“I beleave in the universal salvashun ov men, but I want tew pick the men.”

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

I Think I'll Sit This One Out (1939)
Context: If I believed that force would ever build a better world, I would be a Marxist revolutionary. But I have no more faith in poor men's animalism than in rich men's. And I want no proletarian revolution until the proletariat has demonstrated devotion to reason which the rich, with larger opportunities to cultivate that virtue, have so universally failed to achieve. I favor the underdog against the upperdog, but I favor something better than a dog above both of them.

Josh Billings: His Works, Complete (1873)

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings

As quoted in Heroes of Mexico (1969) by Morris Rosenblum, p. 112
Variant: I want to die a slave to principles. Not to men.