Quotes about badge

A collection of quotes on the topic of badge, people, likeness, being.

Quotes about badge

“Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built on the ruins of the bowers of paradise.”

Thomas Paine book Common Sense

Source: Common Sense

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, War, People

“Depression on my left, Loneliness on my right. They don't need to show me thier badges. I know these guys very well.”

Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer

Guy, Loneliness

“Someone out there was about to find that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian. With a badge.”

Terry Pratchett book Guards! Guards!

Source: Guards! Guards!

“I endorse all that you say of the superior intelligence of the felidae. Never have I been able to associate the docile servility and satellitism of the canidae with mental power. Zoölogists seem to consider the cerebration of cats and dogs about 50-50—but my respect always goes to the cool, sure, impersonal, delicately poised feline who minds his business and never slobbers—the aristocratic, epicurean philosopher who knows what he wants and tells interlopers to go to hell. There is no credit in having a dog attached to one—for a dog can be conditioned to become anybody's slave and property. But a cat is nobody's slave. You do not own a cat. If one lives in your home, it is because he regards your way of life favourably, and accepts you as a friend, as one gentleman accepts another. He takes no kicks or insolence from anyone. If you are not worthy to associate with him, he will depart to seek an environment more suited to a gentleman's taste. Therefore he who retains the respect and companionship of a feline has proven himself to be essentially a superior citizen. For a human being, membership in the Kappa Alpha Tau forms a badge of distinction. Many are the eminent names on that member ship list—Mahomet himself, Richelieu, Poe, Baudelaire... one could catalogue them endlessly. Certainly, I ask no greater honour than to be accounted a citizen of Ulthar beyond the River Skai!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to E. Hoffmann Price (29 July 1936), published in Selected Letters Vol. V, p. 290
Non-Fiction, Letters, to E. Hoffmann Price

Life, Dogs, Way, Home

“I've enjoyed the accommodations offered by police departments from Florida to Hawaii. Any time I saw a badge, something in me would snap.”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

Somebody to Love? (1998)

Time

“I'm not saying I'm 40. I'm 30-10. I don't feel 40. I don't know what it means. I just know that all of a sudden it's something that's in print next to my name. AND NOW SHE'S 40. It almost feels like some sort of badge of honor in a weird way.”

Jennifer Aniston (1969) television and film actress from the United States

Interview for Vogue magazine (December 2008)

Way, Feeling

“Something must be done,
about vengeance, a badge and a gun.
So rip the mic rip the state rip the system,
I was born to rage against them.”

Zack de la Rocha (1970) American musician, poet rapper and activist best known as the vocalist and lyricist of rap metal band Rage Again…

Know Your Enemy.
Song lyrics, Rage Against the Machine (1992)

Rage

“In any foreseeable future there are going to be thousands and thousands of people who detest and abominate Negroes, communists, Russians, Chinese, Jews, Catholics, beatniks, homosexuals, and "dope-fiends." These hatreds are not going to be healed, but only inflamed, by insulting those who feel them, and the abusive labels with which we plaster them—squares, fascists, rightists, know-nothings—may well become the proud badges and symbols around which they will rally and consolidate themselves. Nor will it do to confront the opposition in public with polite and nonviolent sit-ins and demonstrations, while boosting our collective ego by insulting them in private. If we want justice for minorities and cooled wars with our natural enemies, whether human or non-human, we must first come to terms with the minority and the enemy in ourselves and in our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the "external" world—-especially when you realize that the world outside your skin is as much yourself as the world inside. For want of this awareness, no one can be more belligerent than a pacifist on the rampage, or more militantly nationalistic than an anti-imperialist.”

Alan Watts (1915–1973) British philosopher, writer and speaker

Source: The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are (1966), p. 98

War, People, World, Justice

“Listen. All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light Brigade.”

Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) American writer

Cold Turkey (2004)

Light, Courage, Literature

“No one has gone through life without acquiring scars and bruises. Some wounds are hidden inside us and only we can feel. They are badges of our day-to-day struggle to learn and survive.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1981

Life, Feeling, Learning

“I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Self-Reliance

Thinking, Dead

“I hate this guy,” Ari muttered, keeping his head down
“There’s a club,” I told him. “The Haters of ter Borcht Club. Have you gotten your badge yet?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Hate, Guy

“Her name badge read: Hello! My name is DIE, DEMIGOD SCUM!”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Reading

“Couldn't Lissa have healed that black eye away?"
"Its a badge of honor. Makes me seem manly.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

“Ellen had long ago stopped being embarrassed by temper tantrums. She flipped it and wore it like a badge of honor. A temper tantrum was a sign that a mom said no when it counted.”

Lisa Scottoline (1955) American writer

Moms

“Doobie always wanted to see the badge. It was shiny, and he was eight.”

Eoin Colfer book Half Moon Investigations

Source: Half Moon Investigations

“People in the countryside carry a sense of dignity. They wear it, don't they? Like a badge? I'm being genuine.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

People, Sense

“Tarzan of the Apes had decided to mark his evolution from the lower orders in every possible manner, and nothing seemed to him a more distinguishing badge of manhood than ornaments and clothing.
To this end, therefore, he collected the various arm and leg ornaments he had taken from the black warriors who had succumbed to his swift and silent noose, and donned them all after the way he had seen them worn.
About his neck hung the golden chain from which depended the diamond encrusted locket of his mother, the Lady Alice. At his back was a quiver of arrows slung from a leathern shoulder belt, another piece of loot from some vanquished black.
About his waist was a belt of tiny strips of rawhide fashioned by himself as a support for the home-made scabbard in which hung his father's hunting knife. The long bow which had been Kulonga's hung over his left shoulder.
The young Lord Greystoke was indeed a strange and war-like figure, his mass of black hair falling to his shoulders behind and cut with his hunting knife to a rude bang upon his forehead, that it might not fall before his eyes.
His straight and perfect figure, muscled as the best of the ancient Roman gladiators must have been muscled, and yet with the soft and sinuous curves of a Greek god, told at a glance the wondrous combination of enormous strength with suppleness and speed.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 13 : His Own Kind

God, War, Way, Home

“The southern institution of racial segregation or racial separation was the correct, self-evident truth which arose from the chaos and confusion of the reconstruction period. Separation promotes racial harmony. It permits each race to follow its own pursuits, and its own civilization. Segregation is not discrimination. Segregation is not a badge of racial inferiority, and that it is not is recognized by both races in the Southern States. In fact, segregation is desired and supported by the vast majority of the members of both races in the South, who dwell side by side under harmonious conditions. … Let me make this clear, Mr. President: There is no racial hatred in the South. The Negro race is not an oppressed race. … Mr. President, it is the law of nature, it is the law of God, that every race has both the right and the duty to perpetuate itself. All free men have the right to associate exclusively with members of their own race, free from governmental interference, if they so desire. Free men have the right to send their children to schools of their own choosing, free from governmental interference and to build up their own culture, free from governmental interference. These rights are inherent in the Constitution of the United States and in the American system of government, both state and national, to promote and protect this right.”

James Eastland (1904–1986) American politician

1950s

Men, God, Children, Truth

“Apparently they're going to bring in 'Super Asbos'. But 'Asbos' already sound too cool. Teenagers see them as a badge of honour. They should call them 'Gaybos' or 'Bender Badges'.”

Frankie Boyle (1972) Scottish comedian

Frankie Boyle Live (2008)

“Two Japanese soldiers have climbed over the garden wall and are about to break into our house. When I appear they give the excuse that they saw two Chinese soldiers climb over the wall. When I show them my party badge, they return the same way. In one of the houses in the narrow street behind my garden wall, a woman was raped, and then wounded in the neck with a bayonet. I managed to get an ambulance so we can take her to Kulou Hospital… Last night up to 1,000 women and girls are said to have been raped, about 100 girls at Ginling Girls' College alone. You hear nothing but rape.
get the normal city life going as soon as possible. In the latter process we are glad to cooperate in any way we can. But even last night between 8 and 9 p. m. when five Occidental members of our staff and Committee toured the Zone to observe conditions, we did not find any single Japanese patrol either in the Zone or at the entrances!”

