Quotes about crow

A collection of quotes on the topic of crow, likeness, people, black.

Quotes about crow

William Shakespeare photo
Sitting Bull photo

“Because I am a red man. If the Great Spirit had desired me to be a white man he would have made me so in the first place. He put in your heart certain wishes and plans; in my heart he put other and different desires. Each man is good in the sight of the Great Spirit. It is not necessary, that eagles should be crows.”

Sitting Bull (1831–1890) Hunkpapa Lakota medicine man and holy man

Quoted in Vine Deloria, God Is Red: A Native View of Religion. Golden, Colo: Fulcrum Pub, 2003, cited to Virginia Armstrong, I have spoken; American history through the voices of the Indians. Chicago, Sage Books, 1971.

Giovanni Boccaccio photo

“Charming ladies, the beauty of a flock of white doves is better enhanced by a black crow than by a pure white swan.”

Leggiadre donne, infra molte bianche colombe aggiugne più di bellezza uno nero corvo, che non farebbe un candido cigno.
Ninth Day, Tenth Story
The Decameron (c. 1350)

Joel Osteen photo
James O'Barr photo
Tennessee Williams photo
Barack Obama photo
Abraham Lincoln photo

“They will never shoulder a musket again in anger, and if Grant is wise, he will leave them their guns to shoot crows with and their horses to plow with. It would do no harm.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Regarding the treatment of former Confederate soldiers. In Richmond, Virginia (April 4, 1865), as quoted in Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War https://archive.org/download/incidentsanecdot00port/incidentsanecdot00port.pdf (1885), by David Dixon Porter, p. 312
1860s, Tour of Richmond (1865)

Babur photo
Barack Obama photo

“We also know that centuries of racial discrimination -- of slavery, and subjugation, and Jim Crow -- they didn’t simply vanish with the end of lawful segregation. They didn’t just stop when Dr. King made a speech, or the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act were signed. Race relations have improved dramatically in my lifetime. Those who deny it are dishonoring the struggles that helped us achieve that progress. But we know -- but, America, we know that bias remains. We know it. Whether you are black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or of Middle Eastern descent, we have all seen this bigotry in our own lives at some point. […] Although most of us do our best to guard against it and teach our children better, none of us is entirely innocent. No institution is entirely immune. And so when African Americans from all walks of life, from different communities across the country, voice a growing despair over what they perceive to be unequal treatment; when study after study shows that whites and people of color experience the criminal justice system differently, so that if you’re black you’re more likely to be pulled over or searched or arrested, more likely to get longer sentences, more likely to get the death penalty for the same crime; when mothers and fathers raise their kids right and have “the talk” about how to respond if stopped by a police officer -- “yes, sir,” “no, sir” -- but still fear that something terrible may happen when their child walks out the door, still fear that kids being stupid and not quite doing things right might end in tragedy -- when all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid. We can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of political correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and coworkers and fellow church members again and again and again -- it hurts. Surely we can see that, all of us.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2016, Memorial Service for Fallen Dallas Police Officers (July 2016)

Epictetus photo

“Crows pick out the eyes of the dead, when the dead have no longer need of them; but flatterers mar the soul of the living, and her eyes they blind.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

Fragment iv.
Golden Sayings of Epictetus, Fragments

Barack Obama photo

“Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2015, Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney (June 2015)
Context: For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens. It’s true, a flag did not cause these murders. But as people from all walks of life, Republicans and Democrats, now acknowledge -- including Governor Haley, whose recent eloquence on the subject is worthy of praise as we all have to acknowledge, the flag has always represented more than just ancestral pride. For many, black and white, that flag was a reminder of systemic oppression and racial subjugation. We see that now. Removing the flag from this state’s capitol would not be an act of political correctness; it would not be an insult to the valor of Confederate soldiers. It would simply be an acknowledgment that the cause for which they fought -- the cause of slavery -- was wrong -- the imposition of Jim Crow after the Civil War, the resistance to civil rights for all people was wrong. It would be one step in an honest accounting of America’s history; a modest but meaningful balm for so many unhealed wounds. It would be an expression of the amazing changes that have transformed this state and this country for the better, because of the work of so many people of goodwill, people of all races striving to form a more perfect union. By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace.

J. M. Barrie photo

“Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing.”

Source: Peter and Wendy (1911), Ch. 17
Context: The last thing he ever said to me was, "Just always be waiting for me, and then some night you will hear me crowing."

