Quotes about knee
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Cinda Williams Chima photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Stephen Colbert photo
Nora Roberts photo
Allen Ginsberg photo
Kate Bush photo

“You and me on the bobbing knee.
Didn't we cry at that old mythology he'd read!
I will come home again, but not until
The sun and the moon meet on yon hill.”

Kate Bush (1958) British recording artist; singer, songwriter, musician and record producer

Song lyrics, The Kick Inside (1978)

William Morley Punshon photo
Vladimir Putin photo
Alice Evans photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Charles Follen Adams photo
James Connolly photo

“A revolution will only be achieved when the ordinary people of the world, us, the working class, get up off our knees and take back what is rightfully ours.”

James Connolly (1868–1916) Irish republican and socialist leader

As cited in Legendary Locals of Troy, New York (2011), p. 11

Donald J. Trump photo

“Must be a pretty picture you dropping to your knees.”

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

" to Brande Roderick, From The Apprentice, Season 6, Episode 1" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7NDpHfXTCI (3 March 2013)
2010s, 2013

John Mayer photo
David Foster Wallace photo
Curtis Mayfield photo

“I was someone more
Because I was no one poor.
To find that I too was down on my knees.
I'm just homeless.”

Curtis Mayfield (1942–1999) American singer, songwriter, and record producer

Homeless, from Take It To The Streets (1990).
Song lyrics

Geddy Lee photo

“Working at Perfekt,
Got me down on my knees.
Success to failure,
Just a matter of degrees.
Working at Perfekt,
Got me down on my knees…”

Geddy Lee (1953) vocalist, bassist, and keyboardist for the Canadian rock group Rush

"Working at Perfekt"

John P. Kotter photo

“I’ve had 37 orthopedic operations. I ground my feet up into dust. I’ve got a new knee. I‘ve got a new spine. I’m the lucky one… I never thought going through all of it that I would be healthy at the end. And I almost wasn’t.”

"The Thing Bill Walton Still Can't Forgive Himself For" https://www.gq.com/story/bill-walton-back-from-the-dead-interview, interview with GQ (March 26, 2016).

Lester B. Pearson photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Smokey Robinson photo
Samuel Adams photo

“Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say "what should be the reward of such sacrifices?" Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship and plough, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude than the animated contest of freedom — go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen!”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

Speech in Philadelphia (1776)
Variant: If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude <ins>better</ins> than the animat<del>ed</del><ins>ing</ins> contest of freedom — go <del>home</del> from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or <ins>your</ins> arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains <del>sit</del><ins>set</ins> lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen<del>!</del><ins>.</ins>

William Bradford photo
Rick Perry photo
William Jones photo

“On parent knees, a naked new-born child,
Weeping thou sat'st while all around thee smiled;
So live, that sinking in thy last long sleep,
Calm thou mayst smile, while all around thee weep.”

William Jones (1746–1794) Anglo-Welsh philologist and scholar of ancient India

From the Persian, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Caterina Davinio photo

“The head tumbles between the legs
like a wooden ball
you fall, dark night
in the eyes,
the door a span away
inaccessible
you are on your knees
…”

Caterina Davinio (1957) Italian writer

The Book of Opium (1975 - 1990), Overdose
Source: Caterina Davinio, Il libro dell'oppio 1975 – 1990] (The Book of Opium 1975 – 1990), Puntoacapo Editrice, Novi Ligure 2012. English translation by Caterina Davinio and David W. Seaman.</ref>

Eric Clapton photo

“Layla, you got me on my knees. Layla, I'm begging, darling please. Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind.”

Eric Clapton (1945) English musician, singer, songwriter, and guitarist

Layla (by Derek and the Dominos - 1970)

Kent Hovind photo

“.. without any deformation caused by the silly fashion of the corset... she stands somewhat uneasily, with her arms out and knees bent, as if she is balancing. Shadows play over her body and highlight her womanly figure.”

Fritz Bleyl (1880–1966) German artist

c. 1906; as quoted in Ernst Kirchner's Streetwalkers: Art, Luxury, and Immorality in Berlin, 1913 - 1916, Simmons, Sherwin, in 'The Art Bulletin', Vol. 82, No. 1. March 2000, p. 121
Bleyl stated that he favored this model Isabella due to her natural body. Using only two tones of yellow in the poster, Bleyl was able to impart a clear sense of this woman's physique. It is precisely this that got Bleyl in trouble: the police censored this image because they saw pubic hair in the shadow below the belly, apparently giving it an inappropriate sexual power

Tom Petty photo

“We live in our own world,
A world that is too small
For you to stoop and enter
Even on hands and knees,
The adult subterfuge.”

R.S. Thomas (1913–2000) Welsh poet

"Children’s Song"
Song at the Year's Turning (1955)

Jim Henson photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Kage Baker photo
Maria Callas photo

“I would not kill my enemies, but I will make them get down on their knees. I will, I can, I must.”

