It is not an easy thought to articulate in words and pictures. However, the following quotes define this statement.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing"
- Anonymous (Often attributed to Edmund Burke)
“Where there is one brave man, in the thickest of the fight, there is the post of honor.”
- Henry David Thoreau
"I do not love the bright sword for it's sharpness, nor the arrow for it's swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend"
- J. R. Tolkien
“Be ashamed to die until you have done something good for mankind.”
- American Pastor Vernon Johnson (during the Revolutionary War)
The opposite meaning of the above phrase would be . . .
a Traitor . . .
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself"
- John Stuart Mill
Those who would give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-Benjamin Franklin
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