Ronald Wilson Reagan
1911-2004

"Fellow citizens, fellow conservatives, our time has come again. This is our moment. Let us unite, shoulder to shoulder, behind one mighty banner for freedom. And let us go forward from here not with some faint hope that our cause is not yet lost, let us go forward confident that the American people share our values, and that together we will be victorious.

"And in those moments when we grow tired, when our struggle seems hard, remember what Eric Liddell, Scotland's Olympic champion runner, said in Chariots of Fire. He said, 'So where does the power come from to see the race to its end? From within. God made me for a purpose, and I will run for his pleasure.'

"If we trust in him, keep his work, and live lives for his pleasure, he'll give us the power we need -- power to fight the good fight, to finish the race, and to keep the faith." --March 2, 1984 (Washington, D.C.)

Eric Liddell
1902-1945

"Always arguing, never quarreling"

[ excerpted from "A Decade of Deep Delight," an editorial by American Chesterton Society president Dale Ahlquist in, and commemorating the 10th anniversary of, Gilbert Magazine, the publication of The American Chesterton Society.]

". . .By being devoted to Chesterton and his ideas, we have often faced the accusation -- as did the man himself -- of being narrow or of being on the fringe. But our defense is the same as his: we are not eccentric. We represent the central ideas of civilization: family, faith, and friendship. The normal and human ideals remain birth instead of contraception or abortion; natural death instead of suicide or physician-assisted murder; marriage instead of a revolving door of divorce or homosexual mockery; freedom instead of coercion; self-government instead of Big Government; taking care of one's own property instead of taking care of someone else's property; science as a tool or a toy instead of a materialistic philosophy; education as truth passed from one generation to another instead of as state-sponsored indoctrination; beauty instead of ugliness; tradition instead of faddism; laughter instead of sneering; hope instead of despair, and finally, faith in God and Christ instead of endless doubt, relativistic tolerance, or nirvana.

"These normal things are worth fighting for. And one of the things we have learned in our own battles is that fighting is fun. Fighting does not mean one cannot be courteous. But courtesy does not mean praising the errors of our opponents or celebrating the defeat of everything we believe in. Courtesy means treating our opponents with respect despite our disagreement, and maintaining the fight with them because their victory would mean even worse things for them than for us. We fight as a matter of charity.

"We fight the feminization of the culture that tries to suppress fighting. We fight the mechanization of the culture that tries to suppress creativity. We fight the sexualization of the culture that tries to suppress creation itself. We fight the secularization of the culture that tries to suppress the Creator.

"And sometimes we may even fight you. Sometimes you might disagree with us. We hope on those rare occasions that you will stay and argue rather than run away. Come, let us reason together. 'Always arguing, never quarreling.' " . . .