Quotes about self
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“If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst thou be denied.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: Shakespeare's Sonnets

“Talent is God-given; be humble. Fame is man-given; be thankful. Conceit is self-given; be careful.”

John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach

They Call Me Coach (1972)
Variant: Talent is God-given; be humble. Fame is man-given; be thankful. Conceit is self-given; be careful.

God

“All types of knowledge, ultimately mean self knowledge.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Bruce Lee: The Lost Interview (1971)
Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Knowledge

“The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Support, Decision

“It is a human defect--to try to know one's self by the self of another.”

Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989) American poet, novelist, and literary critic

“The voice of our original self is often muffled, overwhelmed, even strangled, by the voices of other people’s expectations.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

People

“My humanity is a constant self-overcoming.”

Friedrich Nietzsche book The Will to Power

Source: The Will to Power

“If history teaches anything, it teaches that self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.”

Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) American politician, 40th president of the United States (in office from 1981 to 1989)

Speech to the House of Commons (8 June 1982) http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1982/60882a.htm 1980s, First term of office (1981–1985) Context: From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than thirty years to establish their legitimacy. But none — not one regime — has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.... If history teaches anything, it teaches self-delusion in the face of unpleasant facts is folly.... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

History

“Don't follow after the object of hatred, look at the angry mind. Anger liberated by itself as it arises is mirrorlike wisdom.

Don't chase after the object of pride, look at the grasping mind. Self-importance liberated as it arises is the wisdom of equanimity.

Don't hanker after the object of desire, look at the craving mind.”

Dilgo Khyentse (1910–1991) Bhutanese Buddhist Lama

Wisdom, Anger

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“How poetic you are," she said. "I've a notion that poetry is the highest form of self-deception.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I will not be "famous," "great." I will go on adventuring, changing, opening my mind and my eyes, refusing to be stamped and stereotyped. The thing is to free one's self: to let it find its dimensions, not be impeded.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: A Writer's Diary

Change

“When one is in love, one always begins by deceiving one's self, and one always ends by deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Love, World

“Many who are self-taught far excel the doctors, masters, and bachelors of the most renowned universities.”

Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973) austrian economist

Universe

“True wisdom consists in two things: Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self.”

John Calvin book Institutes of the Christian Religion

Book 1 Chapter 1, p. 44
Institutes of the Christian Religion (1536; 1559)
Context: Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God.
Our wisdom, in so far as it ought to be deemed true and solid Wisdom, consists almost entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But as these are connected together by many ties, it is not easy to determine which of the two precedes and gives birth to the other.

Wisdom, God, Knowledge

“There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.”

Thomas Mann (1875–1955) German novelist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate

World

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by my self.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

“Leisure is only possible when we are at one with ourselves. We tend to overwork as a means of self-escape, as a way of trying to justify our existence.”

Josef Pieper (1904–1997) German philosopher

Source: Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

Way

“Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

The New Statesman (1933-02-25)

“I'm sick to death of this particular self. I want another.”

Virginia Woolf book Orlando: A Biography

Source: Orlando

Death

“Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Life, Beauty, Question, Hurt

“All conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.”

Aldo Leopold book A Sand County Almanac

“Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy”, p. 101.
A Sand County Almanac, 1949, "Wisconsin: Marshland Elegy," "Wisconsin: The Sand Counties" "Wisconsin: On a Monument to the Pigeon," and "Wisconsin: Flambeau"
Source: A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There
Context: To build a road is so much simpler than to think of what the country really needs. A roadless marsh is seemingly as worthless to the alphabetical conservationist as an undrained one was to the empire-builders. Solitude, the one natural resource still undowered of alphabets, is so far recognized as valuable only by ornithologists and cranes.
Thus always does history, whether of marsh or market place, end in paradox. The ultimate value in these marshes is wildness, and the crane is wildness incarnate. But all conservation of wildness is self-defeating, for to cherish we must see and fondle, and when enough have seen and fondled, there is no wilderness left to cherish.

“Sometimes I'm so deeply buried under self-reproaches that I long for a word of comfort to help me dig myself out again.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Help

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Variant: Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
Source: Fire from Within

Men, Feeling, Thinking

“the self expands through acts of self forgetfulness.”

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934) Hungarian American psychologist

Forgetting

“Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Source: As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980

Secret, Sex

“You may go over the world and you will find that every form of religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman… I have been traveling over the old world during the last few years and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes the Hindoo woman burn herself upon the funeral pyre of her husband? Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of polygamy? By their religion/ Man, of himself, could not do this; but when he declares, 'Thus saith the Lord,' of course he can do it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us Christ is the head of the church, so is man the head of woman, how are we to break the chains which have held women down through the ages? You Christian women look at the Hindoo, the Turkish, the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such bondage…

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It teaches us the abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the mouths of the priesthood?”

Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815–1902) Suffragist and Women's Rights activist

Women, Age, World, Religion

“Love is a mutual self-giving which ends in self-recovery.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Love

“The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

“All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness […] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find […] a being which immediately recognises itself, […] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.”

