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Fighting

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One doesn't fight only when one is optimistic. One fights because it is the right thing to do. ~ Dennis Prager
If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning… ~ Frederick Douglass
When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body! ~ Bruce Lee
Truth is the light,
So you never give up the fight. ~ Bob Marley

Combat or fighting is a purposeful violent conflict meant to weaken, or establish dominance over the opposition, or to kill the opposition, or drive the opposition away from a location where it is not wanted or needed.

Quotes

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  • We're gonna fight
    We know who's right
    (Not them)
    Time to unite
    We're having our say
    (Me and you)
    Oppressed us long
    They've done us wrong
    (Dumb fools)
    You stand up tall
    The futures ours
    (No rules)
    Me and you
    We're gonna fight the narrow minds
    Make are own rules
    Live your life at all
  • Fifty-four forty (54° 40´ N.), or fight.
  • The Minstrel Boy will return we pray
    When we hear the news we all will cheer it,
    The minstrel boy will return one day,
    Torn perhaps in body, not in spirit.
    Then may he play on his harp in peace,
    In a world such as heaven intended,
    For all the bitterness of man must cease,
    And ev'ry battle must be ended.
  • Struggle is very tough and when you cross that line, you risk going to jail, getting seriously hurt, killed, and watching your comrades getting seriously hurt and killed. That is not a pretty picture, but that is what happens when you fight an entrenched oppressor. We are struggling and will make it rough for them, but struggle is also going to be rough for us too. This is why we have to find ways to love and support each other through tough times.
  • If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation … an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power.
    • Premier H. H. Asquith, to House of Commons, Declaration of War with Germany, August 4, 1914.
  • BATTLE, n. A method of untying with the teeth of a political knot that would not yield to the tongue.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • As long as women suffer as they do I will fight! As long as little children hungering go, as they now do, I will fight. As long as men go to the prisons, in and out, in and out, as they now do, I will fight. All who are not on the ship are in the sea. Every Soldier must do his utmost to save them.
    • An unspecified platform appeal, as quoted in The Musical Salvationist (September 1927). Several variants of this exist, some of them credited to his speech at the Royal Albert Hall on May 9, 1912, as researched "While Women Weep - I'll Fight" by Gordon Taylor at the International Heritage Centre (19 July 1996)
    • Variants:
    • While women weep as they do now, I'll fight. While little children go hungry as they do now, I'll fight,. while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight.
      • As quoted in "To the General" by Charles Coller, in All the World (April 1906), p. 169
    • While women weep, as they do now, I'll fight; while little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight; while men go to prison, in and out, in and out, as they do now, I'll fight; while there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, while there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight — I'll fight to the very end!
      • As quoted in Booth the Beloved (1949) by J. Evan Smith, pp. 122-124; this version seems to have become the basis of the most quoted variants.
    • While Women weep as they do now, I'll fight. While little children go hungry, as they do now, I'll fight. While men go to prison, in and out, in and out, I'll fight. While there is a drunkard left, while there is a poor lost girl upon the streets, While there remains one dark soul without the light of God, I'll fight. I'll fight to the very end!
      • William Booth as quoted in What price the poor? William Booth, Karl Marx and the London Residuum (2005) by Ann M. Woodall, p. 218
  • Without excuse and self-consideration of health or limb or life, true soldiers fight, live to fight, love the thickest of the fight, and die in the midst of it.
    • William Booth as quoted in Revolution (2005) by Stephen Court & Aaron White .
  • We must fight those who are committed to destruction, without replicating their destructiveness. Understanding how to fight in this way is the task and the bind of a nonviolent ethics and politics.
  • For those that fly may fight again,
    Which he can never do that's slain.
  • For he who fights and runs away
    May live to fight another day;
    But he who is in battle slain
    Can never rise and fight again.
    • Samuel Butler's lines misquoted by Oliver Goldsmith in a publication of Newbery, the publisher, The Art of Poetry on a New Plan, Volume II, p. 147. The first lines appear in Musarum Deliciæ. Collection by Sir John Mennis and Dr. James Smith. (1656). Accredited by some authorities to Suckling, but not confirmed by Mennis. "Oft he that doth abide / Is cause of his own paine, / But he that flieth in good tide / Perhaps may fight again." A Pleasant Satyre or Poesie. From the French. (About 1595).
  • War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.
