Quotes & Sayings About Martyrs

We can't do these things in the force, Mr. Holmes," said he. "No wonder you get results that are beyond us. But some of these days you'll go too far, and you'll find yourself and your friend in trouble." "For England, home and beauty - eh, Watson? Martyrs on the altar of our country. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Muqtada belongs to the most famous religious family in Iraq, which is the al-Sadr family. He's really the third in line. [Muqtada's father] drew his power from the first really important al-Sadr, Muhammad Baqir, who was executed by Saddam in 1980, together with his sister. So it's really a family of martyrs, and that's why Muqtada suddenly emerged from nowhere with the fall of Saddam. — Patrick Cockburn

If Jesus' death is different, it is not because he suffered more than other martyrs, either physically or spiritually, nor because his death was lonelier, or more humiliating, or more gruesome (despite Mel Gibson's heroic attempt to render it so). This common idea is quite mistaken. Such considerations are not what make Jesus' death unique. The uniqueness of his death is found in its meaning — James Warren

Or possibly- forgive me- you simply haven't decided what you want from life yet; you haven't found anything that you truly want to hold onto. That changes everything, you know. Students and very young people can rent with no damage to their intellectual freedom, because it puts them under no threat: they have nothing, yet, to lose. Have you noticed how easily the very young die? They make the best martyrs for any cause, the best soldiers, the best suicides. It's because they're held here so lightly: they haven't yet accumulated loves and responsibilities and commitments and all the things that tie us securely to this world. They can let go of it as easily and simply as lifting a finger. But as you get older, you begin to find things that are worth holding onto, forever. All of a sudden you're playing for keeps, as children say, and it changes the very fabric of you. — Tana French

The author of the Gospel of Judas wasn't against martyrdom, and he didn't ever insult the martyrs. He said it's one thing to die for God if you have to do that. But it's another thing to say that's what God wants, that this is a glorification of God. — Elaine Pagels

We may never be martyrs but we can die to self, to sin, to the world, to our plans and ambitions. That is the significance of baptism; we died with Christ and rose to new life. — Vance Havner

I was all for setting up a separate Jewish state in Madagascar or Palestine or someplace, but not to exterminate them. Besides, by exterminating 4 million Jews - they say 5 or 6 million at this trial, but that is all propaganda, I am sure it wasn't more than 4.5 million - they have made martyrs out of those Jews. For example, because of the extermination of these Jews, anti-Semitism has been set back many years in certain foreign countries where it had been making good progress. — Julius Streicher

In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs. — Alexandre Dumas

The dead of an army become automatically heroes like the dead of the Church become Martyrs. — Graham Greene

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

They always think one
commits suicide for a reason. But it is quite possible to commit suicide for two reasons. No, that never occurs to them. So what is the good of dying
intentionally, of sacrificing yourself to the idea you want people to have of you? Once you are dead, they will take advantage of it to attribute idiotic or
vulgar motives to your action. Martyrs,cherami, must choose between being forgotten, mocked, or made use of. As for being understood
never! Besides,
let us not beat about the bush; I love life
that is my real weakness. I love it so much that I am incapable of imagining what is not life. Such avidity has
something plebeian about it, don't you think? — Albert Camus

I'm not afraid to be one of the martyrs people have offered in the struggle for their just demands. — Mir-Hossein Mousavi

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

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

I want men who will believe in Me, even when I do not protect them; I will not open the prison doors where My brethren are locked; I will not stay the murderous Red sickle or the imperial lions of Rome, I will not halt the Red hammer that batters down My tabernacle doors; I want My missionaries and martyrs to love Me in prison and death as I loved them in My own suffering. I never worked any miracles to save Myself! I will work few miracles even for My saints. Begone, Satan! Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God. — Fulton J. Sheen

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs
for their religion
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.
I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.
My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet. — John Keats

Heroes become traitors, traitors become martyrs. — Julian Barnes

A heroic, losing battle! I'm tired of brave men who die. There's nothing pretty about losing. — Warren Eyster

Generally speaking, men are held in great esteem in all parts of the world, so why shouldn't women have their share? Soldiers and war heroes are honored and commemorated, explorers are granted immortal fame, martyrs are revered, but how many people look upon women too as soldiers? — Anne Frank

Its inhabitant 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.
Quoted by Richard Wagamese in Ragged Company — John Steinbeck

