for his parents alone awaits the death which destiny assigns him in the course of nature: but he who thinks he was born for his country also will be willing to die, that he may not see her in bondage, and will look upon the outrages and the indignities that he must needs bear in a city that is in bondage as more to be dreaded than death. ~ Demosthenes

Although your decision to die is firm, your decision to become a god has caused you to suffer. You suffered, wondering why you couldn't cure Magdalia's illness, wondering why you weren't capable of saving her. All you wanted to do was protect your only sister, wasn't that it? Not in heaven, but here on Earth. You wanted to make Lady Maldaria happy more than anything else, didn't you? And so now, to avoid the guilt of your loved one dying at your expense, you're willing to die yourself. You've already come to this realization. You know you aren't god. You're just a fragile human being who's capable of feeling pain and having doubts. Go back to being an ordinary man and start all over again for the sake of those who look up to you.
-Kenshin ~ Nobuhiro Watsuki

If the thought police come to Armitage Baptist Church, we will meet them at the door respectfully, unflinchingly, willing to die on this hill, holding a copy of the Sacred Scriptures in one hand and a copy of the U.S. Constitution in the other. ~ Todd Starnes

To live is to be willing to die over and over again. ~ Pema Chodron

You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live. ~ Hermann Hesse

If you haven't found something you're willing to die for, than you don't deserve to live ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

She didn't want any contact with Whitney at all. He was the boogeyman. He'd held absolute authority over her for her entire life. Defying him was difficult. It said a lot that Shylah was willing to die-that she would choose a horrific death rather than go back to him. ~ Christine Feehan

A revolution was never fought, throughout history, for ideals. Revolutions were fought for much more concrete things: food, clothes, housing, and to relieve intolerable oppression. ... I know of no one, outside of Patrick Henry, willing to die for an abstraction. ~ William Powell

How do you know it was him? Did he introduce himself?" He shakes his head. "Nah, but he overheard Marshall introducing me to someone as 'Lily's date.' I thought the look he gave me was going to set me on fire. That's why I came in here. I like you, but I'm not willing to die for you." I ~ Colleen Hoover

I'm willing to die for the woman I love. I just want to take 75 years to do it. ~ Jarod Kintz

I wanted to tell him to wake up before it was too late, but I no longer feel a responsibility to people who are so willing to die having done nothing they wanted to do, having lived for others who never cared any way, muddling along, waiting for a grave to open. My life means infinitely more to me than that. I decided to do what I want, to follow my beliefs no matter what it takes or what I must suffer, lose, abandon. Today I became more of that Xavier persona than ever before. I felt so confident in my self, so self-assured that I didn't care whether those listening to me thought I was crazy, because to me, living in illusions is crazy, staying alive just to eat, screw and work is crazy. I am the sane one, the way I see it now. They asked me what I believed. I said, 'I believe that I can do anything, that I am a product of all that I have thought, that I create my reality and am constantly exploring for ways to make radical changes in my life, by the use of my mind, my behavior -- my actions.' I just gave them a little taste, but they didn't look at me with the look of 'this guy is crazy.' they seemed to be astounded that I would say those things aloud. ~ Mike Darigan

Although many things can be said in criticism of religious faith, there is no discounting its power. Millions among us, even now, are quite willing to die for our unjustified beliefs, and millions more, it seems, are willing to kill for them. ~ Sam Harris

[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

Movies, TV, sports, come and go, but what you stand for is what people remember. Mandela, Martin Luther King, John Kennedy are people who really stood for something and were willing to die for it. You don't see a whole lot of that any more. ~ Christopher Judge

Do you know anyone who would be willing to die to save those five-thousand serial killers?"
"No. Everyone I know is too smart for that!"
"Yet Someone did die to save all of the serial killers, and all of the old women, and all of the soldiers, and all of the babies that the world has ever known. That one is Jesus Christ. He died for you and for me. He died for everyone, because in this world our sin has condemned us to death, and the only way that we can be saved was for someone who was Himself without sin to be willing to die in our place."
Molly was silent. Her bright smile had faded, and she felt tears well up in her eyes. ~ Joyce Swann

