defence quotes

   Brave men are a city's strongest tower of defence.

-Alcaeus
c.600  BC  Attributed.

I am really persuaded that if we were to inquire of all the Cities which†have fallen by Siege into the Power of new Masters, who it was that subjected and overcame them, they would tell you, the Architect; and that they were strong enough to have despised the armed Enemy, but not to withstand the Shocks of the Engines, the Violence of the Machines and the Force of other Instruments of War with whichthe Architect, distressed, demolished and ruinated them.On the contrary, they would inform you that their greatest Defense lay in the Art and Assistance of the Architect.

- Leon Battista Alberti
^2  Architecttura (translated by James Leoni,1755).

Ithink it iswellalsofor themaninthestreettorealizethat there is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed.Whatever people will tell him, the bomber will always get through.The only defence is in offence, which means that you have to kill more women and children more quickly thanthe enemy if you want to save yourselves.

- Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl Baldwin (of Bewdley)
  Speech in the House of Commons,10 Nov.

Truly my soul waiteth upon God: from him cometh my salvation. He only is my rock and my salvation; he is my defence; I shall not be greatly moved.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 62:1^2.

The unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise isgone! it isgone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honour, which felt a stain like a wound, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its grossness.

- Edmund Burke
  Reflections on the Revolution in France.

A rule that may serve for a statesman, a courtier, or a lovernever make a defence or an apology before you be accused.

-Charles I
  Letter to Lord Wentworth, 3 Sep.

Immodest words admit of no defence, For want of decency is want of sense.

-Wentworth Dillon
  Essay on Translated Verse, l.113.

My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defence; I neither seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die. Would all did so well as I!

- Sir Edward Dyer
  'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

England is a great and powerful nation, foremost in human progress, enemy to despotism, the only safe refuge for the exile, friend of the oppressed. If ever England should be so circumstanced as to require the help of anyally, cursed be the Italian who would not step forward with me in her defence.

- Giuseppe Garibaldi
  Letter,12  Apr.

This is the best portent, to fight in defence of one's country.

-Homer   8c
c.700  BC  Iliad, bk.12, l.243 (translated by Martin Hammond).

Preparing for suicide is not a very intelligent means of defence.

- Bruce Kent
  Speech.

There can be no defence like elaborate courtesy.

- E(dward) V(errell) Lucas
  Reading, Writing and Remembering, ch.8.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.

- George pseudonym of  Eric Arthur Blair Orwell
  'Politics and the English Language', collected in Shooting an Elephant (1950).

England's chief defence depends upon the navy being always ready to defend the realm against invasion.

-Philip II
c.1555  Submission to the Privy Council while King-Consort of England.

The spirit that now resists your taxation in America is†the same spirit that established the great fundamental, essential maxim of your libertiesthat no subject of England shall betaxed but byhis ownconsent. The glorious spirit of Whiggismanimates three million in America, who prefer poverty with liberty to gilded chains and sordid affluence; and who will die in defence of their rights as men, as free men.

-William, 1st Earl of Chatham known as  the Elder Pitt
  Speech to the House of Lords, 20 Jan.

The notion of a defence that will protect American cities is one that will not be achieved, but it is that goal that supplies the political magic in the President's vision.

-James Schlesinger
  Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 6 Feb.

Ihave justcausetomakea pitiful defence of poor poetry, which from almost the highest estimation of learning is 790

- Nevil originally Nevil Shute Norway Shute
English  writer.  An  aeronautical  engineer,  he  began  to  write novels in1926 and afterWorldWar II emigrated to Australia, the setting  for  most  of  his  later  books,  notably  A  Town  Like Alice (1949) and On the Beach (1957).

I stand before you tonight in my green chiffon evening gown, my face softly made up, my fair hair gently waved†the Iron Lady of the Western World? Me? A Cold War warrior? Well, yesif that is how they wish to interpret my defence of values and freedoms fundamental to our way of life.

- Margaret HildaThatcher, Baroness Thatcher
  Speech, Dorking. Alluding to the title bestowed upon her by the Soviet defence journal, in Red Star, 31 Jan.

We have to distrust each other. It's our only defence against betrayal.

-TennesseeThomas Lanier Williams
  Marguerite. Camino Real, block10.