John Rabe (1882–1950) German businessman

17 December 1937

Life, Women, Way, Girl

“In order to give conscious expression to the fostering of a valiant spirit in all parts of the German people, I further decide that this SA Sport Insignia [badge] can also be earned and worn by persons who are not members of the movement insofar as they comply racially and ideologically with the National Socialist requirements.”

Viktor Lutze (1890–1943) SA Stabschef

Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 152 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947.

People, Sport, Parting, Personality

“After more than five years of the bitterest war in human experience, the last great stronghold of force surrendering to the demands of America and her allies agreed to cast aside the sword and live under the law. America decided that the path of the Mayflower should not be closed. She decided to sail the seas. She decided to sail not under an Edict of Potsdam, cramped in narrow lands, seeking safety in unarmed merchant men painted in fantastic hues as the badge of an infinite servitude; but she decided to sail under the ancient Declaration of Independence, choosing her own course, maintaining security by the guns of her ships of the LINE, flying at the mast the stars and stripes forever, the emblem of a militant liberty.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, America and the War (1920)

Men, War, Law, Star

“I had my good looks, my blond hair, my height, build, and bullfighting school, I suppose I became one of the Village equivalents of an Eagle Scout badge for the girls. I was one of the credits needed for a diploma in the sexual humanities.”

Norman Mailer book Advertisements for Myself

Sergius O'Shaugnessy, in "The Time of Her Time"
Advertisements for Myself (1959)

School, Girl, Scouting

“Young men and fools sometimes bear pain they do not have to as a badge of their pride. Or their foolishness.”

Robert Jordan A Crown of Swords

Nandera
A Crown of Swords (15 May 1996)

Men, Pain, Fools

“At times he regarded the wounded soldiers in an envious way. He conceived persons with torn bodies to be peculiarly happy. He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.”

Stephen Crane book The Red Badge of Courage

Source: The Red Badge of Courage (1895), Ch. 9

Way, Courage, Time, Personality

“I hope and believe cultural history will make progress if it also fixes its attention firmly on the individual human being. Movements, as distinct from periods, are started by people. Some of them are abortive, others catch on. Each movement in its turn has a core of dedicated souls, a crowd of hangers-on, not to forget a lunatic fringe. There is a whole spectrum of attitudes and degrees of conversion. Even within the individual there may be various levels of conviction, various conscious and unconscious fluctuations in loyalty. What seemed acceptable during the mass rally or revivalist meeting may look pretty crazy on the way home. But movements would not be movements if they did not have their badges, their outward signs, their style of behaviour, style of speech and of dress. Who can probe the motives which prompt individuals to adopt some of these, and who would venture in every case to pronounce on the completeness of the conversion this adoption may express? Knowing these limitations, the cultural historian will be a little wary of the claims of cultural psychology.”

Ernst Gombrich (1909–2001) art historian

In Search of Cultural History (1969)

People, Hope, Way, Home

“The green beret' is again becoming a symbol of excellence, a badge of courage, a mark of distinction in the fight for freedom. I know the United States Army will live up to its reputation for imagination, resourcefulness, and spirit as we meet this challenge.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Letter to the United States Army" (11 April 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx; Box 5, President's Outgoing Executive Correspondence, White House Central Chronological Files, Papers of John F. Kennedy, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library 1962

Imagination, Courage, Freedom, Fight

“Many people feel duty-bound to express skepticism as if it were an automatic badge of honor and intellectual superiority. I'd done the same thing in the past, so I could understand the attitude.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Source: Seth, Dreams & Projections of Consciousness, (1986), p. 1