Americans should never forget that the founders of this country, like all who have served her in uniform, were willing to die defending everything its flag represents. It's so easy to get lost in the controversies that divide us. But I believe, no matter what our race, religion, or beliefs may be, that Americans should be able to come together to keep our country rooted in what made it great: a land of opportunity, a place where people can make something of themselves, limited only by their imaginations and willingness to work hard; a country where we can all come together, whatever our differences, for the greater good; a country of hands up, not handouts, where we try to live by the meaning of the words "Love thy neighbor," and put as much effort into helping others as we do helping ourselves. By doing those things, we can continue to live up to the idea of "One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. ~ Marcus Luttrell

The ambition to establish a reputation worthy of the esteem of his fellows so that his story could be told after his death had carried Lincoln through his bleak childhood, his laborious efforts to educate himself, his string of political failures, and a depression so profound that he declared himself more than willing to die, except that he had done nothing to make any human being remember that he had lived. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Maybe you didn't understand American foreign policy or why we were at war. Maybe you never will. But it doesn't matter. You held up your hand and said, "I'm willing to die for these worthless civilians. ~ Phil Klay

The Republic is six months old, and it's flying apart. It has no cohesive force - only a monarchy has that. Surely you can see? We need the monarchy to pull the country together - then we can win the war."
Danton shook his head.
"Winners make money," Dumouriez said. "I thought you went where the pickings were richest?"
"I shall maintain the Republic," Danton said.
"Why?"
"Because it is the only honest thing there is."
"Honest? With your people in it?"
"It may be that all its parts are corrupted, vicious, but take it altogether, yes, the Republic is an honest endeavor. Yes, it has me, it has Fabre, it has Hebert - but it also has Camille. Camille would have died for it in '89."
"In '89, Camille had no stake in life. Ask him now - now he's got money and power, now he's famous. Ask him now if he's willing to die."
"It has Robespierre."
"Oh yes - Robespierre would die to get away from the carpenter's daughter, I don't doubt. ~ Hilary Mantel

If you're not at least willing to die for something- something that really matters- in the end, you die for nothing. ~ Andrew Klavan

Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, godlike feature that only the special among us will ever taste, it's something that truly exists in all of us. ~ Will Smith

Be as willing to die to sin as Christ was to die for sin, and as willing to live to Him as He was to die for you. Be as willing to be His, to serve Him, as that He should be yours to save you. Take Him on His own terms, give up yourself wholly to Him. ~ Ralph Venning

Those willing to die will live, and those willing to live will die. ~ Yi Sun-sin

But when I was seven or eight years old, the film that changed my life was Titanic. It amazed me that it was a story that took place a hundred years ago. Those people living in 1912 had better technology than most North Koreans! But mostly I couldn't believe how someone could make a movie out of such a shameful love story. In North Korea, the filmmakers would have been executed. No real human stories were allowed, nothing but propaganda about the Leader. But in Titanic, the characters talked about love and humanity. I was amazed that Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet were willing to die for love, not just for the regime, as we were. The idea that people could choose their own destinies fascinated me. This pirated Hollywood movie gave me my first small taste of freedom. ~ Yeonmi Park

You make your whole existence dependant on another human being you're asking for a world of trouble. Think of every tragic love story ever written. And I didn't want to play Juliet to anybody's Romeo, not if I could help it. Even if the only candidate available was willing to die for me and sitting right beside me holding my hand and looking deeply into my eyes with the not-so-gah-now eyes the colour of melted chocolate. Plus being practically naked under those covers and possession the body of a Hollister dude ... but I'm not getting into all that. ~ Rick Yancey

A man must be willing to die for ... ~ Jesse Jackson

Some men are willing to die for their faith, but they are not willing to fully live for it. Christ both lived and died for us. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Its our actions that define us. What we choose. What we resist. What we're willing to die for. ~ Karen Marie Moning