The Istiqlal was powerful, which did not at all coincide with his conception of it, nor with the picture the organization painted of itself: a purely defensive group of selfless martyrs who were willing to brave the brutality of the French in order to bring hope to their suffering countrymen. — Paul Bowles

To know how to say what others only know how to think is what makes men poets or sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think makes men martyrs or reformers-- or both. — Elizabeth Charles

The nature of living and loving is the act of reciprocity. As women, we are told that to be the guest is to receive. We are told that to be the host is to give. But what if it is the reverse? What if it is the guest who gives to the host and it is the host who receives from the guest each time she sets her table to welcome and feed those she loves? To be the guest and the host simultaneously is to imagine a mutual exchange of gifts predicated on respect and joy. If we could adopt this truth, perhaps we as women would be less likely to become martyrs. — Terry Tempest Williams

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

This religion so great in miracles, in men holy, pure and irreproachable, in scholars, great witnesses and martyrs, established kings - David - Isaiah, a prince of the blood; so great in knowledge, after displaying all its miracles and all its wisdom, rejects it all and says that it offers neither wisdom nor signs, but only the Cross and folly. — Blaise Pascal

Days will prove that the assassination policy will not finish the Hamas. Hamas leaders wish to be martyrs and are not scared of death. Jihad will continue and the resistance will continue until we have victory, or we will be martyrs. — Ahmed Yassin

Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, "Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine." — Saint Francis De Sales

Every hunchback has his gypsy, each phantom his diva, and flames of passion consume witches and martyrs alike. For any lonely monster, tradition demands that one sacrificial soul seek immolation.
Ashe to ashes.
It remains the ultimate, transformative act of love. — Robert Dunbar

If the generations of mankind suffered and laid down their lives; if martyrs sang in the fire ... for no other end than that a race of creatures of such unexampled insipidity should succeed, and protract ... their contented and inoffensive lives, why, at such a rate ... better ring down the curtain before the last act of the play, so that a business that began so importantly may be saved from so singularly flat a winding up. — William James

Every Age has its own peculiar faith. Any attempt to translate into facts the mission of one Age with the machinery of another, can only end in an indefinite series of abortive efforts. Defeated by the utter want of proportion between the means and the end, such attempts might produce martyrs, but never lead to victory. — Giuseppe Mazzini

For men are made for happiness, and any one who is completely happy has a right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.' All the righteous, all the saints, all the holy martyrs were happy. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation. — John Donne

A vision is something worth living for, and it is something worth dying for. In fact, if it is not worth dying for, it is not worth living for. Brave, godly martyrs throughout history have proven time and again that what we as Christians live for is worth dying for. — Phil Pringle

On some occasions the bodies of the martyrs who had been devoured by wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their stomachs. — Eusebius

The girl did not even know the video would be leaked. Yet it is her willingness to suffer hardship that gave her power. Martyrs, you see, are like bees. Their only power comes in death. How many of you would sacrifice yourself to not kill, but merely hurt your enemy? Not one of you, I wager."

I taste blood in my mouth. I have the knifeRing Dancer gave me. But I breathe the fury down. I am no martyr. I am not vengeance. I am Eo's dream. Still, doing nothing while her murderer gloats feels like a betrayal.

"In time you will receive your Scars from my sword," Augustus closes. "But first you must earn them. — Pierce Brown

Though my conduct on the 10th of August 1792 was the act of my life of which I have most reason to be proud, I will here merely do homage to the worthy martyrs of the national sovereignty and the sworn laws, who, while they supported constitutional royalty, manifested the highest degree of republican virtue. — Marquis De Lafayette

Other men have said, "If I could only live, I would establish and perpetuate an empire." This Christ of Galilee says, "My death shall do it." Other martyrs have died in simple fidelity to truth. This martyr dies that He may make His truth mighty over all hearts. He was a man; but was He only a man? — Herrick Johnson

Scheler writes: It is not the glowing prospect of a happy afterlife, but the experienced happiness of being in a state of grace of God while in throes of agony that released the wonderful powers in the martyrs. — Timothy Keller

Through all history, from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs have fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history, to the end, as long as men believe in God that army must still march and fall, recruited only from the flower of mankind, cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in the confidence of their cause. — George William Curtis

Martyrs have been sincere. And so have tyrants. Wise men have been sincere. And so have fools. — E. Haldeman-Julius

