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Political speech472 quotes
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations. — Abraham Lincoln · 1865Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. — Abraham Lincoln · 1863We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. — John F. Kennedy · 1961All 472 quotes →Political literature149 quotes
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. — Thomas Jefferson · 1785A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed. — James Madison · 1789Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without. — Walt Whitman · 1871Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. — James Madison · 1789All 149 quotes →Autobiography and memoir113 quotes
Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. — Andy Warhol · 1975All 113 quotes →Legal writing76 quotes
This right of privacy...is broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy. — Harry A. Blackmun · 1973The government of the United States has been emphatically termed a government of laws, and not of men. — John Marshall · 1803Taxes are what we pay for civilized society. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1927The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. — Louis Brandeis · 1928The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. — Hugo Black · 1947The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials, and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts. One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections. — Robert H. Jackson · 1943All 76 quotes →Comedy (stand up)58 quotes
Relationships: easy to get into, hard to maintain. Why are they so hard to maintain? Cause it’s hard to keep up the lie. 'Cause you can't get nobody being you. You got to lie to get somebody. You can't get nobody lookin' like you look, actin' like you act, soundin' like you sound. That's right, when you meet somebody for the first time, you're not meeting them. You're meeting their representative! — Chris Rock · 1999What the fuck do women want? I know what you want: everything. — Chris Rock · 1999Prenuptial agreement. Everybody needs a prenup! People think you gotta be rich to get a prenup, oh no! You got 20 million, your wife want 10, big deal, you ain't starvin'. But if you make 30 thousand, and your wife want 15, you might have to kill her! — Chris Rock · 1996I don't have a girlfriend, I just know a girl who would get really mad if she heard me say that. — Mitch Hedberg · 1999You could be the baddest mama on earth. I don’t give a fuck how good you are. Ain't nothing you can say more powerful than, "I’m gonna tell your daddy." — Chris Rock · 1999There ain't a white man in this room that would change places with me. None of ya! None of ya would change places with me...and I'm rich! That's how good it is to be white. — Chris Rock · 1999All 58 quotes →Philosophical literature32 quotes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana · 1905Politics makes strange bedfellows. — Charles Dudley Warner · 1870The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities. — Allan Bloom · 1987The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contradictory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of the potential knowers... Of all men to the extent they desire to know. But in fact, this includes only a few, the true friends, as Plato was to Aristotle at the very moment they were disagreeing about the nature of the good... They were absolutely one soul as they looked at the problem. This, according to Plato, is the only real friendship, the only real common good. It is here that the contact people so desperately seek is to be found. — Allan Bloom · 1987Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own finitude, and his finitude is, in one sense, overcome. — George Santayana · 1910Justice 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 · 1971All 32 quotes →Sociology32 quotes
What little girls learn is not the desire for the other, but the desire to be desired. — Naomi Wolf · 1990Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. — Thorstein Veblen · 1899There must be eyes upon the street, eyes belonging to those we might call the natural proprietors of the street. The buildings on a street equipped to handle strangers and to insure the safety of both residents and strangers, must be oriented to the street. They cannot turn their backs or blank sides on it and leave it blind. — Jane Jacobs · 1961"Beauty" is a currency system like the gold standard. Like any economy, it is determined by politics, and in the modern age in the West it is the last, best belief system that keeps male dominance intact. — Naomi Wolf · 1990To be a Negro is to participate in a culture of poverty and fear that goes far deeper than any law for or against discrimination... After the racist statues are all struck down, after legal equality has been achieved in the schools and in the courts, there remains the profound institutionalized and abiding wrong that white America has worked on the Negro for so long. — Michael Harrington · 1962All 32 quotes →Travel writing31 quotes