People, Feeling, Understanding, Past

“Again, Mahāmati, there may be some unwitted people in the future time, who, beginning to lead the homeless life according to my teaching, are acknowledged as sons of the Śākya, and carry the Kāshāya robe about them as a badge, but who are in thought evilly affected by erroneous reasonings. They may talk about various discriminations which they make in their moral discipline, being addicted to the view of a personal soul. Being under the influence of the thirst for [meat-] taste, they will string together in various ways some sophistic arguments to defend meat-eating. They think they are giving me an unprecedented calumny when they discriminate and talk about facts that are capable of various interpretations. Imagining that this fact allows this interpretation, [they conclude that] the Blessed One permits meat as proper food, and that it is mentioned among permitted foods and that probably the Tathagata himself partook of it. But, Mahāmati, nowhere in the sutras is meat permitted as something enjoyable, nor it is referred to as proper among the foods prescribed”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

for the Buddha's followers
Mahayana, Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, Chapter Eight. On Meat-eating

Life, People, Food, Way

“When a man comes not merely to tolerate, but to boast of the stains that the world has flung upon him; when he wears his spots as if they were jewels; when he flaunts his unscrupulousness, and his cynicism and his disbelief and his hard-heartedness in your face as the signs and badges of his superiority; when to be innocent and unsuspicious and sensitive seems to be ridiculous and weak; when it is reputable to show that we are men of the world by exhibiting the stains that the world has left upon our reputation, our conduct, and our heart, then we understand how flagrant is the danger; then we see how hard it must be to keep ourselves unspotted from the world.”

Phillips Brooks (1835–1893) American clergyman and author

"Unspotted from the World"

Men, World, Understanding, Heart

“Few people actually nominate themselves in this way. Most defer to the meaning-making apparatus of their culture, taking comfort in the fact that others have built a meaning nest for them. This built-in cover allows them to avoid taking responsibility and at the same time causes them to grow grandiose, narcissistic, and egotistical. As soon as you put on the robes of your culture and add gravity to your mere humanness by wearing the badge of your profession, your club, your gang, or your clan, you … refuse to engage in the process of personal meaning-making, with its requirements of honesty and self-awareness.”

Eric Maisel (1947) American writer

Source: The Atheist’s Way (2009), p. 66

People, Way, Time, Personality

“The terrible lesson of Palestinian politics is that a leadership that elevates victimhood into the be-all and end-all of politics brings untold suffering and misery upon its own people. Given political power, this kind of a leadership will in turn victimize. This is an iron law of social and political psychology confirmed by any number of recent historical experiences. The insurgents in Iraq fully understand this dynamic; in fact they are counting on it. That is why their goal is not to win over Iraqi hearts and minds; it is rather to inculcate a state of pervasive physical insecurity, conducive to the eruption of the most irrational forms of behavior. Theirs is a politics of fear and intimidation borrowed from that of the former regime which produced them, and it is a politics designed to create a backlash among those very Iraqis who so rightfully today wear the blue-black stain on their right index finger as a badge of honor.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

People, Fear, Law, Behavior

“Our ethics and our politics assume, largely without question or serious discussion, that the division between human and 'animal' is absolute. 'Pro-life', to take just one example, is a potent political badge, associated with a gamut of ethical issues such as opposition to abortion and euthanasia.
What it really means is pro-human-life. Abortion clinic bombers are not known for their veganism, nor do Roman Catholics show any particular reluctance to have their suffering pets 'put to sleep'. In the minds of many confused people, a single-celled human zygote, which has no nerves and cannot suffer, is infinitely sacred, simply because it is 'human'. No other cells enjoy this exalted status.
But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could… fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case… who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.
We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.
A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid? The Guardian, Jan 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/02/richard-dawkins-chimpanzee-hybrid?commentpage=2

Life, People, Imagination, Question

“[Re Spicer loss of credibility] Are you kidding me? We think that's a badge of honor. 'Questioning his integrity' are you kidding me? The media has zero integrity, zero intelligence, and no hard work.”

