Quotes about colors

page 16

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book II, Chapter VII, Sec. 3-4
Context: There are also several quarries called Anician in the territory of Tarquinii, the stone being of the color of peperino.... Neither the season of frost nor exposure to fire can harm it, but it remains solid and lasts to a great age, because there is only a little air and fire in its natural composition, a moderate amount of moisture, and a great deal of the earthy. Hence its structure is of close texture and solid, and so it cannot be injured by the weather or by the force of fire. Monuments in the neighborhood of the town of Ferento which are made of stone from these quarries... gracefully carved. Old as these are, they look as fresh as if they were only just finished. Bronze workers, also, make molds for the casting of bronze out of stone from these quarries and find it very useful in bronze-founding.

I understand that the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution was made to prevent this and a like state of things, and the act of May 31, 1870, with amendments, was passed to enforce its provisions, the object of both being to guarantee to all citizens the right to vote and to protect them in the free enjoyment of that right.
1870s, Sixth State of the Union Address (1874)

Still I agreed with General Meade as to his objections to that plan. General Meade said that if we put the colored troops in front, we had only one division, and it should prove a failure, it would then be said and very properly, that we were shoving these people ahead to get killed because we did not care anything about them. But that could not be said if we put white troops in front.
To the Committee on the Conduct of the War, as quoted in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/books/battles/index.cfm (1884-1888), edited by Robert Underwood Johnson and Clarence C. Buel, New York: Century Co., Volume 4, p. 548.

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)
Context: A white man's government? Well, I am a white man, I believe. Will anybody undertake to teach me what are the antipathies and loathings of white men? What mean whites may or may not like is of small importance. But the generous soul of my race, which has led the van in the great march of liberty and civilization, and whose lofty path is marked by the broken chains of every form of slavery, has an instinctive hatred of injustice, of exclusive privilege, of arrogance, ignorance, and baseness, and an instinctive love of honor, magnanimity and justice. The white soul of my race naturally loves the man, of whatever race or color, who bravely fights and gloriously dies for equal rights, and instinctively loathes every man who, saved by the blood of such heroes, deems himself made of choicer clay. The spirit of caste asks us to believe the outraged race inferior. Inferior? Inferior in what? In sagacity? In fidelity? In nobility of soul? In the prime qualities of manhood? And who are asked to believe this? We? We, hot, panting, exhausted from a fight for our national life in a part of the country where every white face was probably that of an enemy, and every colored face was surely that of a friend. We are asked to say it, whose brothers and sons, escaping from horrible pens of torture and death hundreds of miles from our lines, made their way through swamps and forests, safe from hungry bloodhounds and fiercer men, back to our homes and hearts, only because the men whom in our triumphant fortune we are asked to betray, in our darkest hour of misfortune risked their lives to save ours.

Encountering Directors interview (1969)
Context: Everything depends on what you put in front of the camera, what perspectives you create, contrasts, colors. The cameraman can do great things, provided he is well grounded technically. If a person hasn't the raw material, I obviously couldn't do anything with him. But all I ask of a cameraman is technical experience. Everything else is up to me. I was amazed to find that in America cameramen are surprised that this is the way I work.

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)
Context: The propaganda of prejudice and hatred which sought to keep the colored men from supporting the national cause completely failed. The black man showed himself the same kind of citizen, moved by the same kind of patriotism, as the white man. They were tempted, but not one betrayed his country. Among well-nigh 400,000 colored men who were taken into the military service, about one-half had overseas experience. They came home with many decorations and their conduct repeatedly won high commendation from both American and European commanders.