Imagination labors best in distant fields. — Mark Twain · 1869Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. — Mark Twain · 1897The last time I see Paris will be on the day I die. The city was inexhaustible, and so is its memory. — Elliot Paul · 1942On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing. But in those brevities just before dawn and a little after dark-times neither day nor night-the old roads return to the sky some of its color. Then, in truth, they cast a mysterious shadow of blue, and it's that time when the pull of the blue highway is strongest, when the open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself. — William Least Heat-Moon · 1982Every one is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody. — Mark Twain · 1897True irreverence is disrespect for another man's god. — Mark Twain · 1897All 31 quotes →Scientific literature28 quotes
If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham Maslow · 1966Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. — Abraham Maslow · 1966We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds-and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds. We cut nature up, organize it into concepts, and ascribe significances as we do, largely because we are parties to an agreement that holds throughout our speech community and is codified in the patterns of our language. — Benjamin Lee Whorf · 1940"Could a machine think?" my own view is that only a machine could think, and indeed only very special kinds of machines, namely brains and machines that had the same causal powers as brains... Whatever else intentionality is, it is a biological phenomenon, and it is as likely to be as causally dependent on the specific biochemistry of its origins as lactation, photosynthesis, or any other biological phenomena. — John R. Searle · 1980For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. — Robert Jastrow · 1978We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever. — Carl Sagan · 1980All 28 quotes →Comedy26 quotes
He’s nice, bit of a close talker. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994You can't believe this woman. She's one of these low-talkers. You can't hear a word she's saying! You're always going "excuse me?", "what was that?" — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993We're not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word police-the wordinistas-over at Webster's are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books...I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. — Stephen Colbert · 2005They don't grade fathers but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up! — Chris Rock · 2004All 26 quotes →Comedy (TV)26 quotes
He’s nice, bit of a close talker. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994You can't believe this woman. She's one of these low-talkers. You can't hear a word she's saying! You're always going "excuse me?", "what was that?" — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993We're not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993I'm feeling pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good. — Larry David · 2001Truthiness. Now I'm sure some of the word police-the wordinistas-over at Webster's are gonna say, "Hey, that's not a word." Well, anybody who knows me knows I'm no fan of dictionaries or reference books...I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. — Stephen Colbert · 2005All 26 quotes →Rock music26 quotes
Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of livin' is gone. — John Mellencamp · 1982So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U. S. A. — Bruce Springsteen · 1984We gotta get out while we're young
'Cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run. — Bruce Springsteen · 1975Everybody hurts sometimes
Everybody cries. — R.E.M. · 1992Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, that red, white, and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the Chief,"
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no senator's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me
I ain't no fortunate one. — Creedence Clearwater Revival · 1969I'm a loser, baby, so why don't you kill me? — Beck · 1993All 26 quotes →Great American songbook24 quotes
There's no business like show business. — Irving Berlin · 1946I'm dreaming of a white Christmas,
Just like the ones I used to know,
Where the treetops glisten
And children listen
To hear sleigh bells in the snow. — Bing Crosby · 1942God bless America,
Land that I love,
Stand beside her and guide her
Through the night with a light from above.
From the mountains to the prairies,
To the oceans white with foam,
God bless America,
My home sweet home. — Irving Berlin · 1938Anything you can do, I can do better, I can do anything better than you. — Irving Berlin · 1946Oh, what a beautiful mornin'
Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin'
Everything's going my way. — Rodgers and Hammerstein · 1943I like to be in America!
Ok by me in America!
