It is the cause, not the death that makes the martyr.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I am as content to die for God's eternal truth on the scaffold as in any other way.
~ John Mason Brown

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood -- never.
~ Albert Camus

Great persecutors are recruited among martyrs whose heads haven't been cut off.
~ E. M. Cioran

No human beings more dangerous than those who have suffered for a belief: the great persecutors are recruited from the martyrs not quite beheaded. Far from diminishing the appetite for power, suffering exasperates it.
~ E. M. Cioran

The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
~ Aleister Crowley

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.
~ George Eliot

We are not here to triumph by fighting, by strata gem, or by resistance, not to fight with beasts as men. We have fought the beast and have conquered. We have only to conquer now, by suffering. This is the easier victory.
~ T. S. Eliot

The martyr cannot be dishonored. Every lash inflicted is a tongue of fame; every prison a more illustrious abode.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The torments of martyrdom are probably most keenly felt by the bystanders.
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.
~ Indira Gandhi

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.
~ Indira Gandhi

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.
~ John B. S. Haldane

The way of the world is, to praise dead saints, and persecute living ones.
~ Nathaniel Howe

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.
~ Thomas Jefferson

I have been astonished that men could die martyrs for religion --I have shuddered at it. I shudder no more --I could be martyred for my religion --Love is my religion --I could die for that.
~ John Keats

The difference between a man who faces death for the sake of an idea and an imitator who goes in search of martyrdom is that whilst the former expresses his idea most fully in death it is the strange feeling of bitterness which comes from failure that the latter really enjoys; the former rejoices in his victory, the latter in his suffering.
~ Soren Kierkegaard

Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out.
~ Bishop Hugh Latimer

It is more difficult, and it calls for higher energies of soul, to live a martyr than to die one.
~ Horace Mann

The martyr sacrifices themselves entirely in vain. Or rather not in vain; for they make the selfish more selfish, the lazy more lazy, the narrow narrower.
~ Florence Nightingale