Sourced and curated.

How long will the human race sweat under the superstition that, in order to be happy and useful and intelligent, it is necessary to believe in things? What nonsense indeed! Human progress consists, not in acquiring beliefs, but in getting rid of them.

1918

★ 1.8

Now and then a visitor wept, to be sure; but this slaughtering machine ran on, visitors or no visitors. It was like some horrible crime committed in a dungeon, all unseen and unheeded, buried out of sight and of memory.

1921

★ 1.8

Novel

Upton Sinclair

The Jungle · 1905

★ 1.9

Essay · Newspaper

There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.

1917

★ 1.9

The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.

No one in this world, so far as I know...has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.

1919

★ 1.9

Article · Newspaper

South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, "kiss-kiss" and "bang-bang."

1926

★ 1.9

Hortense Powdermaker

1950

★ 1.9

In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism.

Spiro Agnew

1970

★ 1.9

Sociology

Ideal conversation is an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.

Emily Post

1922

★ 1.9

Novel · Magazine · Detective fiction

That's the part of it I always liked. He adjusted himself to beams falling, and then no more of them fell, and he adjusted himself to them not falling.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 1.9

Interview

Maybe you can't override prejudice overnight, but the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863, ninety-odd years ago. I believe in gradualism. I also believe that ninety-odd years is pretty gradual.

Thurgood Marshall

1987

★ 1.9

The relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country, is of all other questions, the great, paramount, imperative and all commanding question for this age and nation to solve.

1863

★ 2.0

We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.

I believe in the United States of America as a government of the people, by the people, for the people, whose just powers are derived from the consent of the governed; a democracy in a republic; a sovereign Nation of many sovereign States; a perfect Union, one and inseparable, established upon those principles of freedom, equality, justice, and humanity for which American patriots sacrificed their lives and fortunes. I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies.

1893

★ 2.1

William Tyler Page

1917

★ 3.4

Ultraliberalism today translates into a whimpering isolationism in foreign policy, a mulish obstructionism in domestic policy, a pusillanimous pussyfooting on the critical issue of law and order.

Spiro Agnew

Speech at Illinois Republican Meeting, September 10, 1970 · 1970

★ 3.5

Speech

When someone tells me a piece of the truth which has been withheld from me, and which I needed in order to see my life more clearly, it may bring acute pain, but it can flood me with a cold, sea-sharp wash of relief.

Adrienne Rich

1975

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

A drug is neither moral or immoral-it's a chemical compound. The compound itself is not a menace to society until a human being treats it as if consumption bestowed a temporary licence to act like an asshole.

Frank Zappa

1989

★ 3.5

Song

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.

John Dickinson

The Liberty Song · 1768

★ 3.5

Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

1916

★ 3.5

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

1922

★ 3.5

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

1922

★ 3.5

Autobiography and memoir

Upton Sinclair

1935

★ 3.5

A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.

Spiro Agnew

1969

★ 3.5

Song · Folk rock

Well, I can tell you about the river Or we could just get in.

Bill Callahan

From the Rivers to the Ocean · 2007

★ 3.5

Novel · Magazine · Detective fiction

He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works.

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 3.6

Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

1949

★ 3.6

You profess to believe "that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth," and hath commanded all men, everywhere, to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own!

1852

★ 3.7

Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob, and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe.

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

1886

★ 3.7

Novel · Magazine · Detective fiction

Dashiell Hammett

Black Mask · 1930

★ 3.7

Despite of it all, the Negro remains like iron or granite, cool, strong, imperturbable and cheerful.

1883

★ 3.8

The life of a nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule.

1885

★ 3.8

Sociology

Emily Post

1922

★ 3.8

Autobiography and memoir

Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains.

Capitalism undoubtedly has certain boils and blotches upon it, but has it as many as government? Has it as many as marriage? Has it as many as religion? I doubt it. It is the only basic institution of modern man that shows any genuine health and vigor.

Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass · 1845

★ 3.9

Political literature · Philosophical literature

1928

★ 4.3

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust.

John Rawls

A Theory of Justice · 1971

★ 4.4

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

Stephen Decatur

1816

★ 5.2

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch.

Thurgood Marshall

Stanley v. Georgia · 1969

★ 5.3

Supreme Court opinion · Legal opinion · Legal writing

They are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word "citizens" in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States.

Roger B. Taney

Dred Scott v. Sandford · 1857

★ 5.4

The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.

1853

★ 5.5

No man can put a chain about the ankle of his fellow man, without at last finding the other end of it fastened about his own neck.

The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.

1883

★ 5.5

Political literature

Notes on Democracy · 1926

★ 6.1

The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said: for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved.

1865

★ 6.1

The destiny of the colored American…is the destiny of America.

And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there- O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave!

1862

★ 6.3

Song

Francis Scott Key

The Star-Spangled Banner · 1814

★ 6.9

No, I make no pretension to patriotism. So long as my voice can be heard on this or the other side of the Atlantic, I will hold up America to the lightning scorn of moral indignation. In doing this, I shall feel myself discharging the duty of a true patriot; for he is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins.

1847

★ 7.0

The man who is right is a majority. He who has God and conscience on his side, has a majority against the universe. Though he does not represent the present state, he represents the future state. If he does not represent what we are, he represents what we ought to be.

1852

★ 7.0

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham.

1852

★ 7.0

If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.

1857

★ 7.0

It is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? · 1852

★ 7.0

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.