Everything free in America
For a small fee in America! — Stephen Sondheim · 1957All 24 quotes →Historical literature23 quotes
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed. — Barbara Tuchman · 1972It is Toussaint's supreme merit that while he saw European civilisation as a valuable and necessary thing, and strove to lay its foundations among his people, he never had the illusion that it conferred any moral superiority. He knew French, British, and Spanish imperialists for the insatiable gangsters that they were, that there is no oath too sacred for them to break, no crime, deception, treachery, cruelty, destruction of human life and property which they would not commit against those who could not defend themselves. — C.L.R. James · 1938What the Mediterranean Sea was to the Greeks, breaking the bond of custom, offering new experiences, calling out new institutions and activities, that, and more, the ever retreating frontier has been to the United States directly, and to the nations of Europe more remotely. And now, four centuries from the discovery of America, at the end of a hundred years of life under the Constitution, the frontier has gone, and with its going has closed the first period of American history. — Frederick Jackson Turner · 1893A tough but nervous, tenacious but restless race; materially ambitious, yet prone to introspection, and subject to waves of religious emotion... A race whose typical member is eternally torn between a passion for righteousness and a desire to get on in the world. — Samuel Eliot Morison · 1921Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip, and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war. — Barbara Tuchman · 1962When history is written as it ought to be written, it is the moderation and long patience of the masses at which men will wonder, not their ferocity. — C.L.R. James · 1938All 23 quotes →Psychological literature20 quotes
An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible. — William James · 1890We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar... Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. — William James · 1890Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? — William James · 1896If the only tool you have is a hammer, it is tempting to treat everything as if it were a nail. — Abraham Maslow · 1966Some people are far more sensitive to resemblances, and far more ready to point out wherein they consist, than others are. They are the wits, the poets, the inventors, the scientific men, the practical geniuses. — William James · 1890Growth was seen as an endless series of daily choices and decisions in each of which one can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again. — Abraham Maslow · 1966All 20 quotes →Commencement address19 quotes
You don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. — Fred Rogers · 2002Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. — Steve Jobs · 2005Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel, a facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal. We are intimately related. — Fred Rogers · 2002The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty, unsexy ways, every day. — David Foster Wallace · 2005It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our lives, from which we make our choices, is very good stuff. — Fred Rogers · 2002Stay hungry, stay foolish. — Steve Jobs · 1974All 19 quotes →Children's literature17 quotes
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. — Mark Twain · 1876What do you mean, less than nothing? I don't think there is any such thing as less than nothing. Nothing is absolutely the limit of nothingness. It's the lowest you can go. It's the end of the line. How can something be less than nothing? If there were something that was less than nothing, then nothing would not be nothing, it would be something-even though it's just a very little bit of something. But if nothing is nothing, then nothing has nothing that is less than it is. — E.B. White · 1952There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. — Mark Twain · 1884All kings is mostly rapscallions. — Mark Twain · 1884It’s lovely to live on a raft. — Mark Twain · 1884In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. — Mark Twain · 1876All 17 quotes →Feminist literature17 quotes
Seduction is often difficult to distinguish from rape. In seduction, the rapist bothers to buy a bottle of wine. — Andrea Dworkin · 1979Oppressed people are frequently very oppressive when first liberated. And why wouldn't they be? They know best two positions. Somebody's foot on their neck or their foot on somebody's neck. — Florynce Kennedy · 1970The problem lay buried, unspoken, for many years in the minds of American women. It was a strange stirring, a sense of dissatisfaction, a yearning that women suffered in the middle of the twentieth century in the United States. Each suburban wife struggled with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night-she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-"Is this all?" — Betty Friedan · 1963The power of money is a distinctly male power. Money speaks, but it speaks with a male voice. In the hands of women, money stays literal; count it out, it buys what it is worth or less. In the hands of men, money buys women, sex, status, dignity, esteem, recognition, loyalty, all manner of possibility. — Andrea Dworkin · 1981Perhaps patriarchy's greatest psychological weapon is simply its universality and longevity... Patriarchy has a still more tenacious or powerful hold through its successful habit of passing itself off as nature. — Kate Millett · 1970If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts. — Camille Paglia · 1990All 17 quotes →Hip hop17 quotes
I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of not trying. — Jay-Z · 2006You only live once, that's the motto nigga YOLO — Drake · 2011You gotta fight
For your right
To party. — Beastie Boys · 1986Look, if you had one shot or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted in one moment
Would you capture it, or just let it slip? — Eminem · 2002Cash rules everything around me
C. R. E. A. M., get the money
Dollar dollar bill, y'all — Wu-Tang Clan · 1994Don't push me 'cause I'm close to the edge
I'm tryin' not to lose my head
It's like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under. — Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five · 1982All 17 quotes →Folk music16 quotes
For the loser now will be later to win,
For the times they are a-changin'. — Bob Dylan · 1964Come mothers and fathers,
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand. — Bob Dylan · 1964How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
A complete unknown
Like a rolling stone? — Bob Dylan · 1965The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'. — Bob Dylan · 1965How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?...