How can I forgive his tormentors?' she bids all the saints, all the martyrs, all the angels and archangels to fall down together with her and plead for the pardon of all without discrimination. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

From my limited and immature child's point of view, Heaven was therefore populated almost exclusively by white people who lived in the United States of America, along with the original disciples of Jesus, an uncalculated number of genuine Christians who had lived throughout the ages, and many but not all of those mentioned in Foxe's Book of Martyrs, which I first read at the age of eight when I found it on my parents' book shelf. — Andrew Himes

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

I've come to believe that God, in His wisdom, allows martyrdom in every generation in part because, without them, the reality of Christ's death for us becomes increasingly blurry ... As we look at [the martyrs], the mist that sometimes enshrouds first-century Golgotha is burned away, and we see ... the Lord nailed to the cross. — Mark Galli

Poetry is a religion without hope, but its martyrs guarantee the eternal truth of its dogma. — Jean Cocteau

What a trajedy to be a martyr for love, yet we worship the characters anyways because they remind us of how we struggled. — Shannon L. Alder

Rare almost as great poets, rarer, perhaps, than veritable saints and martyrs; are consummate men of business. A man, to be excellent in this way, requires a great knowledge of character, with that exquisite tact which feels unerringly the right moment when to act. A discreet rapidity must pervade all the movements of his thought and action. He must be singularly free from vanity, and is generally found to be an enthusiast who has the art to conceal his enthusiasm. — Arthur Helps

It's an insidious idea, this notion that there is life after death. The promise of a reward in the afterlife has been used as an excuse to deny help to the poor, helpless and oppressed; to explain away human misery rather than deal with it. It is an idea that is used to encourage young men and women to kill themselves, and others, so that they can become martyrs. It allows victims of injustice to be told not to worry because justice will be done in the afterlife. It depresses me to think that so many people on the planet live their lives with this notion. Can we truly fulfill our potential as a species as long as we hold on to, and encourage, the perpetuation of the lie of life after death? — Alom Shaha

Whether you go your separate ways or stay together, you will continue to witness--against ignorance, against cruelty, and on behalf of all that is beautiful about this strange and crooked world. — Adam Gidwitz

The protestant martyrs and their monuments testify to the fact that they died, not on account of ecclesial differences, but because the issue was the way of salvation. — Alistair Begg

We must acknowledge that for scores of years the Iraqis have offered martyrs and victims but have not been able to change the regime. — Jalal Talabani

But to declare his wishes only in some unknown corner of Asia, to choose the most double-dealing and the most superstitious of peoples as followers, and the vilest, most ridiculous, and most roguish working man as representative, to muddle up the message so much that it is impossible to comprehend, to teach it only to a tiny number of individuals while leaving everyone else in the dark, and to punish them for remaining there ... Oh, no, Therese, no, no, such atrocities cannot be our guide. I would rather die a thousand times than believe in them. When atheism wants martyrs, let it choose them and my blood is ready. — Marquis De Sade

I am telling you before anything, that the blood of the martyrs and the injured will not go in vain. And I would like to affirm, I will not hesitate to punish those who are responsible fiercely. I will hold those in charge who have violated the rights of our youth with the harshest punishment stipulated in the law. — Hosni Mubarak

Everyone hates a martyr; it's no wonder martyrs were burned at the stake. — E.W. Howe

However, Saudi Arabia quickly discovered what the rest of the world would soon learn. Fundamentalism, in all religious traditions, is impervious to suppression. The more one tries to squelch it, the stronger it becomes. Counter it with cruelty, and it gains adherents. Kill its leaders, and they become martyrs. Respond with despotism, and it becomes the sole voice of opposition. Try to control it, and it will turn against you. Try to appease it, and it will take control. — Reza Aslan

Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for martyrs. But life is not supposed to be about dying well. It is about living well. — Virginia Postrel

Martyrs create faith, faith does not create martyrs. — Miguel De Unamuno

I SIT and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame;
I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men, at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done;
I see, in low life, the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate;
I see the wife misused by her husband - I see the treacherous seducer of young women;
I mark the ranklings of jealousy and unrequited love, attempted to be hid - I see these sights on the earth; 5
I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny - I see martyrs and prisoners;
I observe a famine at sea - I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be kill'd, to preserve the lives of the rest;
I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like;
All these - All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon,
See, hear, and am silent. — Walt Whitman

