I actually like the motto "Live free or die," when spoken by those committed to nonviolence. Of course, you know it was plagiarized from a Virginian warmonger named Patrick Henry, but his words can also be put to better use. He said: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
I think however that both of those statements have been improved upon
by the reggae singer/musician Jimmy Cliff, who said of those abusing
this earth and its people, and this is for Ben Ali of Tunisia, Hosni
Mubarak of Egypt, and Ali Abdullah Saleh of Yemen:
"I'd rather be a free man in my grave.
"Than living as a puppet or a slave.
"The harder they come, the harder they'll fall one and all."
"And these words shall then become," wrote Percy Bysshe Shelley,
"Like Oppression's thundered doom
"Ringing through each heart and brain,
"Heard again - again - again -
"Rise like Lions after slumber
"In unvanquishable number -
"Shake your chains to earth like dew
"Which in sleep had fallen on you -
"Ye are many - they are few."
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