Quotes about racing (2780 quotes, page 5)

“Then, Holden, the little Fang gang kid, came out of nowhere with an apparent death wish. He raced directly toward the maniac with the gun shrieking something that sounded like”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Death

“The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

People

“What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.”

Carter G. Woodson (1875–1950) African-American historian and writer

Hate , World , History

“Tell you what, you let me go, and I’ll ask you plenty of questions about your race. Until then, I’m slightly distracted with how this little vacation on the good ship Holy Sh*t is going to pan out for me.”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Question

“He had possessed the arrogance of a tall member of a short race, with no obligation save to be tall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

“Art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color”

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

Religion , Art , Color , Wealth

“To live anywhere in the world today and be against equality because of race or color is like living in Alaska and being against snow.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

World , Color

“Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Idea , Affliction

“Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone.~Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100 mile race”

Christopher McDougall (1962) American journalist and writer

Source: Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen

Pain

“Some negroes lie, some are immoral, some negro men are not be trusted around women - black and white. But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

Women , Men , Truth , Lie

“The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but to those who see it coming and jump aside.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: 1990s, The Rum Diary (1998)

Strong

“Something brushed his leg, and he gazed down into the face of Pippi Tucker. The theme from Jaws raced through his head.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Match Me If You Can

“In America, you don’t get to decide what race you are. It is decided for you.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Americanah

Source: Americanah

“To give preference to the life of a being simply because that being is a member of our species would put us in the same position as racists who give preference to those who are members of their race.”

Peter Singer book Practical Ethics

Peter Singer - The Genius of Darwin: The Uncut Interviews - Richard Dawkins https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYYNY2oKVWU, 2009.
Source: Practical Ethics
Context: Speciesism is an attitude of prejudice towards beings because they're not members of our species, so just as racism means that you're prejudiced against beings who are not members of your race and sexism means you're prejudiced against people of the other sex. So we humans tend to be speciesist in we think that any being that is a member of the species homo sapien just automatically has a higher moral status and is more important than any being that is a member of any other species, irrespective of the actual characteristics of those beings.

Life

“There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.”

Garth Stein The Art of Racing in the Rain

Source: The Art of Racing in the Rain

“I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart — the best brain.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

Liberty.
Source: The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. IX

Men , Color , Heart

“Madam, the commonest weakness of our race is our ability to rationalize our most selfish purposes.”

Robert A. Heinlein book The Star Beast

Source: The Star Beast (1954), Chapter 14, “Destiny? Fiddlesticks!” (p. 219)

Selfishness

“To Homer, libraries were holy places like churches, and the priestly librarians a blessed race, a saving remnant in a world of sin. Whenever God grew impatient and decided to destroy the world he remembered the librarians and stayed his hand.”

Jane Langton (1922–2018) Novelist, children's writer

God , World

“Running with a drowsy child of Hades was more like doing a 3 -legged race with a life size rag doll.”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

Life

“It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.”

Daniel H. Wilson book Robopocalypse

Source: Robopocalypse

Peace

“So we're racing the Clare and the Courts," said Julian. "Fantastic. Maybe there's someone else we can piss off. The Spiral Labyrinth? The Scholomance? Interpol?”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

History

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

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

1870s, Society and Solitude (1870), Civilization

“Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.
I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records — Bessie, bop, or Bach.
I guess being colored doesn’t make me not like
the same things other folks like who are other races.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)

Love , Life , Color , Drink

“I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.”

Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist

As quoted in Shout! (1981) by Philip Norman, p. 365; and in An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 303

God

“The at-home mother's life: it was a race with no finish line.”

Kristin Hannah (1960) American writer

Source: Firefly Lane

Life , Home

“Gentlemen of the human race, I say to hell with the lot of you.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Hell

“some of us have so much defeat in our past that we feel we lost the race before we knew it started.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Believing in God - Member Book

Feeling , Past

“About 10 minutes ago, we all woke up because of this strange roaring sound. We all raced toward the sound, which turned out to be the washing machine going back on.
Who knew the rinse cycle could be so scary?”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

“Surely the Shadowhunter community must honor you and hold you in high esteem as a gentleman who has truly advanced their race. No, Henry said sadly. Mostly they wish that I would stop suggesting new inventions and cease setting fire to things.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Infernal Devices: Clockwork Princess

Communication

“You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound You don't win with a lot of treble.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 3
Context: You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound You don't win with a lot of treble. This isn't about quality. It's about volume. This isn't about music. This is about winning. You stomp the competition with the bass line. You rattle windows. You drop the melody line, and shout the lyrics. You put in foul language and come down hard on each cussword. You dominate. This is really about power.

People , Music

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Life

“Let's have a good clean three-legged death race.”