Maria Callas (1923–1977) American-born Greek operatic soprano

Callas : The Art and the Life (1974)

P. D. Ouspensky photo

“Bin Laden's long-standing support for the Palestinians against Israel also appears to have been learned at his father's knee.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (p. 82).
2000s

Derren Brown photo
Gloria Estefan photo
Margaret Thatcher photo
Adrienne von Speyr photo

“The only thing worse than a knee-jerk liberal is a knee-pad conservative.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Marianne von Werefkin photo
Samantha Power photo
Matthew Stover photo
Josh Billings photo
Norah Jones photo

“I want to walk with you
On a cloudy day
In fields where the yellow grass grows knee high”

Norah Jones (1979) American singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist

"Come Away With Me", Come Away With Me (2002)
Song lyrics

Dilip Sankarreddy photo

“A tired flying bird
Has to perch somewhere to rest.
So should my old knees.”

Dilip Sankarreddy Business professional

Wanderings with Poetry (2007)

Alex Jones photo

“You're supposed to get on your knees at midnight or in the early morning and tell God you repent on things you've done. You don't tell in a football stadium, “Mainstream media: you're my God, I am bad, tell me what to do.” That is sick. They're kneeling to political correctness and hating white people. They're kneeling to white genocide --- and then I don't want anybody to be genocided (sic). But everywhere it's: “Kill the whites, kill the whites.” The universities: “No whites can come on campus.” It's a bunch of weird white people going, “We need to kill all the white people.” Just everywhere. Hillary: “We lost because of white people.””

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

It's the most racist, weird, anti-Martin Luther King crap I've ever heard. Martin Luther King would say, “You people are crazy.”
Alex Jones: Protesting NFL players are “kneeling to white genocide https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2017/09/26/alex-jones-protesting-nfl-players-are-kneeling-white-genocide/218051"Media Matters for America"(26 September 2017)
2017

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“[I myself will] never acknowledge an Englishman again for the rest of [my] life, nor wear an English Order on [my] chest. The fellows must be brought to their knees.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (16 September 1914), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 33
1910s

Leslie Feist photo

“Old dirt road (Mushaboom)
Knee deep snow (Mushaboom)
Watching the fire as we grow”

Leslie Feist (1976) Canadian musician

Mushaboom
"Mushaboom"
Let It Die (2004)

Plutarch photo
Jim Morrison photo
R. A. Salvatore photo
Mirkka Rekola photo

“But that has changed when a few months later during a lull in the battle of the attack on Verdun, he was telling his comrade a dirty anecdote. To his amazement, his buddy did not laugh: “Kutscher, didn’t you find that one funny?” The reaction of poor fellow to joke was no longer a laughing matter: a shrapnel of an enemy grenade struck him right into the heart - he collapsed dead to the ground. "I still see myself on the edge of the trench. A bright light, brighter than the atomic bomb struck me: he is now standing before holy God! And the next thought was: if we had sat in different arrangement, then the splinter grenade would have hit me instead, and then I would be standing face-to-face before God right now! My friend was laying dead in front of my eyes. For the first time in many years, I folded my hands and uttered a prayer, which consisted of only one sentence: "Dear God, I beg You, do not let me fall before I'll be sure not go to hell!"" A few days later, he then entered with a New Testament in the hand a broken French farmhouse, fell to his knees and prayed: Jesus! The Bible says that you have come from God in order to save sinners. I am a sinner. I cannot promise anything in the future, because I have a bad character. But I do not want to go to hell, if I get a shot. And so, Lord Jesus, I surrender myself to you from head to foot. Do with me whatever you want!"”

Wilhelm Busch (pastor) (1897–1966) German pastor and writer

Since there was no bang, no big movement, I just went out. I had found the Lord, a gentleman to whom I belonged."
Jesus Our Destiny
Source: [ВИЛЬГЕЛЬМ (Wilhelm), БУШ (Busch), Приди домой (Come home), CLV, Christliche Literatur -Verbreitung, Bielefeld, 8, 158, 1995, http://www.manna.lv/nopirkt/Pridi-domoj/389397721X.html, Russian, 3-89397-721-X, 2011-11-19]

Jerome K. Jerome photo
Homér photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Zbigniew Herbert photo
Homér photo
Homér photo

“No more entreating of me, you dog, by knees or parents.”

XXII. 345 (tr. R. Lattimore); Achilles to Hector.
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

Ani DiFranco photo
Noel Gallagher photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
S.M. Stirling photo

“They rode armed for war, curved swords at their side and the thick horn-and-sinew bows of mounted archers in cases at their knees.”

S.M. Stirling (1953) Canadian-American author, primarily of speculative fiction

The Scourge of God https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scourge_of_God_(novel)

Dylan Moran photo

“Counterpart to the knee-jerk liberal is the new knee-pad conservative, always groveling before the rich and powerful.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Bill Bryson photo
John Fante photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Artimus Pyle photo
Michele Bachmann photo
Seneca the Younger photo

“Toward good men God has the mind of a father, he cherishes for them a manly love, and he says, "Let them be harassed by toil, by suffering, by losses, in order that they may gather true strength." Bodies grown fat through sloth are weak, and not only labour, but even movement and their very weight cause them to break down. Unimpaired prosperity cannot withstand a single blow; but he who has struggled constantly with his ills becomes hardened through suffering; and yields to no misfortune; nay, even if he falls, he still fights upon his knees.”
Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur." Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.

