Quotes about lashes

A collection of quotes on the topic of lashes, likeness, doing, use.

Quotes about lashes

Zhuangzi photo
W.B. Yeats photo
Terry Pratchett photo
W.B. Yeats photo

“Hurrah for revolution and more cannon-shot!
A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.
Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!
The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

The Great Day http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1626/
Last Poems (1936-1939)

Sojourner Truth photo

““I am pleading for my people, a poor downtrodden race
Who dwell in freedom’s boasted land with no abiding place
I am pleading that my people may have their rights restored,
For they have long been toiling, and yet had no reward
They are forced the crops to culture, but not for them they yield,
Although both late and early, they labor in the field.
While I bear upon my body, the scores of many a gash,
I’m pleading for my people who groan beneath the lash.
I’m pleading for the mothers who gaze in wild despair
Upon the hated auction block, and see their children there.
I feel for those in bondage—well may I feel for them.
I know how fiendish hearts can be that sell their fellow men.
Yet those oppressors steeped in guilt—I still would have them live;
For I have learned of Jesus, to suffer and forgive!
I want no carnal weapons, no machinery of death.
For I love to not hear the sound of war’s tempestuous breath.
I do not ask you to engage in death and bloody strife.
I do not dare insult my God by asking for their life.
But while your kindest sympathies to foreign lands do roam,
I ask you to remember your own oppressed at home.
I plead with you to sympathize with signs and groans and scars,
And note how base the tyranny beneath the stripes and stars.”

Sojourner Truth (1797–1883) African-American abolitionist and women's rights activist

Olive Gilbert & Sojourner Truth (1878), Narrative of Sojourner Truth, a Bondswoman of Olden Time, page 303.

W.B. Yeats photo

“Whence had they come,
The hand and lash that beat down frigid Rome?
What sacred drama through her body heaved
When world-transforming Charlemagne was conceived?”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Parnell's Funeral and Other Poems http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/WorldeBookLibrary.com/ytpafu.htm (1935). Supernatural Songs http://worldebooklibrary.com/eBooks/WorldeBookLibrary.com/ytpafu.htm#1_0_7

Abraham Lincoln photo

“So long as we call Slavery wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that he ran because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off. Whenever a master cuts his slaves with the lash, and they cry out under it, he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist.”

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

1860s, Allow the humblest man an equal chance (1860)
Context: These natural and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only; cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated — we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Douglas's new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that Slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State Constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected of all taint of opposition to Slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us. So long as we call Slavery wrong, whenever a slave runs away they will overlook the obvious fact that he ran because he was oppressed, and declare he was stolen off. Whenever a master cuts his slaves with the lash, and they cry out under it, he will overlook the obvious fact that the negroes cry out because they are hurt, and insist that they were put up to it by some rascally abolitionist.

Abraham Lincoln photo

“Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.'”

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

1860s, Second Inaugural Address (1865)
Context: The Almighty has his own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offenses! for it must needs be that offenses come; but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.' If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do we pray — that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

Jonathan Swift photo

“Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift (1731), l. 459
Context: Yet malice never was his aim;
He lashed the vice but spared the name.
No individual could resent,
Where thousands equally were meant.
His satire points at no defect
But what all mortals may correct;
For he abhorred that senseless tribe
Who call it humor when they gibe.

Suzanne Collins photo
Jonathan Maberry photo
Cornelia Funke photo
Jenny Han photo

“Underneath my lashes I watched him, and I thought, Come back. Be the you I love and remember”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Dorothy L. Sayers photo

“But it is the mark of all movements, however well-intentioned, that their pioneers tend, by much lashing of themselves into excitement, to lose sight of the obvious.”

Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957) English crime writer, playwright, essayist and Christian writer

Source: Are Women Human? Astute and Witty Essays on the Role of Women in Society

Ayn Rand photo
Harper Lee photo
Richelle Mead photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Dorothy L. Sayers photo
Holly Black photo
Karen Marie Moning photo
Franz Kafka photo
Raymond Chandler photo
Yury Dombrovsky photo
Jefferson Davis photo
Thomas Dekker photo
Henry Liddon photo
Rebecca Latimer Felton photo

“Savage tribes used physical force to manage their women. The club and the lash were their only arguments. Moslem fanatics go a step further in saying women have no souls.”

Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835–1930) American politician

'Why I Am a Suffragist? essay, dated May 14, 1915. Cornerstones of Georgia History, p. 165 http://books.google.com/books?id=0qdkKS2F42MC&pg=PA165&lpg=PA165&dq=rebecca+latimer+felton+why+i+am+a+suffragist&source=bl&ots=B1fM_lWjgv&sig=bOmSGdPp921qKNy3TlmDU3uWaEc#v=onepage&q=rebecca%20latimer%20felton%20why%20i%20am%20a%20suffragist&f=false.

Tristram Hunt photo
Anthony Trollope photo

“Satire, though it may exaggerate the vice it lashes, is not justified in creating it in order that it may be lashed.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

Source: An Autobiography (1883), Ch. 5

Robert Frost photo

“She drew back; he was calm
"It is this that had the power,"
And he lashed his open palm
With the tender-headed flower.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Subverted Flower http://www.andrews.edu/~spangles/life/poet/x.htm"
1940s

Robert Holmes photo
William Cullen Bryant photo

“Thine eyes are springs in whose serene
And silent waters heaven is seen;
Their lashes are the herbs that look
On their young figures in the brook.”

William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) American romantic poet and journalist

Oh Fairest of the Rural Maids http://www.gutenberg.org/files/16341/16341-h/16341-h.htm#page91 (1820)

Muhammad photo
Ralph Chaplin photo
Anne Brontë photo
Robert G. Ingersoll photo
Sam Harris photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“We all know what the negro has been as a slave. In this relation we have his experience of two hundred and fifty years before us, and can easily know the character and qualities he has developed and exhibited during this long and severe ordeal. In his new relation to his environments, we see him only in the twilight of twenty years of semi-freedom; for he has scarcely been free long enough to outgrow the marks of the lash on his back and the fetters on his limbs. He stands before us, today, physically, a maimed and mutilated man. His mother was lashed to agony before the birth of her babe, and the bitter anguish of the mother is seen in the countenance of her offspring. Slavery has twisted his limbs, shattered his feet, deformed his body and distorted his features. He remains black, but no longer comely. Sleeping on the dirt floor of the slave cabin in infancy, cold on one side and warm on the other, a forced circulation of blood on the one side and chilled and retarded circulation on the other, it has come to pass that he has not the vertical bearing of a perfect man. His lack of symmetry, caused by no fault of his own, creates a resistance to his progress which cannot well be overestimated, and should be taken into account, when measuring his speed in the new race of life upon which he has now entered.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1880s, The Future of the Colored Race (1886)

Rian Johnson photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“I have said that President Lincoln was a white man, and shared the prejudices common to his countrymen towards the colored race. Looking back to his times and to the condition of his country, we are compelled to admit that this unfriendly feeling on his part may be safely set down as one element of his wonderful success in organizing the loyal American people for the tremendous conflict before them, and bringing them safely through that conflict. His great mission was to accomplish two things. First, to save his country from dismemberment and ruin; and, second, to free his country from the great crime of slavery. To do one or the other, or both, he must have the earnest sympathy and the powerful cooperation of his loyal fellow-countrymen. Without this primary and essential condition to success his efforts must have been vain and utterly fruitless. Had he put the abolition of slavery before the salvation of the Union, he would have inevitably driven from him a powerful class of the American people and rendered resistance to rebellion impossible. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mister Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical, and determined. Though Mister Lincoln shared the prejudices of his white fellow-countrymen against the Negro, it is hardly necessary to say that in his heart of hearts he loathed and hated slavery. 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.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

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)

Michael Moorcock photo
Emily Dickinson photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“America's strength doesn't come from lashing out. Strength relies on smarts, judgment, cool resolve, and the precise and strategic application of power.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), (July 28, 2016)

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo

“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime [Israel], which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Comments during a rally in southern Iran
[Michal, Lando, http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203343707673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull, Ahmadinejad: Israel filthy bacteria, Jerusalem Post, 20 February 2008, 2008-02-23]
2008

Eminem photo
Muhammad photo
George Eliot photo
Daniel Patrick Moynihan photo
James Boswell photo

“He who has provoked the lash of wit, cannot complain that he smarts from it.”