Abbie Hoffman photo

“In the nineteen-sixties, apartheid was driven out of America. Legal segregation — Jim Crow — ended. We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Closing words from his last speech, Vanderbilt University (April 1989).
Context: In the nineteen-sixties, apartheid was driven out of America. Legal segregation — Jim Crow — ended. We didn't end racism, but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you can send a million soldiers ten thousand miles away to fight in a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. Now, it doesn't matter who sits in the Oval Office. But the big battles that were won in that period of civil war and strife you cannot reverse. We were young, we were reckless, arrogant, silly, headstrong … and we were right! I regret nothing!

Leonardo Da Vinci photo
Richard Aldington photo

“Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill.”

Richard Aldington (1892–1962) English writer and poet

The Colonel’s Daughter (1931) pt. 1, ch. 6

Henry Rollins photo

“Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner
but I feel more lonely in a crowed room with boring people than I feel on my own”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Variant: Yes, I guess you could say I am a loner, but i feel more lonely in a crowded room with boring people then i feel on my owm.

Robert Frost photo

“The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock treeHas given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" Dust of Snow http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=173526" (1923)
General sources

William James photo
William Blake photo

“The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 39

Cinda Williams Chima photo
Cynthia Kadohata photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Bashō Matsuo photo
Muhammad Ali photo
Kim Harrison photo
Jim Butcher photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Marianne von Werefkin photo

“.. upon the frightening gray sky one can see a black mountain, completely black even with black houses, and all of a sudden a fire-red house appears, a violet path with snowflakes and on the path a black chain of people like crows.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Quote from Werefkin's letter to Alexej von Jawlensky, 1910 Lithuanian Martynas-Mazvydas-National Library, Vilnius, RS (F19-1458,1.31) as reprinted in Weidle, Marianne Werefkin, Die Farbe beisst mich ans Herz, 108; as quoted in 'Identity and Reminiscence in Marianne Werefkin's Return Home', c. 1909; Adrienne Kochman http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/spring06/52-spring06/spring06article/171-ambiguity-of-home-identity-and-reminiscence-in-marianne-werefkins-return-home-c-1909
1906 - 1911

“Perhaps [Condoleezza Rice] would have made a more timely cameo in New Orleans had a Chevron tanker caught fire. Jane Crow seems to be just as willing as old Jim was.”

Larisa Alexandrovna (1971) Ukrainian-American journalist, essayist, poet

Defending Those Who Know http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/defending-those-who-know_b_7517.html; "Jim" is a reference to Jim Crow laws.

Woody Guthrie photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo

“Are ye, two vultures sick for battle,
Two scorpions under one wet stone,
Two bloodless wolves whose dry throats rattle,
Two crows perched on the murrained cattle,
Two vipers tangled into one.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819 http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/shelley/percy_bysshe/s54cp/section163.html (Published 1832), st. 4

China Miéville photo

“The light comes brighter from the east; the caw
Of restive crows is sharper on the ear.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"The Light Comes Brighter," ll. 1-2
Open House (1941)

Robert Greene (dramatist) photo

“There is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that with his tiger's heart wrapped in a player's hide supposes he is as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you: and being an absolute Johannes Factotum, is in his own conceit the only Shake-scene in a country.”

Robert Greene (dramatist) (1558–1592) English author

Groatsworth of Wit; cited from William Shakespeare (ed. Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller) The Complete Works (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002) p. xlvii.
Probably the earliest reference to Shakespeare as a figure in the theatrical world.

Russell Crowe photo

“I went shopping with Danielle yesterday, and we were in a bookstore. And this woman actually said, "Look, Russell Crowe reads— who'd have known?"”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Sarvajna photo
Robert Jordan photo
Thiruvalluvar photo
Laurette Taylor photo
Shannon Sharpe photo

“I want to ask America: What does crow taste like? Because y'all are eating it.”

Shannon Sharpe (1968) Player of American football

To doubters of the Baltimore Ravens' chances to defeat the Oakland Raiders in the 2000 AFC Championship Game Cimini, Rich. "Defense All The Rave Shackles Raiders In Super Showing," Daily News (New York City), Monday, January 15, 2001. http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/news/2001/01/15/2001-01-15_defense_all_the_rave_shackle.html

Nikos Kazantzakis photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo

“A distance “as the crow flies” is significant only to crows.”

Source: Starman Jones (1953), Chapter 11, “Through the Cargo Hatch” (p. 111)

Ted Hughes photo
John Milton photo
Amit Chaudhuri photo
Antisthenes photo

“It is better to fall in with crows than with flatterers; for in the one case you are devoured when dead, in the other case while alive.”

