John Smith Quotes

c. January 1580 – June 21, 1631

Captain John Smith (c. January 1580 – 21 June 1631) Admiral of New England was an English soldier, explorer, and author. He was knighted for his services to Sigismund Bathory, Prince of Transylvania and friend Mózes Székely. He is remembered for his role in establishing the first permanent English settlement in North America at Jamestown, Virginia, and his brief association with the Virginia Indian[1] girl Pocahontas during an altercation with the Powhatan Confederacy and her father, Chief Powhatan. He was a leader of the Virginia Colony (based at Jamestown) between September 1608 and August 1609, and led an exploration along the rivers of Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay.

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The opportunity to serve our country—that is all we ask.

Speech to Labour Party fund-raising dinner, May 11, 1994 (the night before his death).

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Heaven & earth never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation; were it fully manured and inhabited by industrious people. Here are mountaines, hils, plaines, valleyes, rivers, and brookes, all running most pleasantly into a faire Bay, compassed but for the mouth, with fruitfull and delightsome land.

John Smith
— Describing the countryside around Chesapeake Bay (1606); reported in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (1907), vol. 2, pp. 44–45.

Tags: Heaven, amp, earth, never, agreed, better, frame, place, man's

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The settled will of the Scottish people.

John Smith
— 1994  Of the creation of a Scottish parliament, in a speech at the Scottish Labour Conference,11 Mar.

Tags: settled, Scottish, people

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We will do our best to reward your faith in us, but please give us the opportunity to serve our country, that is all we ask.

John Smith
— Address to a European Gala Dinner, 11 May 1994. They were his final public words; he died the next morning of a heart attack.

Tags: last words, We, our, best, reward, faith, us, give, opportunity

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You must obey this now for a Law, that he that will not worke shall not eate (except by sicknesse he be disabled:) for the labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine an hundred and fiftie idle loyterers.

John Smith
— Advice to his company when he was governor of Jamestown Colony, Virginia (1608); reported in The Generall Historie of Virginia, New England & The Summer Isles (1907), vol. 1, chapter 10, p. 174.

Tags: You, obey, now, Law, eate, sicknesse, disabled, labours, honest

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If it is the case that one Department of this Government deliberately organised a leak to frustrate a Minister in the same Government, that is not only dirty tricks but a habit that is inimical to the practice of good government in this country.

John Smith
— Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 89, col. 1157.
— Speech on the Westland affair, 15 January 1986.

Tags: case, one, Department, Government, deliberately, organised, leak, frustrate, Minister

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In the course of a few weeks the one policy with which the Prime Minister was uniquely and personally associated, the contribution to policy of which he appears to have been most proud, has been blown apart, and with it has gone for ever any claim by the Prime Minister or the party that he leads to economic competence. He is the devalued Prime Minister of a devalued Government.

John Smith
— Hansard, House of Commons, 6th series, vol. 212, col. 22.
— House of Commons speech, September 24, 1992, referring to Black Wednesday.

Tags: course, few, weeks, one, policy, Prime, Minister, uniquely, personally

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