David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, and one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. He had a mythical status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of commercial and colonial expansion.
His fame as an explorer and his obsession with learning the sources of the Nile River was founded on the belief that if he could solve that age-old mystery, his fame would give him the influence to end the East African Arab-Swahili slave trade. "The Nile sources," he told a friend, "are valuable only as a means of opening my mouth with power among men. It is this power which I hope to remedy an immense evil." His subsequent exploration of the central African watershed was the culmination of the classic period of European geographical discovery and colonial penetration of Africa. At the same time, his missionary travels, "disappearance", and eventual death in Africa—and subsequent glorification as a posthumous national hero in 1874—led to the founding of several major central African Christian missionary initiatives carried forward in the era of the European "Scramble for Africa".
His meeting with Henry Morton Stanley on 10 November 1871 gave rise to the popular quotation "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
“I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity.”
“Sympathy is no substitute for action.”
“I have found that I have no unusual endowments of intellect, but this day I resolve that I will be an uncommon Christian.”
“There is one safe and happy place, and that is in the will of God.”
“Nothing earthly will make me give up my work in despair.”
“If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don't want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.”
“I will place no value on anything I have or may possess except in relation to the kingdom of Christ. ”
“I will go anywhere, provided it be forward.”
“All that I am I owe to Jesus Christ, revealed to me in His divine Book.”
“God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.”