Antisthenes (-444–-365 BC) Greek philosopher

§ 4
From Lives and Opinions of the Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius

Thomas Jefferson photo

“The judiciary of the United States is the subtle corps of sappers and miners constantly working under ground to undermine the foundations of our confederated fabric. They are construing our constitution from a co-ordination of a general and special government to a general and supreme one alone. This will lay all things at their feet, and they are too well versed in English law to forget the maxim, boni judicis est ampliare juris-dictionem. We shall see if they are bold enough to take the daring stride their five lawyers have lately taken. If they do, then, with the editor of our book, in his address to the public, I will say, that "against this every man should raise his voice," and more, should uplift his arm. Who wrote this admirable address? Sound, luminous, strong, not a word too much, nor one which can be changed but for the worse. That pen should go on, lay bare these wounds of our constitution, expose the decisions seriatim, and arouse, as it is able, the attention of the nation to these bold speculators on its patience. Having found, from experience, that impeachment is an impracticable thing, a mere scare-crow, they consider themselves secure for life; they sculk from responsibility to public opinion, the only remaining hold on them, under a practice first introduced into England by Lord Mansfield. An opinion is huddled up in conclave, perhaps by a majority of one, delivered as if unanimous, and with the silent acquiescence of lazy or timid associates, by a crafty chief judge, who sophisticates the law to his mind, by the turn of his own reasoning”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter http://books.google.com/books?vid=0Fz_zz_wSWAiVg9LI1&id=vvVVhCadyK4C&pg=PA192&vq=%22impeachment+is+an+impracticable+thing%22&dq=%22jeffersons+works%22 to Thomas Ritchie (25 December 1820)
1820s

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Ogden Nash photo
Devendra Banhart photo
John Dryden photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo

“The Sultan himself joined in the pursuit, and went after them as far as the fort called Bhimnagar [Nagarkot, modern Kangra], which is very strong, situated on the promontory of a lofty hill, in the midst of impassable waters. The kings of Hind, the chiefs of that country, and rich devotees, used to amass their treasures and precious jewels, and send them time after time to be presented to the large idol that they might receive a reward for their good deeds and draw near to their God. So the Sultan advanced near to this crow's fruit, ^ and this accumulation of years, which had attained such an amount that the backs of camels would not carry it, nor vessels contain it, nor writers hands record it, nor the imagination of an arithmetician conceive it. The Sultan brought his forces under the fort and surrounded it, and prepared to attack the garrison vigorously, boldly, and wisely. When the defenders saw the hills covered with the armies of plunderers, and the arrows ascending towards them like flaming sparks of fire, great fear came upon them, and, calling out for mercy, they opened the gates, and fell on the earth, like sparrows before a hawk, or rain before lightning. Thus did God grant an easy conquest of this fort to the Sultan, and bestowed on him as plunder the products of mines and seas, the ornaments of heads and breasts, to his heart's content. … After this he returned to Ghazna in triumph; and, on his arrival there, he ordered the court-yard of his palace to be covered with a carpet, on which he displayed jewels and unbored pearls and rubies, shining like sparks, or like wine congealed with ice, and emeralds like fresh sprigs of myrtle, and diamonds in size and weight like pomegranates. Then ambassadors from foreign countries, including the envoy from Tagh^n Khan, king of Turkistin, assembled to see the wealth which they had never yet even read of in books of the ancients, and which had never been accumulated by kings of Persia or of Rum, or even by Karun, who had only to express a wish and Grod granted it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

About the capture of Bhimnagar, Tarikh Yamini (Kitabu-l Yamini) by Al Utbi, in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. p. 34-35 Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes (971 CE to 1013 CE)

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas photo

“And swans seem whiter if swart crowes be by.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

First Week, First Day.
La Semaine; ou, Création du monde (1578)

Paul Robeson photo
Ken MacLeod photo
John Milton photo

“Twin miracles of mascara, her eyes looked like the corpses of two small crows that had crashed into a chalk cliff.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On Barbara Cartland
'Wedding of the century'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

Marc Chagall photo
Nick Cave photo

“I am the black crow king,
Keeper of the forgotten corn,
The King!”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, The Firstborn Is Dead (1985), Black Crow King

Henry David Thoreau photo
Alfred Binet photo
Felix Frankfurter photo

“"As the crow flies"—a popular and picturesque expression to denote a straight line.”

William Henry Maule (1788–1858) British politician

Stokes v. Grissell (1854), 23 L. J. Rep. Part 7 (N. S.), Com. PL 144.