Comment on Samuel Johnson's treatment of Thomas Sheridan (16 October 1769)
The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. (1791)

Ernest Thayer photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Timo K. Mukka photo
Ramsay MacDonald photo

“He had been across the veldt, he had seen the battlefields, the still open trenches, and it all came to Chinese labour. They were told it was going to release the slaves, the Uitlanders, to open up South Africa to a great flood of white emigrants. They were told it was going to plant the Union Jack upon the land of the free. But the echoes of the muskets had hardly died out on the battlefields, the ink on the treaty was hardly dry, before the men who plotted the war began to plot to bring in Chinese slaves. (Cheers.) They could talk about their gold; their gold is tainted. (Hear, hear.) They could talk about employing white men; it was not true, and even if it were true, was he going to stand and see his white brothers degraded to the position of yellow slave drivers? No, he was not. (Loud and continued cheers.) These patriots! These miserable patriots! If they had had the custodianship of the opinions of the country 75 years ago, slavery in the colonies would have continued. When the north was fighting the south for the liberty of men, these men would have counted their guineas, would have told them how many white men had plied the lash in the southern states, and they would have said that for miserable cash, miserable trash, the great name of the country required to be bought and sold. Thank God there were no twentieth century Unionist imperialists in office then.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Leicester Daily Mercury (6 January 1906)
1900s

Torquato Tasso photo

“With fortunate misfortune, kindly wrath,
Heaven's light lash now punishes your black
and foolish sin, and makes of your soul's weal
yourself the minister.”

Torquato Tasso (1544–1595) Italian poet

Seconda avversità, pietoso sdegno
Con leve sferza di lassù flagella
Tua folle colpa; e fa di tua salute
Te medesmo ministro.
Canto XII, stanza 87 (tr. Wickert)
Gerusalemme Liberata (1581)

“A fifty-seven-year-old college professor expressed it this way: "Yes, there's a need for male lib and hardly anyone writes about it the way it really is, though a few make jokes. My gut reaction, which is what you asked for, is that men—the famous male chauvinist pigs who neglect their wives, underpay their women employees, and rule the world—are literally slaves. They're out there picking that cotton, sweating, swearing, taking lashes from the boss, working fifty hours a week to support themselves and the plantation, only then to come back to the house to do another twenty hours a week rinsing dishes, toting trash bags, writing checks, and acting as butlers at the parties. It's true of young husbands and middleaged husbands. Young bachelors may have a nice deal for a couple of years after graduating, but I've forgotten, and I'll never again be young! Old men. Some have it sweet, some have it sour."Man's role—how has it affected my life? At thirty-five, I chose to emphasize family togetherness and income and neglect my profession if necessary. At fifty-seven, I see no reward for time spent with and for the family, in terms of love or appreciation. I see a thousand punishments for neglecting my profession. I'm just tired and have come close to just walking away from it and starting over; just research, publish, teach, administer, play tennis, and travel. Why haven't I? Guilt. And love. And fear of loneliness. How should the man's role in my family change? I really don't know how it can, but I'd like a lot more time to do my thing."”

Herb Goldberg (1937–2019) American psychologist

In Harness: The Male Condition, pp. 6–7
The Hazards of Being Male (1976)

Mickey Spillane photo
Mary Howitt photo

“The wild sea roars and lashes the granite cliffs below,
And round the misty islets the loud strong tempests blow.”

Mary Howitt (1799–1888) English poet, and author

The Sea-Fowler, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Kim Stanley Robinson photo
Annie Dillard photo
Herman Melville photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“All kin' o' smily round the lips,
An' teary round the lashes.”

