Sourced and curated.

The thirteenth amendment secured them freedom; the fourteenth amendment due process of law, protection of property, and the pursuit of happiness; and the fifteenth amendment attempted to secure the negro against any deprivation of the privilege to vote because he was a negro. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments have been generally enforced and have secured the objects for which they are intended. While the fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it ought to be observed.

William Howard Taft

Inaugural Address of William Howard Taft · 1909

★ 1.0

Surely there must have been God's intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring.

If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.0

Letter

Orville Wright

1908

★ 1.1

Can I do something in my lifetime that can help change the way we are.... Can I help in a little tiny fraction, make it better here?

Maya Lin

2011

★ 1.1

By the experience of commercial nations in all ages it has been found that gold and silver afford the only safe foundation for a monetary system.

James A. Garfield

Inaugural Address of James A. Garfield · 1881

★ 1.2

TV program

Television. That's where movies go when they die.

Bob Hope

1953

★ 1.2

Speech

Words mean something different depending on the person who says them, right?

Gloria Steinem

2009

★ 1.2

Essay · Magazine

There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.

Toni Morrison

2015

★ 1.2

I don't wait to be struck by lightning and don't need certain slants of light in order to write.

Toni Morrison

1981

★ 1.3

Hymn · Song

I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it some day for a crown.

George Bennard

The Old Rugged Cross · 1912

★ 1.8

Success. Four flights Thursday morning. All against twenty-one mile wind. Started from level with engine power alone. Average speed through air thirty-one miles. Longest 57 seconds. Inform press. Home Christmas.

Orville Wright

1903

★ 1.9

The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag. They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it.

William Howard Taft

Inaugural Address of William Howard Taft · 1909

★ 1.9

Essay

It's no disgrace t'be poor, but it might as well be.

Frank McKinney Hubbard

1911

★ 1.9

America, our America, the America builded on the foundation laid by the inspired fathers, can be a party to no permanent military alliance. It can enter into no political commitments, nor assume any economic obligations which will subject our decisions to any other than our own authority.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

There never can be equality of rewards or possessions so long as the human plan contains varied talents and differing degrees of industry and thrift, but ours ought to be a country free from the great blotches of distressed poverty.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

There is a luring fallacy in the theory of banished barriers of trade, but preserved American standards require our higher production costs to be reflected in our tariffs on imports.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

With the nation-wide induction of womanhood into our political life, we may count upon her intuitions, her refinements, her intelligence, and her influence to exalt the social order. We count upon her exercise of the full privileges and the performance of the duties of citizenship to speed the attainment of the highest state.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment, to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure-that is all agnosticism means.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

Courtroom speech · Speech

Clarence Darrow

1925

★ 1.9

Interview

I don't paint out of responsibility. I paint out of need.

Jim Dine

2010

★ 1.9

Blog post

Steal old stuff.

Austin Kleon

2017

★ 1.9

Letter

We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

William Tecumseh Sherman

1864

★ 1.9

Letter

War is the remedy our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

William Tecumseh Sherman

1864

★ 1.9

Upon one point there is entire unanimity in public sentiment—that conflicting claims to the Presidency must be amicably and peaceably adjusted, and that when so adjusted the general acquiescence of the nation ought surely to follow.

Rutherford B. Hayes

Inaugural Address of Rutherford B. Hayes · 1877

★ 1.9

Under our institutions there was no middle ground for the negro race between slavery and equal citizenship. There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States.

James A. Garfield

Inaugural Address of James A. Garfield · 1881

★ 1.9

If in other lands it be high treason to compass the death of the king, it shall be counted no less a crime here to strangle our sovereign power and stifle its voice.

James A. Garfield

Inaugural Address of James A. Garfield · 1881

★ 1.9

The privileges of American citizenship are so great and its duties so grave that we may well insist upon a good knowledge of every person applying for citizenship and a good knowledge by him of our institutions. We should not cease to be hospitable to immigration, but we should cease to be careless as to the character of it.

Inaugural Address of Benjamin Harrison · 1889

★ 1.9

If our great corporations would more scrupulously observe their legal limitations and duties, they would have less cause to complain of the unlawful limitations of their rights or of violent interference with their operations.

Inaugural Address of Benjamin Harrison · 1889

★ 1.9

God has placed upon our head a diadem and has laid at our feet power and wealth beyond definition or calculation. But we must not forget that we take these gifts upon the condition that justice and mercy shall hold the reins of power and that the upward avenues of hope shall be free to all the people.

Inaugural Address of Benjamin Harrison · 1889

★ 1.9

A community where law is the rule of conduct and where courts, not mobs, execute its penalties is the only attractive field for business investments and honest labor.

For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use.

Inaugural Address of Benjamin Harrison · 1889

★ 1.9

Interview · Newspaper

Thomas Edison

1917

★ 1.9

If revolution insists upon overturning established order, let other peoples make the tragic experiment. There is no place for it in America.

Inaugural Address of Warren G. Harding · 1921

★ 1.9

Life is a game... And you keep score with dollars.

Ted Turner

1978

★ 1.9

I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.

William Tecumseh Sherman

1884

★ 2.0

Autobiography and memoir

There is no substitute for hard work.

Thomas Edison

1932

★ 2.0