[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

The saints must be honored as friends of Christ and children and heirs of God. Let us carefully observe the manner of life of all the apostles, martyrs, ascetics, and just men who announced the coming of the Lord. And let us emulate their faith, charity, hope, zeal, life, patience under suffering, and perseverance unto death so that we may also share their crowns of glory. — John Of Damascus

Vice has more martyrs than virtue; and it often happens that men suffer more to be lost than to be saved. — Charles Caleb Colton

Their example gives witness to the fact that baptism commits Christians to participate boldly in the spread of the Kingdom of God, cooperating if necessary with the sacrifice of one's own life ... This martyrdom of ordinary life is a particularly important witness in the secularized societies of our time. It is the peaceful battle of love that all Christians, like Paul, have to fight tirelessly; the race to spread the Gospel that commits us until death. May Mary, Queen of Martyrs and Star of Evangelization, help us and assist us in our daily witness. — Pope Benedict XVI

The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs in History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you or I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph's legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain. — David Ebershoff

What I do know is that Charlie Hebdo cartoonists have been converted into the closest thing the West has to religious-like martyrs in the war against radical Islam, which means that anything short of pure reverence for them generates tribal rage and vilification. — Glenn Greenwald

It is also the irrational instinct of religionism, the vague yearning for something to worship - a reflection or shadow of the true devotional principle - which prompts men to project a subjective image of the lower, personal mind, and to endow it with human attributes, and then to claim to receive "revelations" from it; and this - the image of the Beast, or unspiritual mind, - is their anthropomorphic God, a fabulous monster the worship of which has ever prompted men to fanaticism and persecution, and has inflicted untold misery and dread upon the masses of mankind, as well as physical torture and death in hideous forms upon the many martyrs who have refused to bend the knee to this Gorgonean phantom of the beast-mind of man. Truly, where the worshipers of this image of the Beast predominate, the man whose brow and hand are unbranded by this superstition, who neither thinks nor acts in accordance with it, suffers ostracism if not virulent persecution. — James Morgan Pryse

Liberty is an old fact; it has had its heroes and its martyrs in almost every age. As I look back through the vista of centuries, I can see no end of the ranks of those who have toiled and suffered in its cause, and who wear upon their breasts its stars of the legion of honor. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

Every smallest step in the field of free thinking, and of the personally formed life, has ever been fought for at the cost of spiritual and physical tortures ... change has required its innumerable martyrs ... Nothing has been bought more dearly than that little bit of human reason and sense of freedom that is now the basis of our pride. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Eighty and six years have I served Christ, nor has He ever done me any harm. How, then, could I blaspheme my King who saved Me? ... I bless Thee for deigning me worthy of this day and this hour that I may be among Thy martyrs and drink the cup of my Lord Jesus Christ. — Polycarp

For to articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these, and yet Be thought an idler by the noisy set Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergymen The martyrs call the world. — William Butler Yeats

Assassination makes only martyrs, not converts. — Alphonse De Lamartine

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced. — John B. S. Haldane

The least step forward in the domain of free thought and individual life has been achieved in all ages to the accompaniment of physical and intellectual tortures: and not only the mere step forward, no! but every form of movement and change has rendered necessary innumerable martyrs, throughout the entire course of thousands of years which sought their paths and laid down their foundation-stones, years, however, which we do not think of when we speak about "world-history," that ridiculously small division of mankind's existence. And even in this so-called world-history, which in the main is merely a great deal of noise about the latest novelties, there is no more important theme than the old, old tragedy of the martyrs who tried to move the mire. — Friedrich Nietzsche

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

Christ has come into the world to lay out a garden wherein, amid splendor and abundance, there should thrive the violet of humanity, the myrtle of mortification, the rose of love, the lily of virginal souls, the laurel of confessors and the palm of martyrs. — Fr James Groenings

Only eight months had gone since Henry VIII of England had been suspended in death, there to lie like Mohammed's coffin, hardly in the Church nor out of it, attended by his martyrs and the acidulous fivefold ghosts of his wives. King Francis of France, stranded by his neighbour's death in the midst of a policy so advanced, so brilliant and so intricate that it should at last batter England to the ground, and be damned to the best legs in Europe - Francis, bereft of these sweet pleasures, dwindled and died likewise. — Dorothy Dunnett