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)
Context: This, of course, is the special field of usefulness for colored men and women who find the opportunity to get adequate education. Their own people need their help, guidance, leadership, and inspiration. Those of you who are fortunate enough to equip yourselves for these tasks have a special responsibility to make the best use of great opportunities. In a very special way it is incumbent upon those who are prepared to help their people to maintain the truest standards of character and unselfish purpose. The Negro community of America has already so far progressed that its members can be assured that their future is in their own hands. Racial hostility, ancient tradition, and social prejudice are not to be eliminated immediately or easily, but they will be lessened as the colored people by their own efforts and under their own leaders shall prove worthy of the fullest measure of opportunity.

Source: The Story of My Life (1932), Ch. 1 "Before The Beginning"
Context: Autobiography is never entirely true. No one can get the right perspective on himself. Every fact is colored by imagination and dream. The young look forth across the sea to a mirage of fairylands filled with hidden treasures; the aged turn to the fading past, and through the mist and haze that veils once familiar scenes, bygone events assume weird and fanciful proportions.

The Spectrum of Love

Address to the United Nations (1964)
Context: Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men — how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom? The government of the United States is not the champion of freedom, but rather the perpetrator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population.

Introduction, p. 28
Electric Waves: Being Researches on the Propagation of Electric Action with Finite Velocity Through Space (1893)
Context: It is not particularly satisfactory to see equations set forth as direct results of observation and experiment, where we used to get long mathematical deductions as apparent proofs of them. Nevertheless, I believe that we cannot, without deceiving ourselves, extract much more from known facts than is asserted in the papers referred to. If we wish to lend more color to the theory, there is nothing to prevent us from supplementing all this and aiding our powers of imagination by concrete representations of the various conceptions as to the nature of electric polarisation, the electric current, etc.

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 45
Context: Jesus teaches the kinship and equality of all children of God. No division of race or color, class or caste, rich or poor, male or female, is found in the teaching of Jesus.

Breaking the Cycle (2003)
Context: I think the ultimate sense of security will be when we come to recognize that we are all part of one human race. Our primary allegiance is to the human race and not to one particular color or border. I think the sooner we renounce the sanctity of these many identities and try to identify ourselves with the human race the sooner we will get a better world and a safer world.

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)
Context: I hope these measures will be adequate. But if the necessities of Vietnam require it, I will not hesitate to return to the Congress for additional appropriations, or additional revenues if they are needed. The second road is justice. Justice means a man's hope should not be limited by the color of his skin. I propose legislation to establish unavoidable requirements for nondiscriminatory jury selection in federal and state courts—and to give the Attorney General the power necessary to enforce those requirements. I propose legislation to strengthen authority of federal courts to try those who murder, attack, or intimidate either civil rights workers or others exercising their constitutional rights—and to increase penalties to a level equal to the nature of the crime. Legislation, resting on the fullest constitutional authority of the federal government, to prohibit racial discrimination in the sale or rental of housing. For that other nation within a nation—the poor—whose distress has now captured the conscience of America, I will ask the Congress not only to continue, but to speed up the war on poverty. And in so doing, we will provide the added energy of achievement with the increased efficiency of experience. To improve the life of our rural Americans and our farm population, we will plan for the future through the establishment of several new Community Development Districts, improved education through the use of Teacher Corps teams, better health measures, physical examinations, and adequate and available medical resources.

Source: The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998), p. 173
Context: The tapestry maker first strings the warp, long strong fibers anchored firmly to the loom, and then interweaves the weft, the patterns, the color, the art. The epic of evolution is our warp, destined to endure, commanding our universal gratitude and reverence and commitment. And then, after that, we are all free to be artists, to render in language and painting and song and dance our ultimate hopes and concerns and understandings of human nature. Throughout the ages, the weaving of our religious weft has been the province of our prophets and gurus and liturgists and poets. The texts and art and ritual that come to us from these revered ancestors include claims about Nature and Agency that are no longer plausible. They use a different warp. But for me at least, this is just one of those historical facts, something that can be absorbed, appreciated, and then put aside as I encounter the deep wisdom embedded in these traditions and the abundant opportunities that they offer to experience transcendence and clarity.

Independence Day address (1821)
Context: America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.

