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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Frederick Douglass17 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 17 quotes →H.L. Mencken11 quotes
The average man doesn't want to be free. He simply wants to be safe. — H.L. Mencken · 1926Capitalism 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. — H.L. Mencken · 1928Puritanism—The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. — H.L. Mencken · 1949Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. — H.L. Mencken · 1916Nine 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. — H.L. Mencken · 1922Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. — H.L. Mencken · 1922All 11 quotes →Dashiell Hammett3 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 · 1930Spiro Agnew3 quotes
A spirit of national masochism prevails, encouraged by an effete corps of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals. — Spiro Agnew · 1969Ultraliberalism 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 · 1970In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. — Spiro Agnew · 1970Thurgood Marshall3 quotes
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 · 1969Maybe 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 · 1987The measure of a country's greatness is its ability to retain compassion in times of crisis. — Thurgood Marshall · 1972Emily Post2 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 · 1922Upton Sinclair2 quotes
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. — Upton Sinclair · 1935Now 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. — Upton Sinclair · 1905Adrienne Rich1 quote
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 · 1975Bill Callahan1 quote
Well, I can tell you about the river
Or we could just get in. — Bill Callahan · 2007Francis Scott Key1 quote
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! — Francis Scott Key · 1814Frank Zappa1 quote
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 · 1989Hortense Powdermaker1 quote
South Sea natives who have been exposed to American movies classify them into two types, "kiss-kiss" and "bang-bang." — Hortense Powdermaker · 1950John Dickinson1 quote
Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all! By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall. — John Dickinson · 1768John Rawls1 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 · 1971John Wilkes Booth1 quote
Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged! — John Wilkes Booth · 1865Roger B. Taney1 quote
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 · 1857Stephen Decatur1 quote
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong. — Stephen Decatur · 1816William Tyler Page1 quote
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. — William Tyler Page · 1917