St. Triduana devoted herself to God in a solitary life at Rescobie in Angus (now Forfarshire). While dwelling there, a prince of the country having conceived an unlawful passion for her is said to have pursued her with his unwelcome attentions. To rid herself of his importunities, as a legend relates, Triduana bravely plucked out her beautiful eyes, her chief attraction, and sent them to her admirer. Her heroism, it is said, procured for her the power of curing diseases of the eyes. — Michael Barrett

It is not a process of bargaining or give-and-take. The peace process is not about giving concessions. We will not allow any step which would hurt the memories of our martyrs. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Take away the contests of the martyrs, and you have taken away their crowns. — Saint Ambrose

But a show of force by the mightiest nation on earth isn't going to do anything except convince them that their attitudes are worth holding on to. Soon they'll be martyrs and world opinion will think the British Empire nothing but a big bully too fond of waving the big stick. — Susan Howatch

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

The Church is that one wherein the true word of God is preached, which Christ left to His Apostles, which the same Church hath always observed, the doctors preached, and Martyrs and confessors witnessed. This is the Church I believe to be true. — Margaret Clitherow

Islam will be victorious through the blood of martyrs who spread its light in every dark corner of this earth. — Mohammed Bouyeri

For modern man, survival meant mental change. The stubborn died as martyrs; the fanatic and the philosopher perished in the face of sudden change. To survive now one had to be pliable; one had to adjust to new codes and ideals and morals. The mind had to change. — William Mulvihill

Virtue has many preachers, but few martyrs. — Claude Adrien Helvetius

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

Others
as most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders
serve the state chiefly with their heads; and, as they rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the devil, without intending it, as God. A very few
as heroes, patriots, martyrs, reformers in the great sense, and men
serve the state with their consciences also, and so necessarily resist it for the most part ... — Henry David Thoreau

There are those individuals who die for a cause, and we say they have made the ultimate sacrifice. We call them martyrs, and we never doubt their sincerity.
Yet many others search their entire lives for something - or someone - worth dying for and this is very different. These are the lonely and the desperate, fearful that their lives have no meaning. They yearn for the bullet, if only someone else will pull the trigger. — Ilsa J. Bick

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

For some not to be martyrs is martyrdom indeed. — Leo Rosten

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

We are not martyrs or heroes, nor do we wish to be. We do not want to die. We are young, too young, for death. We long to see our two young sons, Michael and Robert, grown to full
manhood...We desire some day to be restored to a society where we can contribute
our energies toward building a world where all shall have peace, bread and roses.
Yes, we wish to live, but in the simple dignity that clothes only those who have been
honest with themselves and their fellow men. — Ethel Rosenberg

Generations can follow this destiny, can stay close to it or depart from it, having thus the capability of giving to their nation a maximum of life and honor or a maximum of dishonor and shame. Sometimes only isolated individuals, abandoned by their generation, can reach this destiny. In that moment, they are the people, they speak in its name. All the millions of dead and of the martyrs of the past are with them, as well as the nation's life of tomorrow. — Corneliu Codreanu

Twenty-two martyrs were recognized, but there were many more, and not only Catholics. There were also Anglicans and some Mohammedans. — Pope Paul VI

Most codes extend their definitions of treason to acts not really against one's country. They do not distinguish between acts against the government, and acts against the oppressions of the government. The latter are virtues, yet have furnished more victims to the executioner than the former. Real treasons are rare; oppressions frequent. The unsuccessful strugglers against tyranny have been the chief martyrs of treason laws in all countries. — Thomas Jefferson

We don't know why God chose to deliver Peter from death and James through death. The text doesn't say. — K. Howard Joslin

It has been said that a man with an argument is no match for a man with an experience. — DC Talk The Voice Of The Martyrs

What good are the works of all men, and all the pains of the martyrs, in comparison with the pains of the Son of God dying on the Cross, so that there was not a drop of His precious blood, but it was all shed for your sins. If you could properly evaluate this incomparable price, you would throw all your ceremonies, vows, works, and merits into the ash can. What awful presumption to imagine that there is any work good enough to pacify God, when to pacify God required the invaluable price of the death and blood of His own and only Son? — Martin Luther

To know how to say what other people only think, is what makes poets and sages; and to dare to say what others only dare to think, makes men martyrs or reformers. — Elizabeth Charles

But whoso is heroic must find crises to try his edge. Human virtue demands her champions and martyrs, and the trial of persecution always proceeds. — Ralph Waldo Emerson