Patrium deus habet adversus bonos viros animum et illos fortiter amat et "Operibus," inquit, "doloribus, damnis exagitentur, ut verum colligant robur."
Languent per inertiam saginata nec labore tantum sed motu et ipso sui onere deficiunt. Non fert ullum ictum inlaesa felicitas; at cui assidua fuit cum incommodis suis rixa, callum per iniurias duxit nec ulli malo cedit sed etiam si cecidit de genu pugnat.
De Providentia (On Providence), 2.6; translation by John W. Basore
Moral Essays

Tom Lehrer photo

“So get down upon your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect!”

Tom Lehrer (1928) American singer-songwriter and mathematician

"The Vatican Rag"
That Was the Year That Was (1965)

Jacques Plante photo

“My knees started to shake. In the dressing room that night, I was so nervous I couldn't tie my skates. Maurice Richard walked over and held out his hands. 'Look at them,' he said. 'They shake before a big game. You'll feel better when you get out on the ice.”

Jacques Plante (1929–1986) Canadian ice hockey player

Plante recalls his first playoff game, which he won 3–0.
Quoted in Kevin Shea, "One on One with Jacques Plante," http://www.legendsofhockey.net/html/spot_oneononep197802.htm Legends of Hockey.net (2005-05-24)

Sadegh Hedayat photo
Jane Fonda photo

“Alternate form: I would think that if you understood what communism was, you would hope and pray on your knees that we would someday be communists. I am a socialist. I think that we should strive toward a socialist society - all the way to communism.”

Jane Fonda (1937) American actress and activist

Reported by Paul Scott in the Lewiston Daily Sun (27 September 1972) again as remarks at Duke University; http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=FXwgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7mcFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1010,3814989 reported elsewhere as a remark made at Michigan State University (22 November 1970) and cited to the Detroit Free Press but without a date, page or headline.
Rick Perlstein, in a 2005 London Review of Books article and in his 2008 book Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (Simon and Schuster, p517 http://books.google.com/books?id=dM_enWzoghoC&pg=PA517#v=onepage&q&f=false), accused Helms of inventing the quote: "They tapped their network of friendly media propagandists, like the future Senator Jesse Helms, then a TV editorialist, who supplied an invented quotation that still circulates as part of the Fonda cult’s liturgy." http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n22/rick-perlstein/operation-barbarella The COINTELPRO Papers (2002) documents a separate attempt to plant false quotes from Fonda in the press.
Disputed

Jaroslav Hašek photo

“Heaven-gates are not so highly arched
As princes' palaces; they that enter there
Must go upon their knees.”

John Webster (1578–1634) English dramatist

Act IV, scene ii.
Duchess of Malfi (1623)

Alex Jones photo

“If I'm in, you know, especially in a poor area, and I see guys walking like they're thugs down the street, I don't care what color they are, I go "That guy looks like they're a thug, and looks like they're tough, okay… If they try to shake me down I'm gonna ignore them and keep walking, and if they come up to me and try to put a hand on me, I'm gonna punch 'em right in the throat. 'Cause I don't wanna jump on top on of 'em and hurt my knees and stuff, when I slam their head in the ground. Plus, I don't wanna kill 'em. 'Cause then I'd have to go to jail and stuff, and they'd have to find that it was done in self defense. Been down that road." So, I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, "Alright. I'm gonna punch this guy in the throat." I'm thinking how hard am I gonna punch him. And I'm not thinking he's a black guy. I'm thinking the guy's walking like a thug, thinks they're tough, and I'm thinking about how I'm going to defend myself. Just like when I've been at the Coast, a few years ago, and walk out of a restaurant in South Padre and they're having a biker rally—and it wasn't like a nice biker rally, most rallies are nice people—it was like thug wannabes, rode up with a motorcycle…and were looking at me, and I was thinking "Okay. Alright. That guy is taking his helmet off. I'm gonna punch him in the throat the minute he tries to get up and do something, and then I'm gonna assault those next three guys. Then they'll probably pull a weapon. I need to take that." I mean, that's what I'm thinking whenever something like that is going on. I can't help it. I'm thinking, "Alright, I'm ready to kill." That's just how I am. And I'm thinking, "Alright. Okay. Instantly assess these guys. These are probably ex-con, real criminals. I've got my three kids here. That gives me, you know, just turbo dinosaur power. And I'm thinking, "Control yourself. Don't have a fight, unless you absolutely got to."”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

You know, the man in me is ready to take all on! and... you know what I'm talking about, don't you? ARGH, you scum! I hate gang members and filth! And it has nothing to do with black people. But I will stump your head in if you start a fight with me, you thug scum! Anyways, excuse me ladies and gentlemen.
"Alex Jones Self-Defense Rant" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIMJ_pxy2eU, July 2013.
2013

Stephen Vincent Benét photo
David D. Friedman photo
Andrew Ure photo