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Political speech19 quotes
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857It 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. — Frederick Douglass · 1852If 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. — Frederick Douglass · 1857What, 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. — Frederick Douglass · 1852No, 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. — Frederick Douglass · 1847The 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. — Frederick Douglass · 1852All 19 quotes →Autobiography and memoir3 quotes
Every tone was a testimony against slavery, and a prayer to God for deliverance from chains. — Frederick Douglass · 1845It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair · 1935A 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 · 1989Detective fiction3 quotes
The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter. — Dashiell Hammett · 1930He felt like somebody had taken the lid off life and let him look at the works. — Dashiell Hammett · 1930That'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 · 1930Legal writing3 quotes
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 · 1857If 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 · 1969The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis. — Thurgood Marshall · 1972Political literature2 quotes
The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. — H.L. Mencken · 1926Justice 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 · 1971Sociology2 quotes
To do exactly as your neighbors do is the only sensible rule. — Emily Post · 1922Ideal 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 · 1922Feminist literature1 quote
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. — H.L. Mencken · 1918Folk rock1 quote
Well, I can tell you about the river
Or we could just get in. — Bill Callahan · 2007Philosophical literature1 quote
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 · 1971