Martyr Quotes

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”
― Oscar Wilde

“The tyrant dies and his rule is over, the martyr dies and his rule begins.”
― Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals of Kierkegaard

“The ink of the scholar is more holy than the blood of the martyr.”
― Anonymous, القرآن الكريم

“It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. Santa Claus makes children good in precisely the same way, and yet no one would argue seriously that the fact proves his existence. The defense of religion is full of such logical imbecilities. The theologians, taking one with another, are adept logicians, but every now and then they have to resort to sophistries so obvious that their whole case takes on an air of the ridiculous. Even the most logical religion starts out with patently false assumptions. It is often argued in support of this or that one that men are so devoted to it that they are willing to die for it. That, of course, is as silly as the Santa Claus proof. Other men are just as devoted to manifestly false religions, and just as willing to die for them. Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.”
― H.L. Mencken, Minority Report

“Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
― Mustafa Kemal Atatürk

“Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned.”
― Giordano Bruno

“Being a martyr is highly overrated. ”
― Patricia Briggs, Dragon Bones

“أي قتيل في سبيل شيئ فوق نفسه فهو شهيد، وقد تتغير قيم الأشياء أما موقف الإنسان منها فهو قيمة لا تتغير.”
― نجيب محفوظ, Sugar Street

“Oh Lion in a peculiar guise,
Sharp Roman road to Paradise,
Come eat me up, I'll pay thy toll
With all my flesh, and keep my soul.”
― Stevie Smith, Selected Poems

“So the question becomes, If you are ever faced with this choice are you willing to die for what you believe in? For that is the only way you will deny him. [...] It's a difficult question and not one you can answer until you're faced with it. Keep in mind that many people have died for their beliefs; it's actually quite common. The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe.”
― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“Adolf Hitler was a Jeanne d'Arc, a saint. He was a martyr.”
― Ezra Pound

“Dreamers like your wife are limited, little Helldiver.” She makes sure I don’t speak.
“Understand that. The only power they have is in death. The harder they die, the louder
their voice, the deeper the echoes. But your wife served her purpose.”
― Pierce Brown, Red Rising

“The fearful danger of the present time is that above the cry for authority, we forget that man stands alone before the ultimate authority, and that anyone who lays violent hands on man here, is infringing eternal laws, and taking upon himself superhuman authority, which will eventually crush him.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Saintliness is very odd. When people encounter it, they often take it for something else, something completely unlike it: indifference, mockery, scheming, coldness, insolence, perhaps even contempt. But they're mistaken, and that makes them furious. They commit an awful crime. This is doubtless the reason why most saints end up as martyrs.”
― Philippe Claudel, Brodeck

“I actually believed that after living as fully as humanly possible, one should then die violently. I expected then as I still expect today”
― Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X

“This guilt is a joke, and it’s exhausting to watch you martyr yourself.”
― Ann Aguirre, Aftermath

“My grandmother always acted in other people's interests, whether they wanted her to or not. If they'd had an Olympics in martyrdom my grandmother would have lost on purpose.”
― Emily Levine

“Ashlei was free to spout off how much she loved her savior because Jesus was not about to rear back and tell her He did not quite feel the same way, that He had died for the sins of the world just because it was fun and did not want things to be too serious. He was only thirty-three, after all, and might want to martyr himself for other people.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, Danse Macabre (Night's Dream, #2)

“Fabric of Stars (The Sonnet)

Rise or fall doesn’t matter,
If you've helped a few people.
Live or die doesn’t matter,
If you've helped a few people.
The point of life is not to live,
Any more than it is to just eat.
The point of life is to lift lives,
In their smile is victory, in tears defeat.
To win over enemies is ridiculously easy,
To win over hearts is the real act of valor.
Muscles wither, clothes get torn to pieces,
Valor and virtue can’t be bound by no graveyard.
Graves are for animals and gutter-crawling worms.
Helpers get forever etched upon the fabric of stars.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Gentalist: There's No Social Work, Only Family Work

“Die and help live.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Either Reformist or Terrorist: If You Are Terror I Am Your Grandfather

“I believe those witnesses who get their throats cut.”
― Blaise Pascal

“The measure of a human is sacrifice, the pleasure of a human is sacrifice, the treasure of a human is sacrifice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination

“Suckers seek motivation, reformers seek self-annihilation.”
― Abhijit Naskar, High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination

“Bullets only kill the body, not the being. The being lives, so long as the cause lives.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Mucize Misafir Merhaba: The Peace Testament

“Death with character has dignity, without it, every breath is burden.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“I have no intention of living just a few decades,
I must live forever or not at all.
And the only way we can live forever,
Is to give up this one life in lifting up the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Amantes Assemble: 100 Sonnets of Servant Sultans

“There is no creation without a broken atom, there is no civilization without a broken human.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo

“Inciting Justice by Stewart Stafford

They stretched his neck out,
On the noose of his ancestors,
Bloodied and tattered, he died,
No invader fealty in martyr veins.

The rope, a country's pendulum,
Faces of stone from onlookers,
A witch-hunt's hysteria spreads,
Mourner's rain fell with temerity.

A snowball in a regime's eyes now,
Is the next day's roaring avalanche,
More then take up arms to fight on,
And raise the oppressor's gauntlet.

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Important men become martyrs, unimportant ones victims. The important men were given televised funerals, public days of mourning. Their deaths inspired the creation of art and the destruction of cities. But unimportant men were killed to make the point that they were unimportant - that they were not even men - and the world continues on.”
― Brit Bennett, The Vanishing Half: A Novel

“MLK was not generally revered during his lifetime;
He was decried and vilified by the mainstream (white) media.
MLK had Cassandra vision,
and was unstoppable even in death.
Less stoppable in death.

For MLK Day today,
please let's read his most challenging proclamations
and let us revere him for them.”
― Shellen Lubin