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind. — Bob Dylan · 1963This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York Island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me. — Woody Guthrie · 1945All 16 quotes →Pop music15 quotes
If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it. — Beyonce · 2008It's such a perfect day
I'm glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on. — Lou Reed · 1972Set me free, why don'tcha, baby
Get out my life, why don'tcha, baby
'Cause you don't really love me
You just keep me hangin' on. — The Supremes · 1966People, people who need people
Are the luckiest people in the world. — Barbra Streisand · 1964When the working day is done
Oh girls, they wanna have fun
Oh, girls just wanna have fun — Cyndi Lauper · 1979Got to kick at the darkness 'til it bleeds daylight. — Bruce Cockburn · 1984All 15 quotes →Economic literature14 quotes
In order to gain and to hold the esteem of men it is not sufficient merely to possess wealth or power. The wealth or power must be put in evidence, for esteem is awarded only on evidence. — Thorstein Veblen · 1899All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1977It will be convenient to have a name for the ideas which are esteemed at any time for their acceptability, and it should be a term that emphasizes this predictability. I shall refer to these ideas henceforth as the conventional wisdom. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reputability to the gentleman of leisure. — Thorstein Veblen · 1899Wealth is not without its advantages and the case to the contrary, although it has often been made, has never proved widely persuasive. — John Kenneth Galbraith · 1958History suggests only that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom. Clearly it is not a sufficient condition. — Milton Friedman · 1962All 14 quotes →Religious literature14 quotes
The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire. — Jonathan Edwards · 1741Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found? — William James · 1896For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries. — Robert Jastrow · 1978That there is a Devil, is a Thing Doubted by none but such as are under the Influence of the Devil. For any to Deny the Being of a Devil must be from an Ignorance or Profaneness, worse than diabolical. — Cotton Mather · 1693This universe is not hostile, nor yet is it friendly. It is simply indifferent. — John H. Holmes · 1932Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. — Helen Keller · 1940All 14 quotes →Sitcom14 quotes
He’s nice, bit of a close talker. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994If every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1994You can't believe this woman. She's one of these low-talkers. You can't hear a word she's saying! You're always going "excuse me?", "what was that?" — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993We're not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1993Why do I always have the feeling that everybody’s doing something better than me on Saturday afternoons? — Jerry Seinfeld · 1991You’re a nice guy, but I actually only have three friends. I really can't handle any more. — Jerry Seinfeld · 1995All 14 quotes →Dystopian fiction12 quotes
Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. — Margaret Atwood · 1985When we think of the past it's the beautiful things we pick out. We want to believe it was all like that. — Margaret Atwood · 1985But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind. — Margaret Atwood · 1985He loved the People just as much as he feared and detested Persons. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935It isn't what you earn but how you spend it that fixes your class. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on. — Sinclair Lewis · 1935All 12 quotes →Adventure novel11 quotes
Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden. — Mark Twain · 1876There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth. — Mark Twain · 1884All kings is mostly rapscallions. — Mark Twain · 1884It’s lovely to live on a raft. — Mark Twain · 1884In order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. — Mark Twain · 1876I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me and I can't stand it. I been there before. — Mark Twain · 1884All 11 quotes →Biography10 quotes