So, what now? We're friends?
Yeah. If friends could be in love, but not together. In sync, but out of touch. Willing to die for each other, but unable to trust. ~ Rachel Vincent

Loving and perishing: it's been a rhyme all these eternities. The will to love: that is, also being willing to die. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Rather than street crime, I argue that a better analogy is to voting. Having a high opportunity cost of time - resulting, say, from a high-paying job and a good education - should discourage people from voting, yet it is precisely those with a high opportunity cost of time who tend to vote. Why? Because they care about influencing the outcome and consider themselves sufficiently well informed to want to express their opinions. Terrorists also care about influencing political outcomes. Instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, to understand what makes a terrorist we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose their extremist vision by violent means? Most terrorists are not so desperately poor that they have nothing to live for. Instead they are people who care so deeply and fervently about a cause that they are willing to die for it. ~ Alan B. Krueger

The advantages of a propaganda that constantly "adds the power of organization" to the feeble and unreliable voice of argument, and thereby realizes, so to speak, on the spur of the moment, whatever it says, are obvious beyond demonstration. Foolproof against arguments based on a reality which the movements promised to change, against a counterpropaganda disqualified by the mere fact that it belongs to or defends a world which the shiftless masses cannot and will not accept, it can be disproved only by another, a stronger or better, reality.

It is in the moment of defeat that the inherent weakness of totalitarian propaganda becomes visible. Without the force of the movement, its members cease at once to believe in the dogma for which yesterday they still were ready to sacrifice their lives. The moment the movement, that is, the fictitious world which sheltered them, is destroyed, the masses revert to their old status of isolated individuals who either happily accept a new function in a changed world or sink back into their old desperate superfluousness. The members of totalitarian movements, utterly fanatical as long as the movement exists, will not follow the example of religious fanatics and die the death of martyrs (even though they were only too willing to die the death of robots). Rather they will quietly give up the movement as a bad bet and look around for another promising fiction or wait until the former fiction regains enough strength to establish another ~ Hannah Arendt

If you have not discovered something you are willing to die for, then you are not fit to live. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I was willing to die fighting, but it was senseless for all these men to go down with me. Perhaps my blood was tainted, despite my power over the Pattern. A true prince of Amber should have had no such qualms. I decided then that my centuries on the Shadow Earth had changed me, softened me perhaps, had done something to me which made me unlike my brothers. ~ Roger Zelazny

You have to start living your life for the future that you're alive for, not the past the you're willing to die for. ~ Harper Sloan

To hold on, you have to find something that you're willing to die for. ~ Rick Yancey

Of course! When it's a question of anything stupid and pathetic and devoid of humor or wit,
you're the man, you tragedian. Well, I am not. I don't care a fig for all your romantics of
atonement. You wanted to be executed and to have your head chopped off, you lunatic! For this
imbecile ideal you would suffer death ten times over. You are willing to die, you coward, but not
to live. The devil, but you shall live! It would serve you right if you were condemned to the
severest of penalties. ~ Hermann Hesse

And so, this was the final major theme we found: that when a group of people, no matter how small or ordinary, was willing to die out to their selfish desires, the life which came out of that death was immeasurable, and continued to affect lives far into the future. ~ Peter Marshall

I believe in love at first sight, and I believe that's what we've got going here. I was willing to die for you. I'm sure as hell not going to pass up a chance to live with you. ~ Tara Janzen

Enlightenment is a paradoxical phenomenon. You need to be commited to become enlightenment, and to do whatever is necessary to make it happen. But at the same time you can not force enlightenment to happen by sheer will. It is like the situation with happiness: you can not force happiness to happen, but you can create the right circumstances for happiness to
happen.
You need to be willing to die, to let go of your limited sense of "I", to achieve enlightenment. I can feel a deepening thirst to die, to dissolve into the silence, in my heart and being. ~ Swami Dhyan Giten