Steve Bannon (1953) American media executive and former White House Chief Strategist for Donald Trump

Trump Strategist Stephen Bannon Says Media Should 'Keep Its Mouth Shut' https://www.f3nws.com/news/trump-strategist-steve-bannon-says-media-should-keep-its-mouth-shut-new-york-times-TSfrxF/ (January 26, 2017)

Intelligence, Question, Thinking, Loss

“I've come out here tonight to challenge you… challenge you, the WWE Universe, into seeing things my way and to learn how to just say "no." See, because the people who cheer for Jeff Hardy are just slaves to the vices associated with his (with quote fingers) "living in the moment." I feel bad for you, I really do. You walk around almost blind and you wear your prescriptions proudly on your sleeves like they were badges of honor. What was it the doctor told you? 'Just take one… every four hours,' right? Aside from myself, there's not a person in this arena who hasn't abused prescription medication or taken a recreational drug. And I know, trust me, it's hard being straight-edge, it's hard to live a straight-edge lifestyle. It's extremely difficult to be me, but what concerns me now is that none of you realize how much more difficult it is to live the life… that you all live. I'm positive nobody in here takes into account the long-term consequences of alcohol on your liver. (Smattering of cheers from audience) See, and you cheer that. That's nothing to cheer. You drink because it's fun, right? (Audience cheers a little louder) Eventually, it's not gonna be fun anymore when it spirals out of control and its no longer… it's no longer fun. Sooner or later, you're just drinking to feel normal. And then there's the smokers. You know, I don't know what's more disgusting–is watching a smoker pollute his/her lungs with over 4,000 foreign chemicals, or having to listen to the smoker convince themselves that they can quit whenever they want to. It's… it's hard to quit, I know, it takes a very strong person to quit, but an even stronger person never would've started smoking in the first place. (Audience boos and chants "Hardy") I didn't want to come out here and be the bearer of bad news, but let's face facts: chances are pretty slim that any of you here will ever get the monkey off your back. You'll never be able to pry the cigarette from your lips, or find the self-control to pour your drink from your glass, or the self-respect to take the pill out of your mouth. See, it starts, and it can't happen without learning how to say "no" to temptation, and that's why I'm out here. I'm out here to challenge you before it's too late. Please, learn how to say "no" to temptation, learn how to say "no" to your vices, learn how to control yourself.”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

July 24, 2009
Friday Night SmackDown

Life, People, Alcohol, Way

“Rolf Halbritter coughed from the dust the retreating convoy kicked up. He shook his head in wonder not far from awe. The Amis were really and truly going- no, really and truly gone. Which meant… He had a badge pinned on the underside of his collar, where it didn't show. Now he could wear it openly agian. It was round, with a red outer ring that carried a legend in bronze letters: NATIONALSOZIALISTISCHE DEUTSCHE ARBEITERPARTEI. The white inner circle held a black swastika. Every Party member had one just like it. Pretty soon, they'd all be showing it, too.”

Harry Turtledove (1949) American novelist, short story author, essayist, historian

Source: The Man With the Iron Heart (2008), p. 528

“Take the National Organization for Women — please! They've embarrassed me enough over the years, and now I'm going to give them a taste of their own medicine. They were always so holier-than-thou, systematically getting rid of everyone who wasn't just like them: white, upper-middle class, straight (or closeted), sex-phobic Democratic party apologists. As you can imagine, that's not a huge group anymore — but they still manage to hang onto a name that insists that they represent half the population!
Well, it's all over, sweethearts. I'm taking away your library card, I'm stripping badges and I'm not returning phone calls. Calling NOW feminists is like calling the People's Republic of China communist: Marx and Emma Goldman are both rolling in their graves.”

Susie Bright (1958) American writer and feminist

" This shameless hussy ballbuster Clinton scandals http://www.salon.com/health/sex/col/brig/1998/03/13/nc_13brig/index.html", Salon, March 13, 1998.

Women, People, Sex, Imagination

“My badge my witn- oh shh… *hums* Pete:*makes weird noise* oh shhh!”