2000s, The Logic of the Colorblind Constitution (2004)
Context: Harlan's dissenting opinion in Plessy, that the Constitution was colorblind, and that it did not countenance different and unequal classes of citizens, was based upon a belief in the truth of the principle of equality in which the founders and Lincoln had so profoundly believed. But this belief had been buried by progressivism, and has not been resurrected, except by the intellectual heirs of Leo Strauss. On intellectual grounds, it has never been refuted, and ought never to have been abandoned. There is not now, and never has been any such difference between one human being and another human being, or whatever race or color, such that one is by nature the ruler of the other, as any human being is by nature the ruler of any dog or any horse. For this reason, legitimate political authority can arise only by the consent of the governed, and consent can never be given for any reason other than the equal protection of the rights of the governed. Hence equal protection is the foundation of all constitutionalism, even apart from its specific inclusion in the Constitution itself. For more reasons than one, Justice Harlan's dissenting opinion ought to have been the opinion of the Court in 1896; even more ought it to have been the opinion of the Court in 1954. As Professor Edward J. Erler has demonstrated in the pages of the Claremont Review of Books, the principle of equal protection has never become the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States, nor has it been favored in the writings of conservative jurists.

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)
Context: The accomplishments of the colored people in the United States, in the brief historic period since they were brought here from the restrictions of their native continent, can not but make us realize that there is something essential in our civilization which gives it a special power. I think we shall be able to agree that this particular element is the Christian religion, whose influence always and everywhere has been a force for the illumination and advancement of the peoples who have come under its sway.

In His sight all men are of inherent and inestimable value. ...Jesus also disregarded the rigid class lines of his day.
Source: Jesus or Christianity: A Study in Contrasts (1929), p. 25

"Tennessee Stud" (1958)
Context: The Tennessee stud was long and lean
The color of the sun and his eyes were green.
He had the nerve and he had the blood
And there never was a hoss like the Tennessee stud.

"A Stranger Comes to Town" (c. 2001)
Context: Being with Hemingway meant joining in his elaborate game playing as a necessary mark of respect. Tennessee asked only that you be colorful and that you be honest.
Looking back I still find the 50s the most exhilarating decade I've lived through. The only mistake I made then was in thinking it would go on forever. I keep reading it was all Dull Conformity and I wonder where those people were living. Not on my planet. The fact that we had won World War 2 and that we were alive led to a post-war cultural explosion.

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)
Context: In regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested towards us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us... I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! … And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone! If you see him on his way to school, let him alone, don't disturb him! If you see him going to the dinner table at a hotel, let him go! If you see him going to the ballot box, let him alone, don't disturb him! If you see him going into a work-shop, just let him alone, — your interference is doing him positive injury.

Source: The Other America (1962), p. 71
Context: The laws against color can be removed, but that will leave the poverty that is the historic and institutionalized consequence of color. As long as this is the case, being born Negro will continue to be the most profound disability that the United States imposes upon a citizen.

1870s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1871)
Context: I can hardly believe that any person can be found who will not admit that every one of these provisions is just. They are all asserted, in some form or other, in our Declaration or organic law. But the Constitution limits only the action of Congress, and is not a limitation on the States. This amendment supplies that defect, and allows Congress to correct the unjust legislation of the States, so far that the law which operates upon one man shall operate equally upon all. Whatever law punishes a white man for a crime shall punish the black man precisely in the same way and to the same degree. Whatever law protects the white man shall afford equal protection to the black man. Whatever means of redress is afforded to one shall be afforded to all. Whatever law allows the white man to testify in court shall allow the man of color to do the same. These are great advantages over their present codes. Now different degrees of punishment are inflicted, not on account of the magnitude of the crime, but according to the color of the skin. Now color disqualifies a man from testifying in courts or being tried in the same way as white men.