    • Thomas Carlyle, as quoted by Emma Goldman in her essay, "Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", chapter five of Anarchism and Other Essays (2nd revised edition, 1911).
  • They now to fight are gone;
    Armor on armor shone:
    Drum now to drum did groan,
    To hear was wonder;
    That with the cries they make,
    The very earth did shake;
    Trumpet to trumpet spake,
    Thunder to thunder.
  • Qui fugiebat, rusus præliabitur.
    • The man who flies shall fight again.
      • Demosthenes, on his flight at the battle of Chæronea, B.C. 338. Credited to him by Tertullian—De Fuga in Persecutione, Section X. See Cardinal Newman—Church of The Fathers, p. 215. Same expression in Ælianus. 1. 3. 4. 5. Aulus Gellius, Book XVII. 21. 32. Nepos—Thrasbulus, Chapter II. Justinus. 9. 6.
  • Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reform. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle. The conflict has been exciting, agitating, all-absorbing, and for the time being, putting all other tumults to silence. It must do this or it does nothing. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress. [...] Men might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrongs heaped upon us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be, by our lives and the lives of others.
    • Frederick Douglass, An address on West India Emancipation (3 August 1857), according to Frederick Douglass : Selected Speeches and Writings, p. vi ; other sources give 4 August 1857. Other citation source: Frederick Douglass, West India Emancipation Speech, Delivered at Canandaigua, New York (Aug. 4, 1857), in 2 The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 437 (Philip S. Foner ed., 1950).
  • That same man that renneth awaie
    Maie fight again on other daie.
    • Erasmus, Apothegms. Given as a saying of Demosthenes, and quoted as a "verse common in every body's mouth." Tr. by Udall. (1542).
  • On the wide and silent plain, darkening the bright daylight, she turns midday into darkness. People look upon each other in anger, they look for combat. Their shouting disturbs the plain, it weighs on the pasture and the waste land. Her howling is like Ickur's and makes the flesh of all the lands tremble. No one can oppose her murderous battle -- who rivals her? No one can look at her fierce fighting, the carnage, the engulfing water, raging, sweeping over the earth, she leaves nothing behind.
  • War means fighting, and fighting means killing.
  • It is an olde saw, he fighteth wele (well) that fleith faste.
    • Gesta Romanorum. Wolf and the Hare. 15th cent. MS.
  • I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.
  • Though I have been trained as a soldier, and participated in many battles, there never was a time when, in my opinion, some way could not be found to prevent the drawing of the sword. I look forward to an epoch when a court, recognized by all nations, will settle international differences, instead of keeping large standing armies as they do in Europe.
    • Ulysses S. Grant as quoted in "International Arbitration" by W. H. Dellenback in The Commencement Annual, University of Michigan (30 June 1892) and in A Half Century of International Problems: A Lawyer's Views (1954) by Frederic René Coudert, p. 180.
  • Every position must be held to the last man. There must be no retirement. With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight to the end.
  • We fought him hard we fought him well
    Out on the plains we gave him hell
    But many came too much for Cree
    Oh will we ever be set free?
  • Riding through dust clouds and barren wastes
    Galloping hard on the plains
    Chasing the redskins back to their holes
    Fighting them at their own game
    Murder for freedom the stab in the back
    Women and children are cowards attack
    Run to the hills, run for your lives.
  • There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon, until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight!—I repeat it, sir, we must fight!! An appeal to arms and to the God of Hosts, is all that is left us!
    • Patrick Henry, speech to the Virginia Convention, Richmond, Virginia (March 23, 1775); in William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry (1836, reprinted 1970), 9th ed., p. 140.
  • Our business in the field of fight
    Is not to question, but to prove our might.
    • Homer, The Iliad, Book XX, line 304. Pope's translation
  • We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do,
    We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too.
    We've fought the Bear before and while we're Britons true,
    The Russians shall not have Constantinople.
    • G. W. Hunt. (Called "the Kipling of the Halls.") As sung by the "Great McDermott," in 1878 it made the term "Jingo" popular. "Jingo," first used as a political term of reproach, by George Jacob Holyoake, in a letter to the London Daily News, March 13, 1878. "He … falls a-fighting it out of one hand into the other, tossing it this way and that; lets it run a little upon the line, then tanutus, high jingo, come again." Traced by the Oxford Dict. to John Eachard—Grounds and Occasion of the Contempt of Clergy. 1670, p. 34. See also John Oldham, Satires upon the Jesuits (1679), IV. "By Jingo" found in a translation. of Rabelais—Pantagruel, Book IV, Chapter LV. Also in Cowley—Cutter of Coleman Street, pub. 1663, performed, 1661. "By the living Jingo" in Goldsmith—Vicar of Wakefield, Chapter X.
