Nathan Hale Quotes

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

Liberty? Independence? Are they to remain only words? Gentlemen, let us make them fighting words!

Did you read where the great-grandson of Nathan Hale got married this weekend? Give me liberty or give me death. That’s what the groom will be saying in about one month.

There is no god of war. War is built and controlled by human hands--humans start it, humans stop it.

One has indeed personally to come under the shadow of war to feel fully its oppression... by 1918 all but one of my close friends were dead." J.R.R. Tolkien

I have but one life to live for my country

The young man looked down from the cart at the people in front of him. Jonah felt his teacher’s eyes meet his own, and for a fraction of a second a smile played on the prisoner’s lips. Then he glanced toward heaven and spoke. “I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country

Arnold had never given much thought to whether or not he loved America—but now it seemed pretty obvious to him that he didn’t. Not in the way Nathan Hale had loved America. Or even in the way his late father, a Dutch-Jewish refugee, had loved America. In fact, he found the idea of sacrificing his life for his country somewhat abhorrent. Moreover, it wasn’t that he disliked abstract loyalties in general. He loved New York, for instance: Senegalese takeout at three a.m., and strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the first crisp day of autumn, and feeding the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. If Manhattan were invaded—if New Jersey were to send an expeditionary force of militiamen across the Hudson River—he’d willingly take up arms to defend his city. He also loved Sandpiper Key in Florida, where they owned a time-share, and maybe Brown University, where he’d spent five years of graduate school. But the United States? No one could mistake his qualified praise for love.

Lee had the uncomfortable feeling of being more in sympathy with his country's foes than with such friends as the men of America Will Break. Lincoln said, "Men of Kentucky, men of America, if you vote to go South, you vote to forget Washington and Patrick Henry, Jefferson and Nathan Hale, Jackson and John Paul Jones. Remember the nation your fathers joined, remember the nation so many of you fought so bravely to defend. God bless the United States of America!" Some cheered; more, Lee thought, booed. He found no small irony in the fact that three of Lincoln's "American" heroes, Washington, Patrick Henry, and Jefferson, had been slaveholding Virginians; Martha Washington's blood ran in the veins of his own wife. And the South revered the Founding Fathers no less than the North; he remembered coming into Richmond on Washington's birthday and finding the War Department closed. And for that matter, Washington on horseback appeared on the Great Seal of the Confederate States. This time, he had no sympathy for Lincoln's claims.

I’d say the guy was just plain nuts. Who wants to die for some stupid bird?” “I bet he didn’t think it was a stupid bird,” Garrett said, “especially if he traveled all the way down here from Minnesota to protect it.” By this point, Red was pretty sure he and Garrett would not get along on a long-term basis. “Little son of a bitch cared more about birds than people,” Red said. “That kind of thing—taking a stand—changes the world,” Garrett said. “Think of the guy in Tiananmen Square.” “Where?” Red asked. “Or the students at Kent State.” “Never heard of it,” Red said. “Or Nathan Hale,” Garrett said. “The Skipper on Gilligan’s Island?” “Or, hey, what about the men at the Alamo?” Damn it. That was a good point.

execution of Nathan Hale on September 22, 1776, was the lowest point in a month of low points for General George Washington. First, the British had taken New York City and Long Island—the cornerstones of Washington’s strategy because of their valuable geographic

It is the real stories of heroes like Washington and Nathan Hale and others that help us to properly feel the power of the ideas behind them. We must feel the horror of tyranny and must love the noble idea of liberty. We must love America. We cannot reduce things to the intellectual. In the end we must feel those ideas and see them embodied in heroes and stories. By deciding that every potential hero is too flawed to celebrate and venerate, or that such stories are somehow corny, we have done a grave disservice to several generations and to the country.

She’d practically been preparing for it since birth: Spying was her family business. Most of her ancestors had been spies, going all the way back to Nathan Hale in the Revolutionary War. Her grandfather Cyrus Hale was one of the best there’d ever been, and he’d taught Erica almost everything he knew. On the other hand, I came from a long line of grocers. I was only thirteen, and until seven months earlier, my entire espionage experience had consisted of watching James Bond movies.

A great number of Americans have made the same startling discovery that Francis Dane did: They are related to witches. American presidents descend from George Jacobs, Susannah Martin, and John Procter. Nathan Hale was John Hale’s grandson. Israel “Don’t Fire Until You See the Whites of Their Eyes” Putnam was the cousin of Ann Putnam. Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louisa May Alcott descended from Samuel Sewall; Clara Barton from the Townes; Walt Disney from Burroughs. (In a nice twist, the colonial printer who founded the American Antiquarian Society, where Cotton Mather’s papers reside today, was also a Burroughs descendant.) The Nurse family includes Lucille Ball, who testified before an investigator from the House Un-American Activities Committee. (Yes, she had registered with the Communist Party. No, she was not a Communist. In 1953, a husband leaped to a wife’s defense: “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair,” Desi Arnaz explained,