Patrick Stump (1984) American musician

YouTube.com, Patrick Being Weird (Bonus Track) on YouTube

“History is filled with examples of men and women who rendered highly effective performance without the conventional badges of accomplishment in terms of certificates, diplomas, or degrees. Diplomas and tests are useful servants, but Congress has mandated the commonsense proposition that they are not to become masters of reality.”

Warren E. Burger (1907–1995) Chief Justice of the United States from 1969 to 1986

Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424, 432 (1971).

Women, Men, History, Reality

“Chronic disputes which divert precious resources from the needs of the people or drain the energies of both sides serve the interests of no one — and the badge of responsibility in the modern world is a willingness to seek peaceful solutions.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, UN speech

People, World, Peace

“So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent.”

Isocrates Panegyricus

Panegyricus, 50.

World, Education, Teachers

“For them, flaunting an anti-Modi badge ensured privileged access into the corridors of UPA power. And there's no denying that until at least a year ago, the US remained the flavour of the season for both Congress ministers and a supplicant media.”

Swapan Dasgupta (1955) Indian politician, journalist and columnist

"A mighty fall from a moral high ground", 2014

Season

“Modi told me the last straw for him with regard to NDTV was when one of their correspondents Vijay Trivedi, accompanied him in a helicopter for an interview. When he started asking the same old insulting questions, Modi simply kept quiet and refused to respond any further. Piqued at being ignored, Trivedi spread the canard that Modi nearly threw him out of the helicopter mid-air because he had asked "tough questions". Modi says on that day he decided never to give legitimacy to NDTV by giving them an interview or responding to any questions from them. Vijay Trivedi treats this incident as a badge of honour and has boasted about it on numerous occasions—in writing.”

Madhu Kishwar (1959) Indian activist and writer

Madhu Kishwar, Manushi, "Narendra Modi on the Role of NDTV during the 2002 Riots" http://www.manushi.in/articles.php?articleId=1770#.U1aDWcdz_jE (8 April 2014).

Question

“Let the free people of the world know that we could have bargained over and sold out our cause in return for a personal secure and stable life. We received many offers to this effect but we chose to be at the vanguard of the confrontation as a badge of duty and honour.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Last will and testament

Life, People, World, Personality

“This evening, my thoughts return to the first night I addressed you from this house. September 11, 2001. That morning, terrorists took nearly 3,000 lives in the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. I remember standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center three days later, surrounded by rescuers who had been working around the clock. I remember talking to brave souls who charged through smoke-filled corridors at the Pentagon and to husbands and wives whose loved ones became heroes aboard Flight 93. I remember Arlene Howard, who gave me her fallen son's police shield as a reminder of all that was lost. And I still carry his badge.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2009, Farewell speech to the nation (January 2009)

Love, World, Soul, Housing

“Heroes, while it was cancelled last year for low ratings on the network, ironically was the number one downloaded show in the world that year above shows like Lost and 24 and that kind of thing. For a show like Heroes that had all of these illegal downloading, pirating, I wore that as a badge of honour. That's exactly the kind of fan that you want! The kind that actively goes out and find your show.”

Tim Kring

Series Addicts, 2011 documentary by Oliver Joyard.

World

“There's a lot of dealings with police officers right now. I don’t think all cops are bad. You know, I think there’s some great cops out there, who do everything in their power to uphold the badge and uphold the honor and protect the people in society. But there are bad cops, and I think that also needs to be addressed. I think the police officers we have right now, you know, some of it is being brought to light, because of video cameras, everybody has a camera phone. But these are things a lot of us have dealt with our whole lives. And I think right now is a perfect time to deal with it. The climate we're in, everybody's being more accepting, you know, so I think the ignorance should stop. I think people realize that, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. So, you know, before we're black, white, Asian, Polynesian, Latino. We're humans. So, it's up to us to stop it.”

