The Testament of Vanzetti

1. “If it had not been for these things I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now wedobyan accident. Our words, our lives, our plans, nothing! The taking of our lives, lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all. That last moment belongs to us. That agony is our triumph.

—Some of Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s last words, spoken a few months before his execution, and celebrated ever since as among the most stirring prose sentences ever written.

Featured Tags

Manage following

William F. Buckley Jr.

1. “If it had not been for these things I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure. This is our career and our triumph. Never in our full life can we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man’s understanding of man, as now wedobyan accident. Our words, our lives, our plans, nothing! The taking of our lives, lives of a good shoemaker and a poor fish peddler—all. That last moment belongs to us. That agony is our triumph.

—Some of Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s last words, spoken a few months before his execution, and celebrated ever since as among the most stirring prose sentences ever written.