Source: Andre Cornelis (1886), Ch. 4
Context: I once spoke to my aunt of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise I had made to myself that I would discover the murderer of my father, and take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand upon my mouth. She was a pious woman, and she repeated the words of the gospel: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Then she added: "We must leave the punishment of the crime to Him; His will is hidden from us. Remember the divine precept and promise, 'Forgive and you shall be forgiven.' Never say: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Ah, no; drive this enmity out of your heart, Cornelis; yes, even this." And there were tears in her eyes.
My poor aunt! She thought me made of sterner stuff than I really was. There was no need of her advice to prevent my being consumed by the desire for vengeance which had been the fixed star of my early youth, the blood-colored beacon aflame in my night. Ah! the resolutions of boyhood, the "oaths of Hannibal" taken to ourselves, the dream of devoting all our strength to one single and unchanging aim — life sweeps all that away, together with our generous illusions, ardent enthusiasm, and noble hopes.

1920s, Letter to Charles F. Gardner (1924)
Context: Leaving out of consideration the manifest impropriety of the President intruding himself in a local contest for nomination, I was amazed to receive such a letter. During the war 500,000 colored men and boys were called up under the draft, not one of whom sought to evade it. They took their places wherever assigned in defense of the nation of which they are just as truly citizens as are any others. The suggestion of denying any measure of their full political rights to such a great group of our population as the colored people is one which, however it might be received in some other quarters, could not possibly be permitted by one who feels a responsibility for living up to the traditions and maintaining the principles of the Republican Party. Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I propose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race.

Letter to F.W Weber (1950); as quoted in Maxfield Parrish by Coy Ludwig (1997)
Context: It is generally admitted that the most beautiful qualities of a color are in its transparent state, applied over a white ground with the light shining through the color. A modern Kodachrome is a delight when held up to the light with color luminous like stained glass. So many ask what is meant by transparent color, as though it were some special make. Most all color an artist uses is transparent: only a few are opaque, such as vermillion, cerulean blue, emerald green, the ochres and most yellows, etc. Colors are applied just as they come from the tube, the original purity and quality is never lost: a purple is pure rose madder glowing through a glaze of pure blue over glaze, or vice versa, the quality of each is never vitiated by mixing them together. Mix a rose madder with white, let us say, and you get a pink, quite different from the original madder, and the result is a surface color instead of a transparent one, a color you look on instead of into. One does not paint long out of doors before it becomes apparent that a green tree has a lot of red in it. You may not see the red because your eye is blinded by the strong green, but it is there never the less. So if you mix a red with the green you get a sort of mud, each color killing the other. But by the other method. when the green is dry and a rose madder glazed over it you are apt to get what is wanted, and have a richness and glow of one color shining through the other, not to be had by mixing. Imagine a Rembrandt if his magic browns were mixed together instead of glazed. The result would be a kind of chocolate. Then too, by this method of keeping colors by themselves some can be used which are taboo in mixtures.

Presidency (1977–1981), Farewell Address (1981)
Context: I have just been talking about forces of potential destruction that mankind has developed, and how we might control them. It is equally important that we remember the beneficial forces that we have evolved over the ages, and how to hold fast to them.
One of those constructive forces is enhancement of individual human freedoms through the strengthening of democracy, and the fight against deprivation, torture, terrorism and the persecution of people throughout the world. The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language.
Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity, and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.
I believe with all my heart that America must always stand for these basic human rights — at home and abroad. That is both our history and our destiny.
America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense, it is the other way round. Human rights invented America.
Ours was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded explicitly on such an idea. Our social and political progress has been based on one fundamental principle — the value and importance of the individual. The fundamental force that unites us is not kinship or place of origin or religious preference. The love of liberty is a common blood that flows in our American veins.

Table-Talk (1857)
Context: Love makes its record in deeper colors as we grow out of childhood into manhood; as the Emperors signed their names in green ink when under age, but when of age, in purple.