Today's world is flooded with participation trophies. In an attempt to promote equality we have robbed our youth of the most growth-inducing aspect of competition, failing. If you want to be resurrected, you have to first be crucified. Everybody wants to be reborn, but no one is willing to die. Losing, in the context of whatever arena it may be, is a microcosmic death. When we learn from our failures and grow because of them, we are reborn. ~ Chris Matakas

Evie," she asked, "how do you know if you love someone?"
Evie considered the question as they passed a low circular boundary hedge containing an explosion of multi-colored primulas. "I'm sure this is when I'm s-supposed to say something wise and helpful," she said with a self-deprecating shrug. "But my situation was different from yours. St. Vincent and I didn't expect to fall in love. It caught us both unaware."
"Yes, but how did you know?"
"It was the moment I realized he was willing to die for me. I don't think anyone, including St. Vincent, believed he was capable of self-sacrifice. It taught me that you can assume you know a person quite well - but that person can s-surprise you. Everything seemed to change from one moment to the next - suddenly he became the most important thing in the world to me. No, not important ... necessary. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone ~ Pablo Picasso

How much are you worth? Jesus says, with his arms stretched out on the cross, "I'm willing to die for you, because you mean this much to me." ~ Rick Warren

I figured I had kept her from being too depressed after fucking
it's hard for a girl with any force in her and any brains to accept the whole thing of fucking, of being fucked without trying to turn it on its end, so that she does some fucking, or some fucking up; I mean, the mere power of arousing the man so he wants to fuck isn't enough; she wants him to be willing to die in order to fuck. There's a kind of strain or intensity women are bred for, as beasts, for childbearing when childbearing might kill them, and child rearing when the child might die at any moment: it's in women to live under that danger, with that risk, that close to tragedy, with that constant taut or casual courage. They need death and nobility near. To be fucked when there's no drama inherent in it, when you're not going to rise to a level of nobility and courage forever denied the male, is to be cut off from what is inherently female, bestially speaking. ~ Harold Brodkey

I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community-and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign. It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion ... Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined ... Finally, [the nation] is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately, it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willing to die for such limited imaginings. ~ Benedict Anderson

Mormons can testify whether I am willing to lay down my life for a Mormon; If it has been demonstrated that I have been willing to die for a Mormon I am bold to declare before heaven that I am just as ready to die for a Presbyterian, a baptist or any other denomination. ~ Joseph Smith Jr.

Like the water of a deep stream, love is always too much. We did not make it. Though we drink till we burst, we cannot have it all, or want it all. In its abundance it survives our thirst. In the evening we come down to the shore to drink our fill, and sleep, while it flows through the regions of the dark. It does not hold us, except we keep returning to its rich waters thirsty. We enter, willing to die, into the commonwealth of its joy. ~ Wendell Berry

Willing to die you give up your will; keep still, until moved by what moves all else, you move. ~ Wendell Berry

It's in that place that we're reminded that true life comes when we're willing to admit that we've reached the end of ourselves, we've given up, we've let go, we're willing to die to all of our desires to figure it out and be in control. We lose our life, only to find it. ~ Rob Bell

I think that the power over death and life is the greatest strength that any person can have. It trumps sex and wealth. If I'm willing to die no one can master me. ~ Walter Mosley

You know you love something if you're willing to die for it, and you know it means nothing if you walk away from that which is dying. ~ Anthony Liccione

Earthly love ... is temporal and slight so that is has to be given again and again in order for us to feel any sense of security; but God's love, God's voice and presence, would instill our souls with such affirmation we would need nothing more and would cause us to love other people so much we would be willing to die for them. ~ Donald Miller

A man who has nothing he is willing to die for has nothing worth living for ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

I had it all wrong," he says. "Before I found you, I thought the only way to hold on was to find something to live for. It isn't. To hold on, you have to find something you're willing to die for. ~ Rick Yancey

