"As for your politicians, not a man of them's been
Other than a servant of your deadliest foe.
You've had your usual supply of so-called great sons,
in the period in question, but their filial regard,
Wouldn't do any credit it seems, to a skunk's ones,
And if you still think that this verdict's too hard,
To problems a damned sight harder you're tied,
And the only men who have tried,
To solve them are a few on the rebel side,
Despised, rejected, hounded down and decried,
By the fools on whom like a fool you've relied."

Lord Belhaven - patriot and statesman

"Show me a man who is a bombastic patriot, a verbal fire-eater and I will show you a rascal.
Show me a man who loves other nations equally with his own and I will show you a man devoid of a sense of proportion.
But show me a man while respecting the rights of nations' equality with his own but yet will stand up for his own against the rest, and I will show a man who is a nationalist and an internationalist." - 1707

""I see a free and independent kingdom delivering up that which all the world hath been fighting for, since the days of Nimrod, to wit, a power to manage their own affairs by themselves without the assistance and counsel of any other." - addressing the Scottish Parliament in 1706 during debate over the Treaty of Union

Sir William Wallace - patriot and defender of Scotland, 1272-1305

"Edward can steek my mou wi a word, but truth he canna ding - it will speak on when he and I are dust, and never will be silenced." - Wallace to Edward I of England, from The Wallace by Sydney Goodsir Smith (1960)

Anonymous

"Unless the fates shall faithless prove, And prophets voice be vain, Where'er this sacred Stone is found, The Scottish race shall reign." - Gaelic rhyme, in reference to the Stone of Destiny (the revered stone on which Scottish kings and queens had been crowned for centuries)

"All of our affairs, since the union of crowns, have been managed by the advice of English ministers, and the principal offices of the kingdom filled with such men, as the court of England knew would be subservient to their designs: by which means they had so visible an influence upon our whole administration, that we have, from that time, appeared to the rest of the world more like a conquered province, than a free independent people."

Robert Burns - poet, 1759-1796

Fareweel to a' our Scottish fame,
Fareweel our ancient glory;
Fareweel ev'n to the Scottish name,
Sae fam'd in martial story.
Now Sark rins over Solway sands,
An' Tweed rins to the ocean,
To mark where England's province stands-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

What force or guile could not subdue,
Thro' many warlike ages,
Is wrought now by a coward few,
For hireling traitor's wages.
The English stell we could disdain,
Secure in valour's station;
But English gold has been our bane-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!

O would, or I had seen the day
That Treason thus could sell us,
My auld grey head had lien in clay,
Wi' Bruce and loyal Wallace!
But pith and power, till my last hour,
I'll mak this declaration;
We're bought and sold for English gold-
Such a parcel of rogues in a nation!