Jean Chrétien photo
Isaac Barrow photo
Neal Stephenson photo
Gautama Buddha photo
Muhammad photo

“Five kinds of animals are mischief-doers and can be killed even in the Sanctuary: They are the rat, the scorpion, the kite, the crow and the rabid dog.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Hadith - Bukhari 4:531, Narrated by 'Aisha
Sunni Hadith

David Lange photo
Al Sharpton photo

“Jim Crow is old. That's not who I'm mindful of today. The problem is that Jim Crow has sons. The one we've got to battle is James Crow Jr., Esq. He's a little more educated. He's a little slicker. He's a little more polished, but the results are the same.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Remarks at the funeral of Rosa Parks (3 November 2005).[citation needed]

Jon Courtenay Grimwood photo
Ronald Firbank photo

“I suppose when there's no more room for another crow's-foot, one attains a sort of peace?”

Valmouth (1918), cited from The Complete Ronald Firbank (London: Duckworth, 1961) p. 448.

George Raymond Richard Martin photo

“Back at the Philadelphia Worldcon (which seems a million years ago), I announced the famous five-year gap: I was going to skip five years forward in the story, to allow some of the younger characters to grow older and the dragons to grow larger, and for various other reasons. I started out writing on that basis in 2001, and it worked very well for some of my myriad characters but not at all for others, because you can't just have nothing happen for five years. If things do happen you have to write flashbacks, a lot of internal retrospection, and that's not a good way to present it. I struggled with that essentially wrong direction for about a year before finally throwing it out, realizing there had to be another interim book. That became A Feast for Crows, where the action is pretty much continuous from the preceding book. Even so, that only accounts for one year. Why the four after that? I don't know, except that this was a very tough book to write -- and it remains so, because I've only finished half. Going in, I thought I could do something about the length of the second book in the series, A Clash of Kings, roughly 1,200 pages in manuscript. But I passed that and there was a lot more to write. Then I passed the length of the third book, A Storm of Swords, which was something like 1,500 pages in manuscript and gave my publishers all around the world lots of production problems. I didn't really want to make any cuts because I had this huge story to tell. We started thinking about dividing it in two and doing it as A Feast for Crows, Parts One and Two, but the more I thought about that the more I really did not like it. Part One would have had no resolution whatsoever for 18 viewpoint characters and their 18 stories. Of course this is all part of a huge megaseries so there is not a complete resolution yet in any of the volumes, but I try to give a certain sense of completion at the end of each volume -- that a movement of the symphony has wrapped up, so to speak.”

George Raymond Richard Martin (1948) American writer, screenwriter and television producer

Interview with Locus magazine (November 2005)

Edmond Rostand photo

“Without doubt
I can teach crowing: for I gobble.”

Sans doute
Je peux apprendre à coqueriquer: je glougloute.
Act I, Sc. 2
Chantecler (1910)

Rāmabhadrācārya photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“My gran'ther's rule was safer 'n 'tis to crow:
Don't never prophesy — onless ye know.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 2.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Henry Adams photo

“As a type for study, or a standard for education, Lodge was the more interesting of the two. Roosevelts are born and never can be taught; but Lodge was a creature of teaching — Boston incarnate — the child of his local parentage; and while his ambition led him to be more, the intent, though virtuous, was — as Adams admitted in his own case — restless. An excellent talker, a voracious reader, a ready wit, an accomplished orator, with a clear mind and a powerful memory, he could never feel perfectly at ease whatever leg he stood on, but shifted, sometimes with painful strain of temper, from one sensitive muscle to another, uncertain whether to pose as an uncompromising Yankee; or a pure American; or a patriot in the still purer atmosphere of Irish, Germans, or Jews; or a scholar and historian of Harvard College. English to the last fibre of his thought — saturated with English literature, English tradition, English taste — revolted by every vice and by most virtues of Frenchmen and Germans, or any other Continental standards, but at home and happy among the vices and extravagances of Shakespeare — standing first on the social, then on the political foot; now worshipping, now banning; shocked by the wanton display of immorality, but practicing the license of political usage; sometimes bitter, often genial, always intelligent — Lodge had the singular merit of interesting. The usual statesmen flocked in swarms like crows, black and monotonous. Lodge's plumage was varied, and, like his flight, harked back to race. He betrayed the consciousness that he and his people had a past, if they dared but avow it, and might have a future, if they could but divine it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Eli Siegel photo
Galén photo

“Diogenes compared them to fig-trees growing over precipices; for their fruit was devoured by daws and crows, not by men.”

Galén (129–216) Roman physician, surgeon and philosopher

Galen, on Diogenes's views on the ignorant rich, in Exhortation to Study the Arts, Wakefield (1796), p. 217; cf. Stobaeus, iv. 31b. 48.
Latter day attributions

Will Cuppy photo

“Aristotle described the Crow as chaste. In some departments of knowledge, Aristotle was too innocent for his own good.”

Will Cuppy (1884–1949) American writer

The Crow
How to Tell Your Friends from the Apes (1931)