Richard Sherman (American football) (1988) American football player

Press conference (16 September 2015), as quoted in "Video: Richard Sherman speaks passionately on Black Lives Matter" https://web.archive.org/web/20150917000340/http://www.seattletimes.com/sports/seahawks/video-richard-sherman-speaks-passionately-on-black-lives-matter/ (16 September 2015), by Bob Condotta, The Seattle Times, Seattle, Washington. Press conference (16 September 2015)

People, Thinking, Light, Time

“We're no longer officially a superpower. Please turn in your badges.”

Rachel Maddow (1973) American journalist

The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC (April 20, 2009)

“This is what I say about the scorn of the media elite: I wear their scorn as a badge of honor.”

Dan Quayle (1947) American politician, lawyer

Speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in Indianapolis (9 June 1992)

“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. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds.”

John Marshall Harlan (1833–1911) United States Union Army officer and Supreme Court Associate Justice

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)

Law, Freedom

“[At an anti-vivisection demonstration]I went up to the ringleader, a tall, thin crusty with little braided beaded fussiness in his hair.'I can't express to you all just how diametrically opposed I am to what you're saying. I mean, this sounds like a rhetorical figure, but it's not - I really mean this: I would genuinely go into any field and kill every single horse, cow, goat, sheep, dog, cat, rabbit, gerbil, if I honestly believed in my heart for just one moment, just one moment, that it might be a bit of a laugh.' By now, I had the fellow's Oxfam lapels in my fists. 'BECAUSE I AM SO BORED AND TIRED OF EVERYTHING SINCE SHE LEFT!!'Dropping my head onto his bony vegan shoulder, I sobbed loud and long, in great, wracking heaves and gasps. When I finally ceased and straightened up, my hands were full of small, plastic lapel-badges.”

Robert Newman (1964) British comedian, born 1964

Dependence Day (1994).

Dogs, Cats, Heart, Horse

“I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood' to be flogged publicly.”

Ann Coulter (1961) author, political commentator

Commentary on MSNBC (22 March 1997), as quoted in "The Wisdom of Ann Coulter" in The Washington Monthly (October 2001).
1980s-90s

“Last week, Mr President, I seemed to hear a strange sound emanating from Blackpool. And I thought at first it was seagulls. [laughter] Then I remembered that Labour was holding its annual Conference there. And I realised it wasn't seagulls, it was chickens—[laughter and applause] chickens being counted before they were hatched—[laughter and applause] except for Labour's call to enter the ERM and cut interest rates. That was a case of counting chickens after they'd flown the coop. Then, I heard voices getting all worked up about someone they kept calling the “Prime Minister in Waiting”. [laughter] It occurs to me, Mr President, that he might have quite a wait. [applause] I can see him now, like the people queuing up for the Winter sales. All got up with his camp bed, hot thermos, woolly balaclava, CND badge… [laughter and applause] Waiting, waiting, waiting… And then when the doors open, in he rushes—only to find that, as always, there's “that woman” ahead of him again. [applause and laughter] I gather there may be an adjective between “that” and “woman” [laughter] only no-one will tell me what it is. [laughter and applause]”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1990) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/108217 Third term as Prime Minister

People, Laughter, Winter, Waiting

“He who owns a veteran bur oak owns more than a tree. He owns a historical library, and a reserved seat in the theater of evolution. To the discerning eye, his farm is labeled with the badge and symbol of the prairie war.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“April: Bur Oak”, p. 30.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "April: Come High Water," "April: Draba," "April: Bur Oak," & "April:Sky Dance"

War, Tree

“Anybody who French bashes just might as well wear a badge that says 'I am a follower! I don't think for myself and I have no idea what I'm talking about.”

Janeane Garofalo (1964) comedian, actress, political activist, writer

That would be a French basher."
Majority Report, June 3, 2005 broadcast
Majority Report

Idea, Thinking

“For me, it’s standard. I don’t feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary.”

Russell Brand book Revolution

Revolution (2014)
Context: For me, it’s standard. I don’t feel irresponsible for telling kids not to vote; I feel like I deserve a Blue Peter badge for not telling them to riot. For not telling them that they are entitled to destroy the cathedrals of tyranny erected to mock them in the heart of their community. That they should rise up and destroy the system that imprisons them, ignores them, condemns and maligns them. By any means necessary.' I might also note that I think it unlikely that people aren’t voting because I told them not to; it is more likely that they’re not voting because they are subject to the same conditions that led me not to vote.

