I'm in need a good, historical quote

[DRobert]

"Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be."

William Hazlitt

You might have to provide a bit more detail if you want something more relevant...

 

[Viennetta]

"You can't wake a person who is pretending to be asleep."
-Navajo proverb.

 

[IBlackKiteI]

Winston Churchill:

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." during the Battle of Britain he said this in reference to the pilots of the Royal Air Force.

Don't know if he actually said this but he did enjoy his gentlemanly spirits so.....

After a women approached him and said "Sir, you are drunk." he replied with "Madam, I may be drunk but you are ugly, and when I wake up I will no longer be drunk and you will still be ugly."

Awesome quotes those, Churchill was the man.

OP, you'd probably be pretty well off by googling Martin Luther King Jrs 'I have a Dream' speech, chopping any part of it out and using that.

 

[Rzepik]

Motivational?
"To be defeated and not submit, is victory; to be victorious and rest on one's laurels, is defeat."
? Józef Piłsudski

 

[LC Wynter]

History isn't writte by the victors, guys; it's written by the literate.

 

[uttaku]

nothing except a battle lost can be half as meleconly as a bttle won- duke of wellington

you sir are drunk, yes but you madam are ugly and in the morning I will be sober- churchill