If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. — Charlie Parker · 1955Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. — George S. Patton · 1969We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us! — Malcolm X · 1992Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man. I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is no place in this world that man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone, he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone, he's created destruction. So I charge him. — Malcolm X · 1992Be nice to people on your way up because you'll meet 'em on your way down. — Wilson Mizner · 1953Because of the spiritual rebirth which I was blessed to undergo as a result of my pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweeping indictments of one race. I intend to be very careful not to sentence anyone who has not been proven guilty. I'm not a racist and do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. In all honesty and sincerity it can be stated that I wish nothing but freedom, justice and equality: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people. Now my first concern, of course, is with the group to which I belong, for we, more than any others, are deprived of our inalienable rights. But I believe the true practice of Islam can remove the cancer of racism from the hearts and the souls of all Americans. — Malcolm X · 1992All 10 quotes →Nature writing10 quotes
The world today is sick to its thin blood for lack of elemental things, for fire before the hands, for water welling from the earth, for air, for the dear earth itself underfoot. — Henry Beston · 1928Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land. — Aldo Leopold · 1949The edge of the sea is a strange and beautiful place. All through the long history of Earth it has been an area of unrest where waves have broken heavily against the land, where the tides have pressed forward over the continents, receded, and then returned. For no two successive days is the shore line precisely the same. — Rachel Carson · 1955The sea lies all about us. The commerce of all lands must cross it. The very winds that move over the lands have been cradled on its broad expanse and seek ever to return to it. The continents themselves dissolve and pass to the sea, in grain after grain of eroded land. So the rains that rose from it return again in rivers. In its mysterious past it encompasses all the dim origins of life and receives in the end, after, it may be, many transmutations, the dead husks of that same life. For all at least return to the sea—to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end. — Rachel Carson · 1951A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. — Aldo Leopold · 1949Nature teaches more than she preaches. There are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral. — John Burroughs · 1912All 10 quotes →Dissenting opinion9 quotes
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. — Louis Brandeis · 1928The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race while they are on a public highway is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution... We boast of the freedom enjoyed by our people above all other peoples. But it is difficult to reconcile that boast with a state of the law which, practically, puts the brand of servitude and degradation upon a large class of our fellow citizens, our equals before the law. The thin disguise of "equal" accommodations for passengers in railroad coaches will not mislead anyone, nor atone for the wrong this day done. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. — John Marshall Harlan · 1896They conferred, as against the Government, the right to be let alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. — Louis Brandeis · 1928It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country. — Louis Brandeis · 1932If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold. — Louis Brandeis · 1924All 9 quotes →Drama9 quotes
Business is war. It's dog eat dog, rat eat rat. If my competitor were drowning, I'd walk over and I'd put a hose right in his mouth. — Ray Kroc · 2016We didn't land on Plymouth Rock—Plymouth Rock landed on us! — Malcolm X · 1992My back is thick with scars for protesting my freedom. — Solomon Northup · 2013Brothers and sisters, I am here to tell you that I charge the white man. I charge the white man with being the greatest murderer on earth. I charge the white man with being the greatest kidnapper on earth. There is no place in this world that man can go and say he created peace and harmony. Everywhere he's gone, he's created havoc. Everywhere he's gone, he's created destruction. So I charge him. — Malcolm X · 1992Because of the spiritual rebirth which I was blessed to undergo as a result of my pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca, I no longer subscribe to sweeping indictments of one race. I intend to be very careful not to sentence anyone who has not been proven guilty. I'm not a racist and do not subscribe to any of the tenets of racism. In all honesty and sincerity it can be stated that I wish nothing but freedom, justice and equality: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for all people. Now my first concern, of course, is with the group to which I belong, for we, more than any others, are deprived of our inalienable rights. But I believe the true practice of Islam can remove the cancer of racism from the hearts and the souls of all Americans. — Malcolm X · 1992Mendacity is a system that we live in. Liquor is one way out and death's the other. — Tennessee Williams · 1955All 9 quotes →