Quotations

“There has now for diverse Years, a design been carried on, to change the Lawfull Government of England into an Absolute Tyranny, and to convert the established Protestant Religion into down-right Popery.”

Warning against what Marvell saw as threats of absolutism and religious coercion · Pamphlet, An Account of the Growth of Popery and Arbitrary Government

Andrew Marvell

“God forbid that any bloody struggle should come to darken our picturesque mountains with mourning; let every good Spaniard refrain from taking up arms, whether in the Carlist or the republican cause.”

Original: No permita Dios que ninguna lucha sangrienta venga a enlutar nuestras pintorescas montañas, absténganse todo buen español de pronunciamiento sea en sentido carlista o republicano. — Written by a former Carlist soldier, the letter shows a man wearied by faction and longing for peace among his own people · Letter to the Urretxu town council, 1 September 1869 (Spanish)

José María Iparraguirre

“Though born and bred in the Republican camp, I cannot bear their betrayal of Mr. Wilson and their rejection of the League of Nations, our one hope of peace on earth.”

Putting the hope of international peace above longstanding party loyalty · Political statement, 1924

Katharine Lee Bates

“It is one of my great aims to inform and persuade people on that subject and I should reproach myself if I neglected this occasion.”

Showing his sense of responsibility to explain India's circumstances to an English audience · Letter to Laurence Binyon, Oxford period

Manmohan Ghose

“If you were to go to India and look with an unprejudiced eye, you would see that the system of Government is rotten to the core.”

A strikingly early expression of his opposition to injustice under British rule in India · Letter to Laurence Binyon, October 1887

Manmohan Ghose

“Moral of the whole affair: our optimistic wishes and hopes are still decidedly premature, if we are ever to see them fulfilled at all. I am thoroughly weary of Germany.”

Original: Moral des Ganzen: unsere optimistischen Wünsche u. Hoffnungen sind noch reichlich verfrüht, wenn wir überhaupt jemals ihre Erfüllung erleben sollten. Ich bin reichlich deutschlandmüde. — A candid expression of disillusionment shortly before the outbreak of the First World War · Letter to René Schickele, July 1914 (German)

Ernst Stadler