Feeling, Communication, Heart

“Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty.”

Adam Smith (1723–1790) Scottish moral philosopher and political economist

Source: The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book V, Chapter II, Part II, p. 927.
Context: Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Personality

“If humiliation and rejection are to be the rewards of faithful and effective service in this field, what are those of us to conclude who have also served prominently in this line of work but upon whom this badge has not yet been conferred?”

George F. Kennan (1904–2005) American advisor, diplomat, political scientist and historian

In defense of a colleague undergoing investigation by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951; published in Memoirs : 1950-1963 (1967), p. 218
Context: If humiliation and rejection are to be the rewards of faithful and effective service in this field, what are those of us to conclude who have also served prominently in this line of work but upon whom this badge has not yet been conferred?
We cannot deceive ourselves into believing that it was merit, rather than chance, that spared some of us the necessity of working in areas of activity that have now become controversial, of recording opinions people now find disagreeable, of aiding in the implementation of policies now under question. … In no field of endeavor is it easier than in the field of foreign affairs to be honestly wrong; in no field is it harder for contemporaries to be certain they can distinguish between wisdom and folly; in no field would it be less practicable to try to insist on infallibility as a mark of fitness for office.

Faith

“I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge.”

Dan Aykroyd (1952) Canadian film actor

As quoted in Psychic News # 4001 (18 April 2009)
Context: I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge. Mediums and psychic research have gone on for many, many years.

“I read Stein’s Three Lives, Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage, and Dostoevski’s The Possessed, all of which revealed new realms of feeling. But the most important discoveries came when I veered from fiction proper into the field of psychology and sociology. I ran through volumes that bore upon the causes of my conduct and the conduct of my family. I studied tables of figures relating population density to insanity, relating housing to disease, relating school and recreational opportunities to crime, relating various forms of neurotic behavior to environment, relating racial insecurities to the conflicts between whites and blacks… I still had no friends, casual or intimate, and felt the need for none. I had developed a self-sufficiency that kept me distant from others, emotionally and psychologically.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Disease, School, Family, Behavior

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

No other cells enjoy this exalted status. But such 'essentialism' is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could ... fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case ... who could interbreed with a chimpanzee. We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution. A successful hybridisation between a human and a chimpanzee. Even if the hybrid were infertile like a mule, the shock waves that would be sent through society would be salutary. This is why a distinguished biologist described this possibility as the most immoral scientific experiment he could imagine: it would change everything! It cannot be ruled out as impossible, but it would be surprising. Richard Dawkins Chimpanzee Hybrid? The Guardian, Jan 2009 https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2009/jan/02/richard-dawkins-chimpanzee-hybrid?commentpage=2

Sleep, Question, Suffering, People

“Today, for many in the profession, praise from the government for "responsible" reporting—for taking its direction about what should and should not be published—is a badge of honor. That this is the case is the true measure of how far adversarial journalism in the United States has fallen.”

Glenn Greenwald book No Place to Hide

Picador 2015 edition, p. 247
No Place to Hide (2014)

“When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing — I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better. ... So I view it as a badge of honour, really,”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Trump talked about the 1.59 million confirmed cases of Covid-19, as quoted in * 2020-05-19
Coronavirus: Trump says it’s ‘badge of honour’ for US to lead world in Covid-19 cases
2020s, 2020, May
Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-coronavirus-cases-us-covid-death-toll-a9523166.html

Bad luck

“Ours is a culture where we wear our ability to get by on very little sleep as a kind of badge of honor that symbolizes work ethic, or toughness, or some other virtue—but really, it’s a total profound failure of priorities and of self-respect.”

Timothy Ferriss book Tools of Titans

Self-confidence, Sleep, Failure

“I wonder what a badge is, other than a license to steal.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), p. 316