Maurice Merleau-Ponty book Phenomenology of Perception

Source: Phenomenology of Perception

Idea, Time

“Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.”

Carlos Castaneda book Journey to Ixtlan

Source: Journey to Ixtlan

Life

“Everything that ever happened to you, you experienced right within you. Light and darkness, pain and pleasure, agony and ecstasy—all of it happened within you. If someone touches your hand right now, you may think you are experiencing their hand, but the fact of the matter is you are only experiencing the sensations in your own hand. The whole experience is contained within. All human experience is one hundred percent self-created.”

Sadhguru book Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy

Pain, Pleasure, Thinking, Light

“Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Tear, Moving On

“Aesthetics have substantial political consequences. How one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of one’s feelings of self-worth and one’s capacity to be a political agent.”

Cornel West (1953) African-American philosopher and political/civil rights activist

Source: Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life

Beauty, Feeling

“The easiest thing in the world is self-deceit; for every man believes what he wishes, though the reality is often different.”

Démosthenés (-384–-322 BC) ancient greek statesman and orator

Third Olynthiac http://books.google.com/books?id=n4INAAAAYAAJ&q=&quot;the+easiest+thing+in+the+world+is+self-deceit+for+every+man+believes+what+he+wishes+though+the+reality+is+often+different&quot;&pg=PA57#v=onepage, section 19 (349 BC), as translated by Charles Rann Kennedy (1852) Variants: A man is his own easiest dupe, for what he wishes to be true he generally believes to be true. As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 255 There is nothing easier than self-delusion. Since what man desires, is the first thing he believes.

World, Reality

“We are all self-made, but only the successful will admit it.”

Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker

Success

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity, if judged by the standards of other centuries. It is as though mankind had divided itself between those who believe in human omnipotence (who think that everything is possible if one knows how to organize masses for it) and those for whom powerlessness has become the major experience of their lives.”

Hannah Arendt book The Origins of Totalitarianism

Source: The Origins of Totalitarianism

Thinking, Sense, Future, Dependency

“You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.”

Derek Walcott (1930–2017) Saint Lucian–Trinidadian poet and playwright

"Love after Love"
Source: "A Far Cry from Africa" (1962), Collected Poems, 1948-1984 (1986)

Love, Life, Wine, Heart

“I go into solitude so as not to drink out of everybody's cistern. When I am among the many I live as the many do, and I do not think I really think. After a time it always seems as if they want to banish my self from myself and rob me of my soul.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Soul, Drink, Thinking, Solitude

“The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained to liberation from the self.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

1940s, The World As I See It (1949)

Sense

“We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Heart Touching

“The use of self control is like the use of brakes on train. It is useful when you find yourself in wrong direction but merely harmful when the direction is right”

Bertrand Russell book Marriage and Morals

Source: Marriage and Morals

Training

“Years of secret suffering had taught me superhuman self-control.”

Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita

Source: Lolita

Secret, Suffering

“America's greatest crime against the black man was not slavery or lynching, but that he was taught to wear a mask of self-hate and self-doubt.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Hate

“Solemnity, I don't know what it's for. I mean, what is the point of it? The two most beautiful memorial services that I've ever attended both had a lot of humor. It somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But solemnity, it serves pomposity. The self important always know at some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. That's why they see it as a threat! And so, dishonestly, they pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial.”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Beauty, Memory

“She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there--like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone.”

Katherine Paterson book Bridge to Terabithia

Source: Bridge to Terabithia

World, Home, Sad, Heartbreaking

“From so much self-revising, I’ve destroyed myself. From so much self-thinking, I’m now my thoughts and not I”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Thinking

“I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Life, Education, Nature, Strong

“The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Life, Nature

“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting.”

William Shakespeare Henry V

Source: King Henry V

Love, Cute, Romantic, For Her

“To succeed in the game of power, you have to master your emotions. But even if you succeed in gaining such self-control, you can never control the temperamental dispositions of those around you. And this presents a great danger.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Game

“Lie still, lie still, my breaking heart;
My silent heart, lie still and break:
Life, and the world, and mine own self, are changed
For a dream's sake.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Life, Lie, World, Dreams

“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Victory

“So with curious eyes and sick surmise
We watched him day by day,
And wondered if each one of us
Would end the self-same way,
For none can tell to what red Hell
His sightless soul may stray.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Way, Soul, Hell

“I don't even call it violence when it's in self defense; I call it intelligence.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

Intelligence

“She was cold by nature, self-love predominating over passion; rather than being virtuous, she preferred to have her pleasures all to herself.”

Emile Zola (1840–1902) French writer (1840-1902)

Source: Pot Luck

Love, Pleasure, Nature, Passion

“The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self-created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Life, Pain, Parting

“but i've slammed the door to my inner self; if he ever wants to force the lock again, he'll have to use a harder crowbar!”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“The tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self denial.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

“Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is richness of self.”

May Sarton (1912–1995) American poet, novelist, and memoirist

Solitude, Loneliness

“I think all happiness depends on the energy to assume the mask of some other life, on a re-birth as something not one's self.”