Looking for an Honest Man (2009)
Context: With his attractive picture of human flourishing, Aristotle offers lasting refuge against the seas of moral relativism. Taking us on a tour of the museum of the virtues — from courage and moderation, through liberality, magnificence, greatness of soul, ambition, and gentleness, to the social virtues of friendliness, truthfulness, and wit — and displaying each of their portraits as a mean between two corresponding vices, ­Aristotle gives us direct and immediate experience in seeing the humanly beautiful. Anyone who cannot see that courage is more beautiful than cowardice or rashness, or that liberality is more beautiful than miserliness or prodigality, suffers, one might say, from the moral equivalent of color-blindness.

Glorious days

From, On Loving of God, Paul Halsall trans., Ch. 10
Context: Seeing that the Scripture saith, God has made all for His own glory (Isa. 43.7), surely His creatures ought to conform themselves, as much as they can, to His will. In Him should all our affections center, so that in all things we should seek only to do His will, not to please ourselves. And real happiness will come, not in gratifying our desires or in gaining transient pleasures, but in accomplishing God’s will for us: even as we pray every day: ‘Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven’ (Matt. 6.10). O chaste and holy love! O sweet and gracious affection! O pure and cleansed purpose, thoroughly washed and purged from any admixture of selfishness, and sweetened by contact with the divine will! To reach this state is to become deified. As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, becomes like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated as to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God. For how could God be all in all, if anything merely human remained in man? The substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory. When will that be? Who will see, who possess it? ‘When shall I come to appear before the presence of God?’ (Ps. 42.2). ‘My heart hath talked of Thee, Seek ye My face: Thy face, Lord, will I seek’ (Ps. 27.8). Lord, thinkest Thou that I, even I shall see Thy holy temple?

1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953
Context: I do indeed believe that there is a certain contrast between, say, people in scientific professions and people working in the arts. Often there is even mutual suspicion and irritation, and in some cases one group greatly undervalues the other. Fortunately there is no one who actually has only feeling or only thinking properties. They intermingle like the colors of the rainbow and cannot be sharply divided. Perhaps there is even a transitional group, like the green between the yellow and the blue of the rainbow. This transitional group does not have a particular preference for thinking or feeling, but believes that one cannot do without either the one or the other. At any rate, it is unprejudiced enough to wish for a better understanding between the two parties... It is clear that feeling and understanding are not necessarily opposites but that they complement each other.

The good are befriended even by weakness and defect. As no man had ever a point of pride that was not injurious to him, so no man had ever a defect that was not somewhere made useful to him.
1840s, Essays: First Series (1841), Compensation

" Gavitt's Original Ethiopian Serenaders http://utc.iath.virginia.edu/minstrel/miar03at.html," The North Star (Rochester, N. Y.: 29 June 1849).
1840s
Context: Partly from a love of music, and partly from curiosity to see persons of color exaggerating the peculiarities of their race, we were induced last evening to hear these Serenaders. The Company is said to be composed entirely of colored people, and it may be so. We observed, however, that they too had recourse to the burnt cork and lamp black, the better to express their characters and to produce uniformity of complexion. Their lips, too, were evidently painted, and otherwise exaggerated. Their singing generally was but an imitation of white performers, and not even a tolerable representation of the character of colored people. Their attempts at wit showed them to possess a plentiful lack of it, and gave their audience a very low idea of the shrewdness and sharpness of the race to which they belong. With two or three exceptions, they were a poor set, and will make themselves ridiculous wherever they go. We heard but one really fine voice among the whole, and that was Cooper's, who is truly an excellent singer; and a company possessing equal ability with himself, would no doubt, be very successful in commanding the respect and patronage of the public generally. Davis (the Bones) too, is certainly a master player; but the Tambourine was an utter failure. B. Richardson is an extraordinary character. His Virginia Breakdown excelled anything which we have ever seen of that description of dancing. He is certainly far before the dancer in the Company of the Campbells. We are not sure that our readers will approve of our mention of those persons, so strong must be their dislike of everything that seems to feed the flame of American prejudice against colored people; and in this they may be right, but we think otherwise. It is something gained when the colored man in any form can appear before a white audience; and we think that even this company, with industry, application, and a proper cultivation of their taste, may yet be instrumental in removing the prejudice against our race. But they must cease to exaggerate the exaggerations of our enemies; and represent the colored man rather as he is, than as Ethiopian Minstrels usually represent him to be. They will then command the respect of both races; whereas now they only shock the taste of the one, and provoke the disgust of the other. Let Cooper, Davis and Richardson bring around themselves persons of equal skill, and seek to improve, relying more upon the refinement of the public, than its vulgarity; let them strive to conform to it, rather than to cater to the lower elements of the baser sort, and they may do much to elevate themselves and their race in popular estimation.