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

The Courtin' .
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Bryan Caplan photo
Philip K. Dick photo
Ted Cruz photo

“Donald has a very unfortunate habit. When he gets scared, he lashes out… And he insults and attacks whoever is standing near him… Donald does seem to have an issue with women… Donald doesn't like strong women. Strong women scare Donald.”

Ted Cruz (1970) American politician

As quoted in "Cruz calls Trump "sniveling coward" and says 'leave Heidi the hell alone'" http://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-cruz-bashes-sniveling-coward-donald-trump/ (24 March 2016), by Reena Flores, CBS News
2010s

Winston S. Churchill photo

“Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

According to Churchill's assistant, Anthony Montague-Browne, Churchill had not coined this phrase, but wished he had.
Resembles an ironic aphorism cited by Langworth from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as 19th-century English naval tradition, “Ashore it’s wine, women and song; aboard it’s rum, bum and concertina” or variously “... rum, bum and bacca [tobacco]”.
Misattributed
Source: This Day in Quotes, Robert Deis, Churchill’s alleged quip about British naval tradition http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2010/08/rum-sodomy-and-lash-winston-churchills.html,
Source: [Churchill by Himself: The Definitive Collection of Quotations, Richard Langworth, 1586489577, https://books.google.com/books/about/Churchill_by_Himself.html?id=vbsU21fEhLAC, 577, In dinner conversation ca. 1955, private secretary Anthony Montague Browne confronted WSC with this quotation. 'I never said it. I wish I had,' responded Churchill. (AMB to the editor.) 'Compare “Rum, bum, and bacca” and “Ashore it's wine women and song, aboard it's rum, bum and concertina”, naval catchphrases dating from the nineteenth century' -- Oxford Dictionary of Quotations]

Ralph Nader photo
Francesco Dall'Ongaro photo

“Slowly doth bud, and slowly doth mature
The woodland oak, yet doth long time endure.
Lashed by the winds, her leaves around she steews,
But, the wind passed, her beauty she renews.”

Francesco Dall'Ongaro (1808–1873) Italian poet, playwright and librettist

Stornelli Politici, ""Costanza"".
Translation reported in Harbottle's Dictionary of quotations French and Italian (1904), p. 354.

“When a child, my dreams rode on your wishes,
I was your son, high on your horse,
My mind a top whipped by the lashes
Of your rhetoric, windy of course.”

Stephen Spender (1909–1995) English poet and man of letters

On his father in "The Public Son of a Public Man" as quoted in TIMEmagazine (20 January 1986) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1074981,00.html

Carl Sandburg photo
Clarence Thomas photo
George William Curtis photo

“Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense!' was the reply, 'that's all very well in theory, but it doesn't work so. The returning of slaves amounts to nothing in fact. All that is obsolete. And why make all this row? Can't you hush? We've nothing to do with slavery, we tell you. We can't touch it; and if you persist in this agitation about a mere form and theory, why, you're a set of pestilent fanatics and traitors; and if you get your noisy heads broken, you get just what you deserve'. And they quoted in the faces of the abolitionists the words of Governor Edward Everett, who was not an authority with them, in that fatal inaugural address, 'The patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invited to abstain from a discussion which, by exasperating the master, can have no other effect than to render more oppressive the condition of the slave'. It was as if some kindly Pharisee had said to Christ, 'Don't try to cast out that evil spirit; it may rend the body on departing'. Was it not as if some timid citizen had said, 'Don't say hard things of intemperance lest the dram-shops, to spite us, should give away the rum'? And so the battle raged. The abolitionists dashed against slavery with passionate eloquence like a hail of hissing fire. They lashed its supporters with the scorpion whip of their invective. Ambition, reputation, ortune, ease, life itself they threw upon the consuming altar of their cause. Not since those earlier fanatics of freedom, Patrick Henry and James Otis, has the master chord of human nature, the love of liberty, been struck with such resounding power. It seemed in vain, so slowly their numbers increased, so totally were they outlawed from social and political and ecclesiastical recognition. The merchants of Boston mobbed an editor for virtually repeating the Declaration of Independence. The city of New York looked on and smiled while the present United States marshal insulted a woman as noble and womanly and humane as Florence Nightingale. In other free States men were flying for their lives; were mobbed, seized, imprisoned, maimed, murdered; but still as, in the bitter days of Puritan persecution in Scotland, the undaunted voices of the Covenanters were heard singing the solemn songs of God that echoed and re-echoed from peak to peak of the barren mountains, until the great dumb wilderness was vocal with praise — so in little towns and great cities were heard the uncompromising voices of these men sternly intoning the majestic words of the Golden Rule and the Declaration of Independence, which echoed from solitary heart to heart until the whole land rang with the litany of liberty.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
John Boyle O'Reilly photo
Orson Scott Card photo