  • These moments of nocturnal prowling leave an indelible impression. Eyes and ears are tensed to the maximum, the rustling approach of strange feet in the tall grass in an unutterably menacing thing. Your breath comes in shallow bursts; you have to force yourself to stifle any panting or wheezing. There is a little mechanical click as the safety-catch of your pistol is taken off; the sound cuts straight through your nerves. Your teeth are grinding on the fuse-pin of the hand-grenade. The encounter will be short and murderous. You tremble with two contradictory impulses: the heightened awareness of the huntsmen, and the terror of the quarry. You are a world to yourself, saturated with the appalling aura of the savage landscape.
  • When you're talking about fighting, as it is, with no rules, well then, baby you'd better train every part of your body!
    • Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
  • It don't seem hardly right, John,
    When both my hands was full,
    To stump me to a fight, John,
    Your cousin, too, John Bull!
    Ole Uncle S. sez he, "I guess
    • We know it now," sez he,
      "The lion's paw is all the law,
      * According to J. B.,
      * That's fit for you an' me."
    • James Russell Lowell, The Biglow Papers (1848), Jonathan to John, Stanza 1.
  • Now deeper roll the maddening drums,
    And the mingling host like ocean heaves:
    While from the midst, a horrid wailing comes,
    And high above the fight the lonely bugle grieves.
    • Granville Mellen—The Lonely Bugle Grieves. Ode on the Celebration of Battle of Bunker Hill. June 17, 1825. (Mellen is called the "Singer of one Song" from this Ode).
  • A man that runs away may fight again.
    • Menander, after the battle of Chæronea. 338 B.C. In Didot—Bib. Græca, p. 91. Fragment appended to Aristophanes.
  • There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.
    • Peter Muhlenberg. The precise text of this Lutheran clergyman's sermon in Woodstock, Virginia, in January 1776, does not exist. The quotation above is from Edward W. Hocker, The Fighting Parson of the American Revolution (1936), p. 61.
  • O you who believe, when you meet those who disbelieve marching for war, turn not your backs to them. And whoso turns his back to them on that day unless manoeuvring for battle or turning to join a company -- he, indeed, incurs God's wrath and his refuge is Hell. And an evil destination it is. Because you slew them not, but God didst slay them, and thou smotest not when thou didst smite (the enemy), but God didst smite (him), and that He might confer upon the believers a benefit from Himself. Surely God who heareth and knoweth (all things). This -- and (know) that God will weaken the struggle of the disbelievers.
  • Every struggle is like mud - there are always some lotus seeds waiting to sprout.
    • Amit Ray Nonviolence: The Transforming Power" (2012)
  • He that fights and runs away,
    May turn and fight another day;
    But he that is in battle slain,
    Will never rise to fight again.
    • James Ray, A Complete History of the Rebellion in 1745, p. 48. (1752).
  • Brother Jonathan sat by the kitchen fire,
    Nursin' his foot on his knee.
    "It's a turrible fight they're havin' out there,
    But they can't git over to me."
    And Jonathan jingled the coins in his han'
    An' thanked the good God for the sea.
  • Aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords.
    • Theodore Roosevelt, saying. Gifford Pinchot, "Roosevelt as President" in State Papers as Governor and President, 1899–1909 (vol. 15 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed.), p. xxxiii (1926). Pinchot commented, "There are few sayings of his that hold for me so much of him as this".
  • So struggle!
    For struggle is life's flower;
    The fertile flower of life.
    • Ōsugi Sakae, Barren Flowers, Originally published in Kindai shisō (Modern Thought), Vol. 1, No. 11, August 1913. Translated by Michael Schauerte
  • Sed omissis quidem divinis exhortationibus illum magis Græcum versiculum secularis sententiæ sibi adhibent, "Qui fugiebat, rursus prœliabitur:" ut et rursus forsitan fugiat.
    • But overlooking the divine exhortations, they act rather upon that Greek verse of worldly significance, "He who flees will fight again," and that perhaps to betake himself again to flight.
    • Tertullian, De Fuga in Persecutione, Chapter 10.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

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Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
  • For those that fly may fight again,
    Which he can never do that’s slain.
  • For bragging time was over and fighting time was come.
    • Newbolt Henry, Hawke, l. 7, in: Collected Poems 1897-1907 (1910).
  • Celuy qui fuit de bonne heure
    Peut combattre derechef.
    • He who flies at the right time can fight again.
    • Satyre Menippée. (1594)
  • It's easy to fight when everything's right
    And you're mad with the thrill and the glory;
    It's easy to cheer when victory's near,
    And wallow in fields that are gory.
    It's a different song when everything's wrong,
    When you're feeling infernally mortal;
    When it's ten against one, and hope there is none,
    Buck up, little soldier, and chortle!
  • He which hath no stomach to this fight,
    Let him depart; his passport shall be made.
  • Fight the good fight of faith.
    • I Timothy, VI. 12.
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