Towne vs. Eisner, 245 U.S. 418, 425 (7 January 1918).
1910s

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Context: It is often said that Anarchists live in a world of dreams to come, and do not see the things which happen today. We do see them only too well, and in their true colors, and that is what makes us carry the hatchet into the forest of prejudice that besets us.
Far from living in a world of visions and imagining men better than they are, we see them as they are; and that is why we affirm that the best of men is made essentially bad by the exercise of authority, and that the theory of the "balancing of powers" and "control of authorities" is a hypocritical formula, invented by those who have seized power, to make the "sovereign people," whom they despise, believe that the people themselves are governing. It is because we know men that we say to those who imagine that men would devour one another without those governors: "You reason like the king, who, being sent across the frontier, called out, 'What will become of my poor subjects without me?'"

Source: Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 223
Context: Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)
Context: Can any colored man, or any white man friendly to the freedom of all men, ever forget the night which followed the first day of January 1863, when the world was to see if Abraham Lincoln would prove to be as good as his word? I shall never forget that memorable night, when in a distant city I waited and watched at a public meeting, with three thousand others not less anxious than myself, for the word of deliverance which we have heard read today. Nor shall I ever forget the outburst of joy and thanksgiving that rent the air when the lightning brought to us the emancipation proclamation. In that happy hour we forgot all delay, and forgot all tardiness, forgot that the President had bribed the rebels to lay down their arms by a promise to withhold the bolt which would smite the slave-system with destruction; and we were thenceforward willing to allow the President all the latitude of time, phraseology, and every honorable device that statesmanship might require for the achievement of a great and beneficent measure of liberty and progress.

78 U.S. 93
Judicial opinions, United States v. Ballard (1944)

"The Son", Ch. 4, p. 49
Report to Greco (1965)
Context: I thank God that this refreshing childhood vision still lives inside me in all its fullness of color and sound. This is what keeps my mind untouched by wastage, keeps it from withering and running dry. It is the sacred drop of immortal water which prevents me from dying. When I wish to speak of the sea, woman, or God in my writing, I gaze down in my breast and listen carefully to what the child within me says. He dictates to me; and if it sometimes happens that I come close to these great forces of the sea, woman, and God, approach them by means of words and depict them, I owe it to the child who still lives within me. I become a child again to enable myself to view the world always for the first time, with virgin eyes.

Statement quoted in Prophet Singer: The Voice And Vision of Woody Guthrie (2007) by Mark Allan Jackson. There are a few slight variants of this statement, which seems to have originated in a performance monologue.
Context: I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood.
I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.
And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you. I could hire out to the other side, the big money side, and get several dollars every week just to quit singing my own kind of songs and to sing the kind that knock you down still farther and the ones that poke fun at you even more and the ones that make you think you've not any sense at all. But I decided a long time ago that I'd starve to death before I'd sing any such songs as that. The radio waves and your movies and your jukeboxes and your songbooks are already loaded down and running over with such no good songs as that anyhow.