If what you do is being threatened as a profession, that could be scary. But that's the same reason why I walked out on stage many times after receiving death threats. I couldn't live without doing what I wanted to do. So at the same time I have to be willing to die for it. ~ Marilyn Manson

Very well," she said after a moment. "Here is how I see that loyalty and love are the same: You would lay down your life for someone for reasons of both love and loyalty. But loyalty implies dependence, doesn't it? For instance, dogs are loyal. It also implies indebtedness. For instance, servants are loyal."
"It also implies integrity. And honor. And - "
"Steadfastness," she completed, with only a hint of irony.
"So you see them as absolutes then, Miss Redmond? Love means to be willing to die for someone, and loyalty perhaps the same?"
"How can they be otherwise? ~ Julie Anne Long

When they'd gone the old man turned around to watch the sun's slow descent. The Boat of Millions of Years, he thought; the boat of the dying sungod Ra, tacking down the western sky to the source of the dark river that runs through the underworld from west to east, through the twelve hours of the night, at the far eastern end of which the boat will tomorrow reappear, bearing a once again youthful, newly reignited sun.
Or, he thought bitterly, removed from us by a distance the universe shouldn't even be able to encompass, it's a vast motionless globe of burning gas, around which this little ball of a planet rolls like a pellet of dung propelled by a kephera beetle.
Take your pick, he told himself as he started slowly down the hill ... But be willing to die for your choice. ~ Tim Powers

Make sure that what you are living for is what you are willing to die for. ~ Charles F. Stanley

Killing for ideas is the most dangerous form of killing at all. Being willing to die for your ideas rather than your country is another concept, but dying for an idea, like in religion, is absurd. ~ Mick Jagger

She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately
a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks
a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. ~ Henry Miller

Married men live longer than single men. But married men are a lot more willing to die. ~ Johnny Carson

A city man is a home anywhere, for all big cities are much alike. But a country man has a place where he belongs, where he always returns, and where, when the time comes, he is willing to die. ~ Edward Abbey

Others have suggested that the disciples deliberately lied, thus spreading the story that Jesus had risen from the dead in order to keep their movement going. But this becomes preposterous when we remember that the disciples were willing to die rather than to deny that Jesus rose from the dead. Some say that they just cannot believe "the story of the miracle." But the trouble is, that they must then decide what to do with the "miracle of the story." That is, they are left with the insoluble problem of how such a sober story could ever have been written. The story is either true, or else it is the product of insanity or wickedness. And, after nearly two thousand years, no one has been able to show that it comes from either insane or wicked men. No satisfactory explanation has come forth except to believe that it actually did happen. ~ G.I. Williamson

In my less charitable moments I might call him a coward, but I get it. I'd opt out, too, if I could. I just don't feel like I can. There's still too much I'm willing to die for. ~ Tahereh Mafi

You don't have to be a pastor to let your passion be felt and your voice heard. You just need to be willing to be the first one willing to die. ~ Eric Ludy

To win, you have to be willing to die. ~ Ronda Rousey

If she'd thought cutting ties with Galen would help her get on with her life, Harper knew that after today, she'd never, ever get him out of her system. He was a drug she couldn't kick, an addiction she was willing to die for. And as he drew her clit into his mouth and sucked gently, Harper reasoned that there were much, much worse ways to die. ~ Mandy Baxter

Until we are willing to die, we have no right to live. ~ Jack Hyles

You can give me anything?" he asked.
"Anything!" Lucifer cried.
"Anything I ask for?"
"Anything you desire!"
"Can you give me love?" Ammon asked him. "Can you take away my sins? Can you give me salvation? Are you willing to die for me? Can you give me the love of my family and the love of my friends? Can you promise me anything besides what you have shown me here? Can you give me the love of my Father, or my older brother, Jehovah, the Christ? ~ Chris Stewart

