It is the love of the people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you your army 168 and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

-Burke, Edmund
  On Conciliation with  America.

Unless you stake your life, life will not be won.

-Heisenberg,Werner
  Der Teil und das Ganze, translated by A  J Pomerans as Physics and Beyond (1971).

   Let them bestow on every airth a limb, Then open all my veins that I may swim To thee, my Maker, in that crimson lake; Then place my parboiled head upon a stake, Scatter my ashes, strew them in the airö Lord! since thou knowest where all these atoms are, I'm hopeful thou'lt recover once my dust, And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.

-Montrose,James Graham, 1st Marquis of
  'Lines Composed on the Eve of his Execution'.

We must recollect†what it is we have at stake, what it is we have to contend for. It is for our property, it is for our liberty, it is for our independence, nay for our existence as a nation; it is for our character, it is for our very name as Englishmen, it is for everything dear and valuable to man on this side of the grave.

-Pitt,William known as  theYounger
  Speech, 22 Jul, on the breaking of the Peace of Amiens and the resumption of the war with Napoleon. Quoted in Speeches of the Rt. Hon.William Pitt (1806), vol.4.

People who are always praising the past And especially the times of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

-Smith, Stevie (Florence Margaret)
  NotWaving but Drowning,'The Past'.

I played with fire, did counsel spurn, Made life my common stake; But never thought that fire would burn, O that a soul could ache.

-Vaughan, Henry
  Silex Scintillans,'The Garland'.