How to Avoid a Hole in the Head in Marvel Science Stories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvel_Science_Stories (May 1951), p. 115

On the challenges facing a diaspora community in “The boundaries of how we think of the Global African Diaspora: AN INTERVIEW WITH Dr. Marta Moreno Vega” https://africasacountry.com/2018/04/the-boundaries-of-how-we-think-of-the-global-african-diaspora in Africa is a County (2018 Apr 5)

On portraying different kinds of relationships in her book Emergency Contact in “Interview with Mary H.K. Choi” https://therumpus.net/2018/05/the-rumpus-interview-with-mary-h-k-choi/ in The Rumpus (2018 May 18)

Sanders takes aim at Biden, Buttigieg in heated debate, in VTDigger (Dec 19, 2019)
2010s, 2019, December 2019

On racism and being lighter-skinned in “‘Either Hyper-Visible or Invisible’: An Interview with Jaquira Díaz” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/either-hyper-visible-or-invisible-an-interview-with-jaquira-diaz/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2019 Oct 29)

On putting the final touches to her images in “The Prince and the Dressmaker’s Jen Wang Talks High-School Habits, Sensitive Storytelling & Her Favorite Princesses” https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/02/the-prince-and-the-dressmakers-jen-wang-talks-high.html in Paste Magazine (2018 Feb 13)

On becoming a Chicana artist in “CARMEN LOMAS GARZA – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-art/carmen-lomas-garza/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

Quoted in Warren Faces Ancestry Question At Town Hall: ‘I Shouldn’t Have Done It. I Am Not A Person Of Color’ https://www.dailywire.com/news/warren-faces-ancestry-question-at-town-hall-i-shouldnt-have-done-it-i-am-not-a-person-of-color (December 8, 2019)
2019

On how he defines good storytelling in “San Jose’s Christopher Oscar Peña no longer ‘Insecure’ about work” https://www.sfchronicle.com/tv/article/San-Jose-s-Christopher-Oscar-Pe-a-no-longer-11297163.php in SF Gate (2017 Jul 18)

On experimenting as a playwright in “Playwright Kristoffer Diaz steps into the ring” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-xpm-2011-aug-21-la-ca-chad-deity-20110821-story.html in the Los Angeles Times (2011 Aug 21)

Independence Day address (1821)

On studying in Europe (as quoted in the book Improper Bostonians: Lesbian and gay history from the Puritans to Playland https://www.google.com/books/edition/Improper_Bostonians/azaIecghLVgC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq)

On the Live 2012 concert documentary.

On the themes that she’s most intrigued by in “An Interview with Tanya Saracho” https://www.theintervalny.com/interviews/2014/10/an-interview-with-tanya-saracho/ in The Interval (2014 Oct 29)

The Pale King (2011)

On how she feels unable to fully articulate racism in “Adrienne Kennedy Talks About Her Life” https://www.villagevoice.com/2008/01/29/adrienne-kennedy-talks-about-her-life/ in The Village Voice (2008 Jan 29)

On the state of Black Art in https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2014/01/10/in-memoriam-an-interview-with-the-late-amiri-baraka/

Source: The Laundry Files, The Jennifer Morgue (2006), Chapter 12, “Power Breakfast” (p. 254)

On ghetto youth being caged even at birth in “Schools and the New Jim Crow: An Interview With Michelle Alexander” https://truthout.org/articles/schools-and-the-new-jim-crow-an-interview-with-michelle-alexander/ in Truthout (2013 Jun 4)

On the elite’s influence on the poor in in “The struggle for racial justice has a long way to go” https://isreview.org/issue/84/struggle-racial-justice-has-long-way-go in the International Socialist Review (May 2012)

On writing in an industry that typically prefers White writers in “ Jacqueline Woodson: 'I don't want anyone to feel invisible'” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/25/jacqueline-woodson-national-book-awards-invisible in The Guardian (2014 Nov 25)