Rick Riordan book The Hidden Oracle

Source: The Hidden Oracle

Death

“The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Soul , Memory

“The most foolish mistake we could possibly make would be to allow the subject races to possess arms. History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

11 April 1942.
Disputed, Hitler's Table Talks (1941-1944) (published 1953)

History

“Participation - that's what's gonna save the human race.”

Pete Seeger (1919–2014) American folk singer

“Don't ever forget the words on a postcard that my father sent me last year: "If you win the rat race, you're still a rat.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: A Short Guide to a Happy Life

Forgetting

“A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”

E.M. Forster (1879–1970) English novelist

"George and Gide"
Two Cheers for Democracy (1951)

“My sense of humor will always stand in the way of my seeing myself, my family, my race or my nation as the whole intent of the universe.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Dust Tracks on a Road

Source: Dust Tracks on a Road

Family , Way , Sense , Universe

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Love , Life , People

“One of the most important resources that a garden makes available for use, is the gardener's own body. A garden gives the body the dignity of working in its own support. It is a way of rejoining the human race.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Way , Support

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

War , History , Communication , Fish

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you're still a rat.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

Contributions of Jane Wagner

“A genius is a genius, regardless of the number of morons who belong to the same race—and a moron is a moron, regardless of the number of geniuses who share his racial origin.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

http://alexpeak.com/twr/racism/
The Virtue of Selfishness (1964)
Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

“But I don't understand God. I don't understand how he could see the way people treat one another, and not chalk up the whole human race as a bad idea.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

God , People , Way , Idea

“Democracy is a poor system of government at best; the only thing that can honestly be said in its favor is that it is eight times as good as any other method the human race has ever tried.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Democracy , Time

“You can get so confused
that you'll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Fear , Waiting

“Can't be part of the rat race when you're one of the rats who knows you're in a cage.”

Ed Brubaker (1966) comic book writer and cartoonist

Parting

“The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.”

Carter G. Woodson book The Mis-Education of the Negro

Source: The Mis-Education of the Negro

History , Understanding

“If you neglect to recharge a battery, it dies. And if you run full speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Water , Speed

“Imagine how different a world might be if more leaders took time to ponder the finality of death before racing off to war.”

Dan Brown book The Lost Symbol

Source: The Lost Symbol

Death , War , World , Imagination

“God preordained, for his own glory and the display of His attributes of mercy and justice, a part of the human race, without any merit of their own, to eternal salvation, and another part, in just punishment of their sin, to eternal damnation.”

John Calvin (1509–1564) French Protestant reformer

God , Justice , Parting

“A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.”

Idries Shah book Reflections

Source: Reflections

“Life is a Sisyphean race, run ever faster towards a finishing line that is merely the start of the next race.”

Matt Ridley book The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Source: The Red Queen (1993), Ch. 5
Source: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Life

“Why should any guy want to be only friends with a girl? It’s like agreeing to be near a chocolate cake and never eat it. It’s like sitting in a racing car but not driving it.”

Chetan Bhagat book 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Source: 2 States: The Story of My Marriage

Cars , Guy , Girl

“Life is not a race to restore a past situation. Nor does one have to hurry to meet the future. Seeing how things change is what makes life interesting.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

Life , Change , Past , Future

“I am a believer in free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so.”

Diana Wynne Jones book Castle in the Air

Source: Castle Series, Castle in the Air (1990), p. 31.
Context: "Maybe," he said, "you should be more careful about whom you let your dog bite."
"Not I!" said Jamal. "I am a believer of free will. If my dog chooses to hate the whole human race except myself, it must be free to do so."

Hate , Dogs

“The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Nature

“It especially annoys me when racists are accused of 'discrimination.' The ability to discriminate is a precious faculty; by judging all members on one 'race' to be the same, the racist precisely shows himself incapable of discrimination.”

Christopher Hitchens Letters to a Young Contrarian

Source: Letters to a Young Contrarian

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Nature

“Nowadays silence is looked on as odd and most of my race has forgotten the beauty of meaning much by saying little. Now tongues work all day by themselves with no help from the mind.”

Toni Morrison Love

Source: Love

Beauty , Silence , Help

“If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creatures could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet?”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West
Context: And the answer, said the judge. If God meant to interfere in the degeneracy of mankind would he not have done so by now? Wolves cull themselves, man. What other creature could? And is the race of man not more predacious yet? The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day. He loves games? Let him play for stakes. This you see here, these ruins wondered at by tribes of savages, do you not think that this will be again? Aye. And again. With other people, with other sons.

God

“The human race tends to remember the abuses to which it has been subjected rather than the endearments. What's left of kisses? Wounds, however, leave scars.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Kiss

“The Victorian woman became her ovaries, as today's woman has become her 'beauty.' Her reproductive value, as the 'aesthetic' value of her face and body today, 'came to be seen as a sacred trust, one that she must constantly guard in the interest of her race.”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 222

Beauty

“Yes, the brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over, this is recognised: that the human race has been harshly treated, but that it has advanced.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

“The most Beautiful people are the ones that don't look like one race or even one sex”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

People , Beauty , Sex

“We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.”

