Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood… will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.
Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.
I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion –I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more –I could be martyred for my religion –Love is my religion –I could die for that.
I will soon be going out to shape all the singing tomorrows.
It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.
It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.
Martyrdom covers a multitude of sins.
Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.
Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity, never of the correctness of a belief.
Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood — never.
No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.
Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.
The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.