2010s, 2019, November 2019

Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), Race Culture, p. 224

The fact that an animal is a human, that is, that he belongs to the hominine species of beings, entitles him, regardless of his imperfections, to some sort of consideration.
Source: Better-World Philosophy: A Sociological Synthesis (1899), The Social Ideal, p. 143

Source: "The Black Manifesto" (1969), p. 116

Source: Broca's Brain (1979), Chapter 23, “A Sunday Sermon” (pp. 339-340)

The Carnegie Hall Performance (2006)

Source: Black Skin, White Masks (1952), p. 28-29

Introduction,page 8
Black Skin, White Masks (1952)

Remarks at Bush Institute Summit, "The Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In The World" at the Bush Institute Summit in New York City https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2YlVZxu_L0 (October 2017), as quoted in The Washington Post http://archive.is/jl9AF#selection-2115.0-2135.112 (October 2017)
2010s, 2017

A Tenderfoot in Space (p. 689)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Gulf (p. 544)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

The Source and Value of the "Mysteries" (1888)

Address to the Democratic National Convention, 1984

1940s

29 January 2019 https://twitter.com/SenDuckworth/status/1090416500954021889 by Tammy Duckworth
About, January 2019

Farrakhan speaks of ‘satanic Jews’ in talk at Catholic church https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/farrakhan-speaks-of-satanic-jews-in-talk-at-catholic-church Jewish Telegraphic Agency (9 May 2019)

1880s, Speech on the Anniversary of Emancipation (1886)

The man who could say, 'Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war shall soon pass away, yet if God wills it continue till all the wealth piled by two hundred years of bondage shall have been wasted, and each drop of blood drawn by the lash shall have been paid for by one drawn by the sword, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether', gives all needed proof of his feeling on the subject of slavery. He was willing, while the south was loyal, that it should have its pound of flesh, because he thought that it was so nominated in the bond; but farther than this no earthly power could make him go.
About Abraham Lincoln https://web.archive.org/web/20150302203311/http://www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4071#_ftnref57.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

The fact that the Chinese and other nations desire to come and do come is a proof of their capacity for improvement and of their fitness to come.
1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)

1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

1860s, Should the Negro Enlist in the Union Army? (1863)

Małgorzata Kossut, neuroscientist, member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and friend of Vetulani. Debate on depression: in memoriam Professor Jerzy Vetulani at the XXIst Science Festival in Warsaw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS-1L-NZYXQ (in Polish), 30th September 2017.

Source: Looking Backward, 2000-1887 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25439 (1888), Ch. 19

translation from the Dutch original: Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch / citaat van Paul Gabriël, in Nederlands: Een vroege morgen kan er oppervlakkig grijs uitzien, maar ze is het niet.. ..de dauw is veel gekleurder dan men wel zou geloven, dikwijls zo sterk dat het palet te kort schiet.
Quote of Paul Gabriël, in a letter to a befriended art-critic; as cited in 'Dauw heeft meer kleur dan men denkt', by Truus Ruiter https://www.volkskrant.nl/cultuur-media/dauw-heeft-meer-kleur-dan-men-denkt~b14d3e3c/; newspaper 'de Volkskrant', 27 July 1998
Gabriël avoided to use frequently grey in his work, because he loved natural colors
undated quotes

Source: Semiology of graphics (1967/83), p. 87

The Fifth Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.
"What Is An American?" http://www.historyplace.com/speeches/ickes.htm (18 May 1941)

that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms — nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?
You Must Remember This (1987), pt. 1, ch. 13

You Shall Know Our Velocity! (2002)

1970s-, The Captains, the Kings, and Taylor Caldwell (1978)

Defending the re-segregation of federal offices, in Conference with members of the National Association for Equal Rights https://web.archive.org/web/20150315002852/http://friesian.com/presiden.htm#43 (November 1914)
1910s

1910s, Dada Manifesto', 1918

How It Feels to Be Colored Me (1928)