We talk and tease and bargain with the main dish. Maniacal laughter echoes in the marble halls, sweet to my ears.
There's movement at the banquet hall's entrance. A child with my eyes tumbles in - all wings and blue hair and giggling innocence. Holding his hand is Morpheus, wearing a ruby crown.
The Red King. My king.
The bubble bursts and takes the vision with it, leaving nothing but the sound of my gasp and wisps of gray smoke behind.
"You see," Ivory says, "once Morpheus knew that one day you would belong to him and he to you, that you would share a child, he was no longer willing to die to save Wonderland. But he's insecure about your feelings for him. He feared you would refuse to help. So he made a new plan, however flawed it was." ~ A.G. Howard

I'm willing to die, but ... not of boredom. ~ Daria Halprin

I play guys who are willing to go really far. If the dung really hits the fan, I don't know if I could walk the talk. But anyone who isn't willing to die for his convictions isn't worth living. My characters, no matter how demented they are, they have their convictions. ~ Elias Koteas

If a man is to be a man, a free spirit unto himself, he must arm himself not only with weapons but with ideals and concepts he is willing to die for. ~ William Powell

She was still looking down and she saw tears spill from her eyes and fall toward Damon's outstretched arms. Elena didn't know why she was crying, but part of it was sorrow for her ever having doubted him.
Because Damon wasn't just on her side. Unless she was wrong, he was willing to die for her - was courting death for her. ~ L.J.Smith

Ignore what a man is willing to fight for, watch closely what he's willing to die for. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

The mark of a mature man is not willing to die for a worthy cause, rather it's willing to live for one ~ J.D. Salinger

We have not thoroughly assessed the bodies snatched from dirt and sand to be chained in a cell. We have not reckoned with the horrendous, violent mass kidnapping that we call the Middle Passage.

We have not been honest about all of America's complicity - about the wealth the South earned on the backs of the enslaved, or the wealth the North gained through the production of enslaved hands. We have not fully understood the status symbol that owning bodies offered. We have not confronted the humanity, the emotions, the heartbeats of the multiple generations who were born into slavery and died in it, who never tasted freedom on America's land.

The same goes for the Civil War. We have refused to honestly confront the fact that so many were willing to die in order to hold the freedom of others in their hands. We have refused to acknowledge slavery's role at all, preferring to boil things down to the far more palatable "state's rights." We have not confessed that the end of slavery was so bitterly resented, the rise of Jim Crow became inevitable - and with it, a belief in Black inferiority that lives on in hearts and minds today.

We have painted the hundred-year history of Jim Crow as little more than mean signage and the inconvenience that white people and Black people could not drink from the same fountain. But those signs weren't just "mean". They were perpetual reminders of the swift humiliation and brutal violence that could be suffered at any m ~ Austin Channing Brown

It's a basic truth of the human condition that everybody lies. The only variable is about what. The weird thing about telling someone they're dying is it tends to focus their priorities. You find out what matters to them. What they're willing to die for. What they're willing to lie for. ~ David Shore

-I am willing to die for my own clan.-Fireheart ~ Erin Hunter

I've never feared death before. I've always been willing to die. Sometimes I even welcomed it, wishing for this all to be over and finally find peace in an endless sleep. But when I look at you, I see possibility, and I start to do what I know better than to do - I wonder ~ Emalynne Wilder

At points in our lives, we have to choose the hills we're willing to die on. ~ Christa Allan

Power was the ability to reward and punish. Henry could reward with money and drugs. He could punish by withholding money and drugs. A nice combination. Ultimately, however, Henry wielded the power of punishment held only by a self-selected few. He was willing to murder. China knew that if a man could kill someone, everyone knew that he could kill anyone. The only way to stand up to that kind of power was to be willing to die. ~ Karl Marlantes

Our condition is most noble, being so beloved of the Most High God that He was willing to die for our sake- which He would not have done if man had not been a most noble creature and of great worth. ~ Angela Of Foligno

