If it had not been for these thing

I might have lived out my life

talking at street corners to scorning men.

I might have die, unmarked, unknown, a failure.

Now we are not a failure.

This is our career and our triumph.  Never

in our full life could we hope to do such work

For tolerance, for justice, for men’s understanding

of man, as now we do by accident.

Our words, our lives, our pains—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.

 

 “What I say is that I am innocent.  Everybody that knows these two arms knows very well that I did not need to go into the streets and kill a man or try to take money.  I can live by my two hands and live well . . . I never committed a crime in my life – I have never stolen and I have never killed and I have never spilt blood . . . I would not wish to any of them what I have had to suffer for things that I am not guilty of.  I am suffering because I am a radical and indeed I am a radical; I have suffered because I was an Italian, and indeed I am an Italian; I have suffered more for my family and my beloved than for myself; but I am so convinced to be right that you can only kill me once but if you could execute me two times, and if I could be reborn two other times, I would live again to do what I have done already.”