Sourced and curated.

Our national drug is alcohol. We tend to regard the use of any other drug with special horror.

Worcester v. Georgia · 1832

★ 1.9

Novel · Science fiction

William S. Burroughs

1959

★ 1.9

Many people apparently don't trust their reactions to art or to music unless there is a verbal explanation for it. In music the only thing that matters is whether you feel it or not.

Ornette Coleman

1960

★ 1.9

We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. We have talked for one hundred years or more. It is time now to write the next chapter, and to write it in the books of law.

1963

★ 1.9

This Nation--this generation--in this hour, has man's first chance to build the Great Society--a place where the meaning of man's life matches the marvels of man's labor.

Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.

1964

★ 1.9

Political debate

Lloyd Bentsen

1988

★ 1.9

We are a nation of believers. Underneath the clamor of building and the rush of our day's pursuits, we are believers in justice and liberty and in our own union. We believe that every man must some day be free.

Second Inaugural Address of Lyndon Baines Johnson · 1965

★ 1.9

Think of our world as it looks from the rocket that is heading toward Mars. It is like a child's globe, hanging in space, the continents stuck to its side like colored maps. We are all fellow passengers on a dot of earth. And each of us, in the span of time, has really only a moment among our companions. How incredible it is that in this fragile existence, we should hate and destroy one another. There are possibilities enough for all who will abandon mastery over others to pursue mastery over nature. There is world enough for all to seek their happiness in their own way.

"We, the people." It is a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787 I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

1965

★ 1.9

Barbara Jordan

1974

★ 1.9

Interview · Magazine

Painting is the best way I've found to get along with myself.

Robert Rauschenberg

The New Yorker · 2005

★ 1.9

Song · Rock music

Only the lonely (know the way I feel).

Roy Orbison

Only the Lonely · 1960

★ 2.0

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or to lose.

1963 Thanksgiving Day Speech · 1963

★ 2.0

Our nation is chosen by God and commissioned by history to be a model to the world of justice.

2000

★ 2.0

Our democratic faith is more than the creed of our country, it is the inborn hope of our humanity, an ideal we carry but do not own, a trust we bear and pass along. And even after nearly 225 years, we have a long way yet to travel.

First Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2001

★ 2.0

America, at its best, is a place where personal responsibility is valued and expected. Encouraging responsibility is not a search for scapegoats, it is a call to conscience. And though it requires sacrifice, it brings a deeper fulfillment. We find the fullness of life not only in options, but in commitments.

First Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2001

★ 2.0

We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom...because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul.

Second Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2005

★ 2.0

We are led, by events and common sense, to one conclusion: The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands. The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.

Second Inaugural Address of George W. Bush · 2005

★ 2.0

All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: the United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for your liberty, we will stand with you.

By the power elite, we refer to those political, economic, and military circles which as an intricate set of overlapping cliques share decisions having at least national consequences. In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide them.

2005

★ 2.0

Sociology

C. Wright Mills

The Power Elite · 1956

★ 2.5

Comedy (stand up)

I was in the unenviable position of being for the war but against the troops.

Bill Hicks

Relentless · 1991

★ 2.6

Uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Chester W. Nimitz

1945

★ 2.7

Political debate

Oops.

Rick Perry

2011

★ 2.7

TV news · TV program

To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, if unsatisfactory, conclusion.

Walter Cronkite

1968

★ 3.5

A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie.

Tim O'Brien

1987

★ 3.5

Novel

Miracles are instantaneous, they cannot be summoned, but come of themselves, usually at unlikely moments and to those who least expect them.

Katherine Anne Porter

1962

★ 3.5

The vice-presidency isn't worth a pitcher of warm piss.

John Nance Garner

★ 3.5

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the Constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are not prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the Constitution, are Constitutional.

The people made the Constitution, and the people can unmake it. It is the creature of their will, and lives only by their will.

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

Cohens v. Virginia · 1821

★ 3.6

Unfortunately, many Americans live on the outskirts of hope—some because of their poverty, and some because of their color, and all too many because of both. Our task is to help replace their despair with opportunity. This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.

1964 State of the Union · 1964

★ 3.6

We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

1964

★ 3.6

We have seen their kind before. They're the heirs of all the murderous ideologies of the 20th century. By sacrificing human life to serve their radical visions, by abandoning every value except the will to power, they follow in the path of fascism, Nazism, and totalitarianism. And they will follow that path all the way to where it ends in history's unmarked grave of discarded lies.

By a plan known only to Providence, the stolen sons and daughters of Africa helped to awaken the conscience of America. The very people traded into slavery helped set America free. My nation's journey toward justice has not been easy, and it is not over. The racial bigotry fed by slavery did not end with slavery or with segregation. And many of the issues that still trouble America have roots in the bitter experience of other times. But however long the journey, our destination is set: liberty and justice for all.

Address to Joint Session of Congress, September 20, 2001 · 2001

★ 3.6

Political speech

The power to tax involves the power to destroy.

2003

★ 3.6

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

McCulloch v. Maryland · 1819

★ 3.7

We still seek no wider war.