““A man like that thinks that fear can win loyalty.”
“Plenty of masters with a lash who can testify it works.”
“Don’t win loyalty, just obedience, and only while the lash is in the room.””

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, The Crystal City (2003), Chapter 4 “La Tia” (p. 74).

Thomas Browne photo
Christopher Hitchens photo

“Our common speech contains numberless verbs with which to describe the infliction of violence or cruelty or brutality on others. It only really contains one common verb that describes the effect of violence or cruelty or brutality on those who, rather than suffering from it, inflict it. That verb is the verb to brutalize. A slaveholder visits servitude on his slaves, lashes them, degrades them, exploits them, and maltreats them. In the process, he himself becomes brutalized. This is a simple distinction to understand and an easy one to observe. In the recent past, idle usage has threatened to erode it. Last week was an especially bad one for those who think the difference worth preserving…Col. Muammar Qaddafi's conduct [killing his protesters] is far worse than merely brutal—it is homicidal and sadistic…and even if a headline can't convey all that, it can at least try to capture some of it. Observe, then, what happens when the term is misapplied. The error first robs the language of a useful expression and then ends up by gravely understating the revolting reality it seeks to describe…Far from being brutalized by four decades of domination by a theatrical madman, the Libyan people appear fairly determined not to sink to his level and to be done with him and his horrible kin. They also seem, at the time of writing, to want this achievement to represent their own unaided effort. Admirable as this is, it doesn't excuse us from responsibility. The wealth that Qaddafi is squandering is the by-product of decades of collusion with foreign contractors. The weapons that he is employing against civilians were not made in Libya; they were sold to him by sophisticated nations.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

2010s, 2011

Howard Bloom photo
Sara Teasdale photo
Bartolomé de las Casas photo
David Hunter photo
Amir Taheri photo
Salman Rushdie photo
James Joyce photo

“Your lean jaws grin with. Lash
Your itch and quailing, nude greed of the flesh.”

A Memory Of The Players In A Mirror At Midnight, p. 19
Pomes Penyeach (1927)

Michael Moore photo
John Hodgman photo
Alexander Maclaren photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“The negro worked and took his pay in religion and the lash”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

1860s, Our Composite Nationality (1869)
Context: Companies and associations may yet be formed to promote this Mongolian invasion. The loss of the negro is to gain them the Chinese, and if the thing works well, abolition, in their opinion, will have proved itself to be another blessing in disguise. To the statesman it will mean Southern independence. To the pulpit, it will be the hand of Providence, and bring about the time of the universal dominion of the Christian religion. To all but the Chinaman and the negro it will mean wealth, ease and luxury. But alas, for all the selfish invention and dreams of men! The Chinaman will not long be willing to wear the cast off shoes of the negro, and, if he refuses, there will be trouble again. The negro worked and took his pay in religion and the lash. The Chinaman is a different article and will want the cash. He may, like the negro, accept Christianity, but, unlike the negro, he will not care to pay for it in labor. He had the Golden Rule in substance five hundred years before the coming of Christ, and has notions of justice that are not to be confused by any.

Michelle Obama photo

“Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can't make snap decisions. You can't have thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well informed.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, 2016 Democratic National Convention (2016)
Context: What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that is what I want. I want someone with the proven strength to persevere. Somebody who knows this job and takes it seriously. Somebody who understands that the issues of our nation are not black or white. It cannot be boiled down to 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military in your command, you can't make snap decisions. You can't have thin skin or a tendency to lash out. You need to be steady and measured and well informed.