February 13, 2025

It is a fine thing to face machine guns for immortality and a medal, but isn’t it a fine thing, too, to face calumny, injustice and loneliness for the truth which makes men free?

H. L. Mencken, 1880-1956, American journalist, literary critic. Epigraph to The Portable Curmudgeon, Jon Winokur, ed. (New York: 1987), p.xv

Is the aim of your political career simply “…to go along to get along”? Or do you want to accomplish something of real benefit to your constituents, your fellow citizens, mankind?

An oft-expressed view—better to live rather than die for a good cause. The counter-argument was best made by Dolores Ibárruri, the Spanish republican of the civil war era (1936-1939), known as “La Pasionaria”: better to die on your feet than live on your knees. I suspect this was the quotation to which Mencken was responding?