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American politics194 quotes
With 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 · 1865We 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 · 1961But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. — Abraham Lincoln · 1863When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir... America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." — Abraham Lincoln · 1865All 194 quotes →Political theory141 quotes
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem. — Ronald Reagan · 1981The due administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government. — George Washington · 1789The happiness of society is the end of government. — John Adams · 1776All 141 quotes →Politics140 quotes
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787A riot is at bottom the language of the unheard. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1967Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. — James Madison · 1788Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. — James Madison · 1787Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857I agree with you, that in Politicks the Middle Way is none at all. — John Adams · 1776All 140 quotes →Progress58 quotes
That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. — Neil Armstrong · 1969I do not pretend to understand the moral universe, the arc is a long one... But from what I see I am sure it bends towards justice. — Theodore Parker · 1853I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low; the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963Come mothers and fathers,
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand. — Bob Dylan · 1964Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul. — Mark Twain · 1884All 58 quotes →America56 quotes
America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without. — Walt Whitman · 1871Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! — Emma Lazarus · 1883At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. — Abraham Lincoln · 1838I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how
beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America. — Langston Hughes · 1926This 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 · 1945The destiny of the colored American…is the destiny of America. — Frederick Douglass · 1862All 56 quotes →Freedom45 quotes
The boisterous sea of liberty indeed is never without a wave. — Thomas Jefferson · 1820When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure. — Thomas Jefferson · 1787Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety. — Benjamin Franklin · 1755Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. — James Baldwin · 1961I know why the caged bird sings! — Paul Laurence Dunbar · 1899All 45 quotes →War45 quotes
There are no atheists in the fox holes. — William Thomas Cummings · 1943War!
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing. — Edwin Starr · 1970In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory. — Douglas MacArthur · 1951There are no warlike peoples-just warlike leaders. — Ralph J. Bunche · 1950Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle. — George S. Patton · 1969To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given. — John Updike · 1989All 45 quotes →Art42 quotes
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals. — Susan Sontag · 1973Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. — Andy Warhol · 1975Filling a space in a beautiful way. That is what art means to me. — Georgia O'Keeffe · 1977I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own. — Andy Warhol · 1975In the Greek cities, it was reckoned profane, that any person should pretend a property in a work of art which belonged to all who could behold it. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1860All profoundly original art looks ugly at first. — Clement Greenberg · 1945All 42 quotes →Cold War37 quotes
Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall! — Ronald Reagan · 1987An evil empire. — Ronald Reagan · 1983Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F. Kennedy · 1963We have listened to the wisdom in an old Russian maxim. And I'm sure you're familiar with it, Mr. General Secretary…The maxim is…trust, but verify. — Ronald Reagan · 1987There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration. — Gerald Ford · 1976What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. — Francis Fukuyama · 1989All 37 quotes →Men and women35 quotes
Men, their rights, and nothing more; women, their rights, and nothing less. — Susan B. Anthony · 1868If you like it, then you shoulda put a ring on it. — Beyonce · 2008In the true marriage relation, the independence of the husband and wife is equal, the dependence mutual and their obligations reciprocal. — Lucretia Mott · 1880Women always ready to settle down. Shit, a woman goes on four good dates, she's like "Why are we bullshittin'? What are you waiting for?" Men—never ready to settle down. Men don't settle down. We surrender. — Chris Rock · 1996When two people take each other on terms of perfect equality, without the desire of one to control the other, to make the other subservient, it is a beautiful thing. It is the truest and highest state of life. — Susan B. Anthony · 1896Stand by your man
And show the world you love him,
Keep giving all the love you can. — Tammy Wynette · 1968All 35 quotes →Democracy34 quotes
What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. — Francis Fukuyama · 1989Well, the people have spoken-the bastards. — Dick Tuck · 1966In a racially divided society majority rule is not a reliable instrument of democracy. — Lani Guinier · 1992A monarchy is a merchantman which sails well, but will sometimes strike on a rock, and go to the bottom; a republic is a raft which will never sink, but then your feet are always in the water. — Fisher Ames · 1795It is a great word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because that history has yet to be enacted. — Walt Whitman · 1871What other form of government, indeed, can so well deserve our esteem and love? — John Adams · 1797All 34 quotes →The human condition34 quotes
