The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Boxing4 quotes
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee! — Muhammad Ali · 1964Not only do I knock 'em out, I pick the round. — Muhammad Ali · 1963I have wrassled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale, I woulda handcuffed lightnin', throw thunder in jail. — Muhammad Ali · 1974It's just a job. Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand. I beat people up. — Muhammad Ali · 1977Constitutional law3 quotes
Our 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 · 1928The Court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function. — Louis Brandeis · 1932American politics2 quotes
It 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 · 1932In all disputes between conflicting governments it is our interest not less than our duty to remain strictly neutral, while our geographical position, the genius of our institutions and our people, the advancing spirit of civilization, and, above all, the dictates of religion direct us to the cultivation of peaceful and friendly relations with all other powers. — Zachary Taylor · 1849Freedom2 quotes
The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding. — Louis Brandeis · 1928Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties; and that in its government the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty. — Louis Brandeis · 1927Freedom of speech and expression2 quotes
Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify suppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burned women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. — Louis Brandeis · 1927Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards. They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty. To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. — Louis Brandeis · 1927Legal theory2 quotes
Our 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 · 1896The Court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function. — Louis Brandeis · 1932Nature2 quotes
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. — Wendell Berry · 1968Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory and a sterner sense of justice than we do. — Wendell Berry · 1995Race relations2 quotes
Yeah, Africa's my home. Damn America and what America thinks. Yeah, I live in America; but, Africa's the home of the black man. And I was a slave 400 years ago and I'm going back home to fight among my brothers. Yeah! — Muhammad Ali · 1996Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin. — Whitney Young · 1969Africa1 quote
Yeah, Africa's my home. Damn America and what America thinks. Yeah, I live in America; but, Africa's the home of the black man. And I was a slave 400 years ago and I'm going back home to fight among my brothers. Yeah! — Muhammad Ali · 1996Aging1 quote
Our hair
turns white with our ripening
as though to fly away in some
coming wind, bearing the seed
of what we know. — Wendell Berry · 1980American Revolution1 quote
Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war let it begin here! — John Parker · 1775American foreign policy1 quote
In all disputes between conflicting governments it is our interest not less than our duty to remain strictly neutral, while our geographical position, the genius of our institutions and our people, the advancing spirit of civilization, and, above all, the dictates of religion direct us to the cultivation of peaceful and friendly relations with all other powers. — Zachary Taylor · 1849Big business1 quote
Is there not a casual connection between the development of these huge, indomitable trusts and the horrible crimes now under investigation?... Is it not irony to speak of the equality of opportunity in a country cursed with their bigness? — Louis Brandeis · 1911Bill of Rights1 quote
They 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 · 1928Black identity1 quote
Yeah, Africa's my home. Damn America and what America thinks. Yeah, I live in America; but, Africa's the home of the black man. And I was a slave 400 years ago and I'm going back home to fight among my brothers. Yeah! — Muhammad Ali · 1996Black is beautiful1 quote
Black is beautiful when it is a slum kid studying to enter college, when it is a man learning new skills for a new job, or a slum mother battling to give her kids a chance for a better life. But white is beautiful, too, when it helps change society to make our system work for black people also. White is ugly when it oppresses blacks-and so is black ugly when black people exploit other blacks. No race has a monopoly on vice or virtue, and the worth of an individual is not related to the color of his skin. — Whitney Young · 1969Common law1 quote
Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society... Now the right to life has come to mean the right to enjoy life, — the right to be let alone; the right to liberty secures the exercise of extensive civil privileges; and the term "property" has grown to comprise every possession — intangible, as well as tangible. — Louis Brandeis · 1890Dissent1 quote
Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. — Wendell Berry · 1973Dogs1 quote
The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog.... When all other friends desert, he remains. — George Graham Vest · 1870Drugs1 quote
We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold. — Hunter S. Thompson · 1971Enlightenment1 quote
A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing. — Muhammad Ali · 1964Environmental destruction1 quote
Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory and a sterner sense of justice than we do. — Wendell Berry · 1995Federalism1 quote
It 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 · 1932Fourth Amendment1 quote
They 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 · 1928Greatness1 quote
It's hard to be humble when you are as great as I am. — Muhammad Ali · 1974Humility1 quote
It's hard to be humble when you are as great as I am. — Muhammad Ali · 1974Ignorance1 quote
A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he'll never crow. I have seen the light and I'm crowing. — Muhammad Ali · 1964Jim Crow1 quote
The 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 · 1896Lawyers1 quote
Instead of holding a position of independence, between the wealthy and the people, prepared to curb the excesses of either, able lawyers have, to a large extent, allowed themselves to become adjuncts of great corporations and have neglected the obligation to use their powers for the protection of the people. We hear much of the "corporation lawyer," and far too little of the "people's lawyer." — Louis Brandeis · 1905