"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Patrick Henry, first Governor of Virginia,1775, at the end of his famous exhortation to the colony of Virginia to join the Revolutionary War.

Can you imagine this speech today? The anonymous TAMU professor speech has me thinking of the degradation in quality and in courage of writing/speaking that plagues many in positions of influence today. I then think how eloquent, persuasive and courageous our forebears were and how I wish I had those same qualities. Thankfully our country is rich with a long history in this subject to learn from.

What great speeches, quotes, and writings have inspired y'all that we must share with others, and above all, future generations?

Yeah, our performative dime-store martyr could learn a thing or two about real courage by picking up a book about our founding fathers.

I like Steve Job's Stanford commencement address.

"Knowledge is good." Emil Faber

In all seriousness though, The Declaration of Independence is one of the most beautifully conceived and written documents in all of human history.
It should be required reading in every grade. It should be memorized and recalled often.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other."

-John Stuart Mills

Hank the Grifter said:

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In all seriousness though, The Declaration of Independence is one of the most beautifully conceived and written documents in all of human history.
It should be required reading in every grade. It should be memorized and recalled often.

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Amen to that.

What is so amazing is how freaking dense it is. If you take out the grievances, the text is less than 700 words. In those 677 words TJ tells the King of England that his appeal to rule is not and cannot be granted to him by God, because God granted men certain rights that he is ignoring. He concludes by appealing TO GOD to judge the hearts of the men that sign the document as to whether their intention is to power or to the good of the rights of individual man.

It is the most amazing document ever written in my opinion.

Another part that I like is TJ talking about how revolution is usually a mistake, too often we throw off the old with not enough reason, and the world is worse because of it. It kind of supports that idea that conservatives don't really support slowly escalating violence in the face of opposition, we just go on with our lives and make concessions until it is time to kill EVERYBODY in charge.(Help a brother out. Post the meme if ya got it)

I still think that MLK's I have a Dream speech is the high-water mark for recent speeches and essays. Meaning, I don't think that there has been anything as profound as that speech since it was delivered in 1963.

what, no Kamala salad or uh uh uh uh uh uh Barry?

Two come to mind.

Algonquin J. Calhoun "Not only do I deny the allegations, I deny the allegator."

Judge Learned Hand "Anyone may arrange his affairs so that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which best pays the treasury. There is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes. Over and over again the Courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everyone does it, rich and poor alike and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands."

Learned Hand has many awesome quotes, more than any other person who has crossed my radar.

"No one in football should be called a genius. A genius is a guy like Norman Einstein"

- Joe Theismann

Ronald Reagan didn't use the flowery language of old, but he wasn't known as The Great Communicator for nothing.

His "Boys of Pointe du Hoc" speech -- written by Peggy Noonan -- is one of my favorites:

"Forty summers have passed since the battle that you fought here. You were young the day you took these cliffs; some of you were hardly more than boys, with the deepest joys of life before you. Yet, you risked everything here.

"Why? Why did you do it? What impelled you to put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk your lives to take these cliffs? What inspired all the men of the armies that met here? We look at you, and somehow we know the answer. It was faith and belief; it was loyalty and love.

"The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next.

"It was the deep knowledge -- and pray God we have not lost it -- that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt."

"Your best is good enough" - flown-the-coop's old business partner

"WHAT IT TAKES TO BE #1" Vince Lombardi coached the Green Bay Packers to victory in the first two NFL Super Bowl's. The current NFL Super Bowl trophy is named the Vince Lombardi trophy. "Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all the time thing. You don't win once in a while; you don't do things right once in a while; you do them right all the time. Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so is losing. "There is no room for second place. There is only one place in my game, and that's first place. I have finished second twice in my time at Green Bay, and I don't ever want to finish second again. There is a second place bowl game, but it is a game for losers played by losers. It is and always has been an American zeal to be first in anything we do, and to win, and to win, and to win. "Every time a football player goes to play his trade he's got to play from th e ground up - from the soles of his feet right up to his head. Every inch of him has to play. Some guys play with their heads. That's O.K. You've got to be smart to be number one in any business. But more importantly, you've got to play with your heart, with every fiber of your body. If you're lucky enough to find a guy with a lot of head an d a lot of heart, he's never going to come off the field second. "Running a football team is no different than running any other kind of organization - an army, a political party or a business. The principles are the same. The object is to win - to beat the other guy. Maybe that sounds hard or cruel. I don't think it is. "It is a reality of life that men are competitive and the most competitive games draw the most competitive men. That's why they are there - to compete. To know the rules and objectives when they get in the game. The object is to win fairly, squarely, by the rules - but to win. "And in truth, I've never known a man worth his salt who in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn't appreciate the grind, the discipline. There is something in good men that really yearns for discipline and the harsh reality of head to head combat. "I don't say these things because I believe in the 'brute' nature of man or that men must be brutalized to be combative. I believe in God, and I believe in human decency. But I firmly believe that any man's finest hour - his greatest fulfillment to all he holds dear - is that moment when he has to work his heart out in a good cause and he's exhausted on the field of battle - victorious."

Holy wall of text, Batman!

Another great Reagan speech:

rocky the dog said:

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Lord help us.

"Fortune favors the bold." - Various Latin authors.

As I've gotten older, I recognize opportunities lost due mostly to fear. Never really a lack of effort in terms of work and devotion to family. Everything is there for the earning. To live the life one desires. "I'm free to be the greatest, I'm alive." - Kendrick Lamar.

The excerpt of TRs "Man in the Arena" (from his 'Citizenship in a Republic' speech) is amongst the best of American speeches IMHO...

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

"What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated." - Thomas Paine, The American Crisis