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry. — Ernest Hemingway · 1929Imagine that human existence is defined by an Ache: the Ache of our not being, each of us, the center of the universe; of our desires forever outnumbering our means of satisfying them. — Jonathan Franzen · 1996We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave-to the ancient enemies of man-half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival for us all. — Adlai Stevenson · 1965I think I could turn and live ahile with te animals, they are so placid and self-contain'd,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied...not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth. — Walt Whitman · 1855All 34 quotes →Love33 quotes
I have also decided to stick with love...hate is too great a burden to bear. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1967Love is or it ain't. Thin love ain't love at all. — Toni Morrison · 1987Love may be a sleepy, creeping thing with some others, but it is a mighty wakening thing with me. — Zora Neale Hurston · 1942Nobody dies from lack of sex. It's lack of love we die from. — Margaret Atwood · 1985What is Love?... It is the morning and the evening star. — Sinclair Lewis · 1927What did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? — Robert Hayden · 1962All 33 quotes →Political progress33 quotes
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. — Frederick Douglass · 1857Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788If 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 · 1857I was born by the river
In a little tent
And just like the river
I've been runnin' ever since
It's been a long, a long time comin'
But I know a change gon' come. — Sam Cooke · 1964The 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 · 1852Come Senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall. — Bob Dylan · 1963All 33 quotes →Human nature32 quotes
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.) — Walt Whitman · 1855Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854It is useful to distinguish among four factors which give importance, urgency, and inevitability to the advancement of space technology. The first of these factors is the compelling urge of man to explore and to discover, the thrust of curiosity that leads men to try to go where no one has gone before. — James R. Killian · 1958Man is the Only Animal that Blushes. Or needs to. — Mark Twain · 1897All 32 quotes →Life32 quotes
Our life is frittered away by detail…. Simplify, simplify. — Henry David Thoreau · 1854How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. — Annie Dillard · 1990Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks. — T.S. Eliot · 1932Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1911The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way. — Michael Crichton · 1953Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. — Allen Saunders · 1957All 32 quotes →American Civil War29 quotes
With 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 · 1865We 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 · 1861But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. — Abraham Lincoln · 1863Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged! — John Wilkes Booth · 1865Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." — Abraham Lincoln · 1865It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. — Abraham Lincoln · 1865All 29 quotes →Government29 quotes
Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint. — Alexander Hamilton · 1787It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. — James Madison · 1788Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit. — James Madison · 1788The best government is that which governs least. — John L. O'Sullivan · 1837If all men were just, there still would be some, though not so much, need of government. — Abraham Lincoln · 1854There are no necessary evils in the government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favor alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. — Andrew Jackson · 1832All 29 quotes →Slavery28 quotes
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just. — Thomas Jefferson · 1785Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether." — Abraham Lincoln · 1865It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. — Abraham Lincoln · 1865A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved—I do not expect the house to fall—but I do expect it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing or all the other. — Abraham Lincoln · 1858If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. — Abraham Lincoln · 1864Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue. — Abraham Lincoln · 1862All 28 quotes →International politics27 quotes
Ich bin ein Berliner. — John F. Kennedy · 1963Speak softly and carry a big stick. — Theodore Roosevelt · 1900What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of man's ideological evolution and the universalism of Western liberal democracy. — Francis Fukuyama · 1989The world must be made safe for democracy. — Woodrow Wilson · 1917The attitude above all others which I feel sure is no longer valid is the arrogance of power, the tendency of great nations to equate power with virtue and major responsibilities with a universal mission. — J. William Fulbright · 1966I asked Tom if countries always apologized when they had done wrong, and he says:
"Yes, the little ones does." — Mark Twain · 1894All 27 quotes →Law26 quotes
A government of laws, and not of men. — John Adams · 1775The law sees and treats women the way men see and treat women. — Catharine MacKinnon · 1983I fought the law, and the law won. — The Crickets · 1961The law may... Depend on what the judge has had for breakfast. — Robert Maynard Hutchins · 1933The law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still. — Roscoe Pound · 1921The truth is, that the law is always approaching, and never reaching, consistency. It is forever adopting new principles from life at one end, and it always retains old ones from history at the other, which have not yet been absorbed or sloughed off. It will become entirely consistent only when it ceases to grow. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1880All 26 quotes →Legal theory26 quotes
Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched... Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind... We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. — Thomas Jefferson · 1816It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is... If two laws conflict with each other, the Courts must decide on the operation of each... This is of the very essence of judicial duty. — John Marshall · 1803They 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 · 1857The law must be stable, and yet it cannot stand still. — Roscoe Pound · 1921It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since, and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1897There are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963All 26 quotes →Equality25 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. · 1963Four 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 · 1863When we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!" — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 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 · 1945I hold that if the Almighty had ever made a set of men that should do all the eating and none of the work, he would have made them with mouths only and no hands, and if he had ever made another class that he intended should do all the work and none of the eating, he would have made them without mouths and with all hands. — Abraham Lincoln · 1859We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal. — Elizabeth Cady Stanton · 1848All 25 quotes →American foreign policy24 quotes
Our whole duty, for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto, "America first." — Woodrow Wilson · 1915I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. — Harry Truman · 1947Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate. — John F. Kennedy · 1961Observe good faith and justice toward all Nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all... The Nation, which indulges towards another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. — George Washington · 1796The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign Nations, is, in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little Political connection as possible. — George Washington · 1796In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others. — Franklin D. Roosevelt · 1933All 24 quotes →Success24 quotes
I 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 · 1854You don't ever have to do anything sensational for people to love you. — Fred Rogers · 2002Showing up is 80 percent of life. — Woody Allen · 1977Success is relative:
It is what we can make of the mess we have
made of things. — T.S. Eliot · 1939I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. — Michael Jordan · 1997If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business—you didn't build that. — Barack Obama · 2012All 24 quotes →Taking risks24 quotes
Always do what you are afraid to do. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841I 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 · 1854In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1841Remembering 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 · 2005Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could. — Louise Erdrich · 2005100 percent of the shots you don't take don't go in the net. — Wayne Gretzky · 1983All 24 quotes →Black experience23 quotes
I, too, sing America.
I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.
Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen"
Then.
Besides,
They'll see how
beautiful I am
And be ashamed—
I, too, am America. — Langston Hughes · 1926I swear to the Lord
I still can't see
Why Democracy means
Everybody but me. — Langston Hughes · 1943If we should ever get to Heaven, we shall find nobody to reproach us for being black, or being slaves. — Jupiter Hammon · 1786Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? — W.E.B. Du Bois · 1903The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed. — Frederick Douglass · 1853I am an invisible man... I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids-and I might even be said to posses a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. — Ralph Ellison · 1952All 23 quotes →US Constitution23 quotes
When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir... America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963We current Justices read the Constitution in the only way that we can: as Twentieth Century Americans. We look into the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But, the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time. For the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but it's in the adaptability of its great principles to cope with current problems and current needs. — William J. Brennan, Jr. · 1985We must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding. — John Marshall · 1819This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861I hold that, in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual... Continue to execute all the express provisions of our National Constitution, and the Union will endure forever - it being impossible to destroy it except by some action not provided for in the instrument itself. — Abraham Lincoln · 1861A constitution is, in fact, and must be regarded by the judges, as a fundamental law. It therefore belongs to them to ascertain its meaning, as well as the meaning of any particular act proceeding from the legislative body. If there should happen to be an irreconcilable variance between the two, that which has the superior obligation and validity ought, of course, to be preferred; or, in other words, the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents. — Alexander Hamilton · 1788All 23 quotes →Civil rights21 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. · 1963When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir... America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1963We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1968I was born by the river
In a little tent
And just like the river
I've been runnin' ever since
It's been a long, a long time comin'
But I know a change gon' come. — Sam Cooke · 1964Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever! — George Wallace · 1963Government action is not the whole answer to the present crisis, but it is an important partial answer. Morals cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. The law cannot make an employer love me, but it can keep him from refusing to hire me because of the color of my skin. — Martin Luther King, Jr. · 1958All 21 quotes →Constitutional law21 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 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 · 1947These men and women...ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. — Anthony Kennedy · 2015They 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 · 1969In other words, the First Amendment has a penumbra where privacy is protected from governmental intrusion. — William O. Douglas · 1965All 21 quotes →