
“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.”
Letter published 15 October 1787 in the New York Daily Advertiser under the pseudonym “Caesar”; Paul Leicester Ford suggested that “Caesar” was Alexander Hamilton, but this has not been generally accepted. See Jacob E. Cooke, "Alexander Hamilton's Authorship of the 'Caesar' Letters," The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Jan., 1960), pp. 78-85
Attributed
“If I could snap my fingers and be nonautistic, I would not. Autism is part of what I am.”
Speech in the House of Commons (25 April 1816), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), p. 14.
1810s
Part 1, Section 1
A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book 3: Of morals
Context: Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and 'tis evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engag'd on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of. Without this advantage I never should have ventur'd upon a third volume of such abstruse philosophy, in an age, wherein the greatest part of men seem agreed to convert reading into an amusement, and to reject every thing that requires any considerable degree of attention to be comprehended.
one of Girtin's yellow drawings
remark of Turner to Chambers Hall, (before 1855); as cited in The Life of J. M. W. Turner R.A. , Walter Thornbury - A new Edition, Revised https://ia601807.us.archive.org/24/items/gri_33125004491185/gri_33125004491185.pdf; London Chatto & Windus, 1897, p. 61
undated quotes
Letter to Alfred Galpin (27 May 1918), published in Letters to Alfred Galpin edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 18
Non-Fiction, Letters
2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), Rebuttal
1990s, I Am a Man, a Black Man, an American (1998)
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 217.
Statement to Colonel Valentine Walton (5 or 6 September 1644)
And somehow, it was God. I wasn't sure that it was… just something cool and dark and clean.
God Dies (1931)