“When I was a boy, the priest, my uncle, carefully inculcated upon me this proverb, which I then learned and have ever since kept in my mind: ‘Dico tibi verum, Libertas optima rerum; Nunquam servili, sub nexu vivito, fili.’ ‘I tell you a truth: Liberty is the best of things, my son; never live under any slavish bond.’”
“Return to your friends and tell them that we came here with no peaceful intent, but ready for battle, and determined to avenge our own wrongs and set our country free. Let your masters come and attack us: we are ready to meet them beard to beard.”
“As to my followers, I wish no man to follow me who is not sound at the heart in the cause of his country; and either at the head or in the ranks of these, I will always consider it my glory to be found.”
“I always showed myself in the face of day, asserting the liberty and independence of my country, while some others, like owls, courted concealment and were too much afraid of losing their roosts to leave them for such a cause.”
“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”
“If I or my soldiers have plundered or done injury to the houses or ministers of religion, I repent me of my sin; but it is not of Edward of England I shall ask pardon.”
“As Governor of my country, I have been an enemy to its enemies; I have slain the English; I have mortally opposed the English King; I have stormed and taken the towns and castles which he unjustly claimed as his own.”
“I’m William Wallace, and the rest of you will be spared. Go back to England and tell them… Scotland is free!”
“To Edward, I cannot be a traitor, for I owe him no allegiance; he is not my sovereign; he never received my homage; and whilst life is in this persecuted body, he shall never receive it.”
“Here is no choice but either do or die.”
“O! Desolated Scotland, too credulous of fair speeches, and not aware of the calamities which are coming upon you! If you were to judge as I do, you would not easily put your neck under a foreign yoke.”
“As governor of my country, I have been an enemy to its enemies.”
“I have mortally opposed the English king; I have stormed and taken the towns and castles which he unjustly claimed as his own.”
“If I or my soldiers have plundered or done injury to the houses or to the ministers of religion, I repent me of my sin – but it is not of Edward of England that I shall ask pardon.”
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