William Golding book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible

Madness

“Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Tree , Universe

“They didn't understand what they were doing. I'm afraid that will be on the tombstone of the human race. I hope it's not. We might get lucky.”

Michael Crichton Prey

Source: Prey (2002)

Hope , Understanding

“The 1143-year-long war hand begun on false pretenses and only because the two races were unable to communicate.

Once they could talk, the first question was 'Why did you start this thing?' and the answer was 'Me?”

Joe Haldeman book The Forever War

Source: The Forever War

War , Communication , Question , Falseness

“Men of learning are those who have read the contents of books. Thinkers, geniuses, and those who have enlightened the world and furthered the race of men, are those who have made direct use of the book of the world.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

"Thinking for Oneself" http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/essays/chapter8.html
Essays

Men , Books , World , Learning

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Based on a 1957 Ken Purdy quote, first mentioned in a posthumously published interview with Alfonso de Portago: note: :“I have a quotation in a story, a piece of fiction that won't be published until this summer,” I told Portago, “something that I thought at the time I wrote it you might have said: that of all sports, only bull fighting and mountain-climbing and motor-racing really tried a man, that all the rest are mere recreations. Would you have said that?”
I tend to agree with Hemingway who said something to the effect that only mountain climbing, bull fighting and automobile racing were sports and that everything else was a game.
Source: Ken W. Purdy (August 1957) "Portaro; The real story of the sizzling Spaniard" https://archive.org/details/sim_car-and-driver_1957-08_3/page/n70 Sports Cars Illustrated (Ziff-Davis: New York) vol. 3 no. 2 p. 63 note: :“There are three sports that try a man,” she remembered Helmut Ovden saying, “bullfighting, motor racing, mountain climbing. All the rest are recreations.”
Source: Ken W. Purdy (27 July 1957) "Blood Sport" https://archive.org/details/sim_saturday-evening-post_1957-07-27_230_4/page/92 The Saturday Evening Post (Curtis: Philadelphia) vol. 230 no. 4 p. 92
Source: An early attribution to Hemingway is the essay "Why" by Gene Hill, published in Guns & Ammo and reprinted in 1972 in A Hunter's Fireside Book: Tales of Dogs, Ducks, Birds and Guns (Winchester Press: New York) ISBN 0876910762 p. 96

Mountain , Game , Sport

“Can you giggle while racing for your life and protecting a six-year-old? I can.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: Maximum Ride The Angel Experiment

Life

“because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth”

Gabriel García Márquez book One Hundred Years of Solitude

Nobel lecture (8 December 1982) http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_nobel.html
Variant: races condemned to 100 years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
Source: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Context: The most prosperous countries have succeeded in accumulating powers of destruction such as to annihilate, a hundred times over, not only all the human beings that have existed to this day, but also the totality of all living beings that have ever drawn breath on this planet of misfortune.
On a day like today, my master William Faulkner said, "I decline to accept the end of man." I would fall unworthy of standing in this place that was his, if I were not fully aware that the colossal tragedy he refused to recognize thirty-two years ago is now, for the first time since the beginning of humanity, nothing more than a simple scientific possiblity. Faced with this awesome reality that must have seemed a mere utopia through all of human time, we, the inventors of tales, who will believe anything, feel entitled to believe that it is not yet too late to engage in the creation of the opposite utopia. A new and sweeping utopia of life, where no one will be able to decide for others how they die, where love will prove true and happiness be possible, and where the races condemned to one hundred years of solitude will have, at last and forever, a second opportunity on earth.

Solitude

“I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth.”

Jonathan Swift book Les Voyages de Gulliver

Voyage to Brobdingnag, Ch. 6
Source: Gulliver's Travels (1726)

Nature , Suffering

“We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Thinking

“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”

George Bernard Shaw Heartbreak House

O'Flaherty V.C. (1919)
1910s
Source: Heartbreak House

World

“Imagine what could be accomplished if only the human race would shed its humanity.”

Max Brooks book World War Z

Source: World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Imagination

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”

Booker T. Washington book Up from Slavery

Chapter XIV: The Atlanta Exposition Address http://books.google.com/books?id=xN45ZsUMgKEC&q=%22No+race+can+prosper+till+it+learns+that+there+is+as+much+dignity+in+tilling+a+field+as+in+writing+a+poem+It+is+at+the+bottom+of+life+we+must+begin+and+not+at+the+top%22&pg=PA220#v=onepage
1900s, Up From Slavery (1901)
Context: No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top.

Learning