surrender quotes

Atfifteenlifehadtaught meundeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

- Maya originally MayaJohnson Angelou
  I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ch.31.

La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas. The Guards die but do not surrender.

- Pierre, Baron de Cambronne
  Attributed, when called upon to surrender at the Battle of Waterloo,18  Jun.

We shall not flag or fail.We shall go on to the end.We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island whatever the cost may be.We shall fight on the beaches, weshall fight onthelanding grounds, weshall fight inthe fields and in thestreets, we shall fight inthehills.We shall never surrender.

- Lord Randolph Henry Spencer Churchill
  Speech in the House of Commons,4  Jun, after the Dunkirk evacuation.

The awful daring of a moment's surrender Which an age of prudence can never retract. 306

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  The Waste Land, pt.5,'What the Thunder Said'.

No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works.

- Ulysses S(impson) Grant
  Message to Simon Bolivar Buckner, besieged at Fort Donelson,16 Feb. Quoted in P C Headley TheLife and Campaigns of General U. S. Grant (1869), ch.6.

The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

-John F(itzgerald) Kennedy
   Address to the nation, 22 Oct.

I am happy that I shall not live to see the surrender of Quebec.

- Marquis de Montcalm
  Spoken to his aides,13 Sep. He died the following day. Quoted in Francis Parkman Montcalm and Wolfe (1884).

In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them.

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