Terrorism is a real despair. These are people for whom life has been so negative that they're willing to die if they can take down some of their enemies. ~ John Shelby Spong

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live. ~ Douglas MacArthur

To erroneously assert that the unclaimed Shunemite does not treasure the opportunity misses the entire point of this superlative song. She wants to leave with Solomon. This earthly Shunemite would be willing to die to be with Solomon
but until she develops skills of value to his kingdom
she will remain unclaimed.
pg 10 ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

The important thing to bear in mind is that you must face your willingness to die to yourself before you choose to walk down the aisle. Is this person the one for whom you are willing to die daily? Is this person to whom you say, "I do" also the one for whom you are willing to say, "No, I don't" to everybody else? Be assured that marriage will cost you everything. ~ Ravi Zacharias

Gentleman, God created you with the heart of a warrior. Until there's something you're willing to die for, you can't truly live. ~ Craig Groeschel

Someone is pounding on a door within you and hoping for an answer. They want to tell us the secret tale of ourselves. The stories we've never told.

Some African tribes believe if you were to tell someone your entire story the audience would actually become you. From then on, the only life the teller would have would be in and through the listener. Some believe this is the relationship between Jesus and his disciples.

How I wished for my story to be blemish free. How I wished to be a good-natured soul giving back to the world, regardless of how broken I was. In the end, it's those things we are willing to die to change that sculpt our story.

Some people open the floodgates of their minds and hearts so memories burst forth like water through a breached dam. Pieces of our lives can be found among the floating wreckage, and somewhere, the presence of God hovers over the surface of the deep.

Inside, I am treading, biding my time, waiting for the magic I thought I owned as a child. Many seek this enchantment. I sought my wife, daughter and the power to conjure hope. ~ Christopher Hawke

First commandment: there ain't no such thing as "one true way" and the way you find is only good for you, not anybody else, because your interpretation of what you see and feel and understand as the truth is never going to be the same as anyone else's.
Second commandment: the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself.
Third commandment: leave the world better than you found it.
Fourth commandment: if it isn't true, going to do some good, or spread a little love around, don't say it, do it, or think it.
Fifth commandment: there are only three things worth living for; love in all it's manifestations, freedom, and the chance to keep humanity going a little while longer. They're the same things worth dying for. And if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race. ~ Mercedes Lackey

You are guaranteed failure if you accept it. Victory is almost in your hands if you are willing to die for it. Success is already yours if God has ordained it. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

If you are willing to kill for your beliefs, you are a murderer; if you are willing to die for your beliefs, you are a martyr. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

And so, here at the end of days, you are as you've always been. Willing to die. Not willing to quit ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

A fanatic who is willing to die for his cause thinks nothing of killing you for his cause. ~ Ben Bova

I used to read in books how our fathers persecuted mankind. But I never appreciated it. I did not really appreciate the infamies that have been committed in the name of religion, until I saw the iron arguments that Christians used. I saw the Thumbscrew - two little pieces of iron, armed on the inner surfaces with protuberances, to prevent their slipping; through each end a screw uniting the two pieces. And when some man denied the efficacy of baptism, or may be said, 'I do not believe that a fish ever swallowed a man to keep him from drowning,' then they put his thumb between these pieces of iron and in the name of love and universal forgiveness, began to screw these pieces together. When this was done most men said, 'I will recant.' Probably I should have done the same. Probably I would have said: 'Stop; I will admit anything that you wish; I will admit that there is one god or a million, one hell or a billion; suit yourselves; but stop.'

But there was now and then a man who would not swerve the breadth of a hair. There was now and then some sublime heart, willing to die for an intellectual conviction. Had it not been for such men, we would be savages to-night. Had it not been for a few brave, heroic souls in every age, we would have been cannibals, with pictures of wild beasts tattooed upon our flesh, dancing around some dried snake fetich.

Let us thank every good and noble man who stood so grandly, so proudly, in spite of opposition, of hatred and dea ~ Robert G. Ingersoll