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

Life, Happiness, Birth, Thinking

“Be so busy Improving your self that you have no time to criticize others.”

Chetan Bhagat (1974) Indian author, born 1974

Business, Time

“How was I able to live alone before, my little everything? Without you I lack self-confidence, passion for work, and enjoyment of life--in short, without you, my life is no life.

[Written to his wife, Mileva]”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Life, Confidence, Passion, Self-confidence

“Only the self-sufficient stand alone - most people follow the crowd and imitate.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

People

“Amazing what we can self-rationalize when we really want something”

Harlan Coben book Six Years

Source: Six Years

“Not only do self-love and love of others go hand in hand but ultimately they are indistinguishable.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

Source: The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth

Love

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Falseness, Night

“People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something one finds; it is something one creates.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Second Sin (1973), p. 49.

People, Personality

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Feeling

“Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.”

Jean Vanier (1928–2019) Canadian humanitarian

Source: Becoming Human

Joy, Parting, Personality

“There is nothing to fear except fear it's self.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Fear

“Man is by nature a social animal; an individual who is unsocial naturally and not accidentally is either beneath our notice or more than human. Society is something that precedes the individual. Anyone who either cannot lead the common life or is so self-sufficient as not to need to, and therefore does not partake of society, is either a beast or a god.”

Aristotle book Politics

Source: Politics

Life, God, Nature, Animals

“A quest for self-respect is proof of its lack”

Ayn Rand book The Fountainhead

Source: The Fountainhead

“Relationship is understanding. It is a process of self-revelation. Relationship is the mirror in which you discover yourself -- to be is to be related.”

Bruce Lee book Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Source: Tao of Jeet Kune Do

Understanding

“Those moralists, on the other hand, who, following in the footsteps of Socrates, offer the individual a morality of self-control and temperance as a means to his own advantage, as his personal key to happiness, are the exceptions.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Happiness, Personality

“To be around someone whose self-confidence is more than what our first glance led us to expect is seductive.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Confidence, Self-confidence

“In my experience, self-hatred is the dominant malaise crippling Christians and stifling their growth in the Holy Spirit.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

“Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Source: On Being Ill

Health, Truth, Parting

“Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or
perhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know. But I am
sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

“The world is full of people who are determined to be somebody or to give trouble. They want to get ahead, to stand out. Such ambition has no use for a gung fu man, who rejects all forms of self-assertiveness and competition”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

People, World

“He who despises himself esteems himself as a self-despiser.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

“In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Truth

“Far better it is for you to say: "I am a sinner," than to say: "I have no need of religion." The empty can be filled, but the self-intoxicated have no room for God.”

Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) Catholic bishop and television presenter

Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary

God, Religion

“What makes us want to know the worst? Is it that we tire of preferring to know the best? Does curiosity always hurdle self-interest? Or is it, more simply, that wanting to know the worst is love's favorite perversion.”

Julian Barnes (1946) English writer

Love

“Hell needed horribly bright, self-centered people like Eric. They were much better at being nasty than demons could ever manage”

Terry Pratchett book Eric

Source: Eric

People, Hell

“There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel that no one else has a right to blame us.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Feeling

“I had already found that it was not good to be alone, and so made companionship with what there was around me, sometimes with the universe and sometimes with my own insignificant self; but my books were always my friends, let fail all else.”

Joshua Slocum (1844–1909) American navigator and maritime writer

Source: Sailing Alone around the World

Books, Universe

“There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

For Men

“If we look straight and deep into a chimpanzee's eyes, an intelligent self-assured personality looks back at us. If they are animals, what must we be?”

Frans de Waal (1948) Dutch primatologist and ethologist

Intelligence, Animals, Personality

“To experience the ultimate you have to be willing to obliterate the self-created boundaries of individuality, you have to be willing to dissolve. That state of unbounded freedom is a state of oneness with Shiva – an unconditioned state beyond physical experience, beyond imaginative speculation, beyond all conceptual understanding.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Source: Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga

Imagination, Understanding, Freedom

“Many people become bankrupt through having invested too heavily in the prose of life. To have ruined one's self over poetry is an honor.”

Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray

Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray

Life, People

“Self-control is something for which I do not strive. Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.”

Franz Kafka book The Zürau Aphorisms

31
The Zürau Aphorisms (1917 - 1918)

“Coffee is a way of stealing time that should by rights belong to your older self.”

Terry Pratchett Thud!

Source: Thud!

Way, Coffee, Time

“He could see plainly that she was not herself. That is, he could not see that she was becoming herself and daily casting aside that fictitious self which we assume like a garment with which to appear before the world.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

Source: The Awakening

World, Appearance

“Without excuse and self-consideration of health or limb or life, true soldiers fight, live to fight, love the thickest of the fight, and die in the midst of it.”

William Booth (1829–1912) British Methodist preacher

As quoted in Revolution (2005) by Stephen Court & Aaron White .

Love, Life, Health, Fight

“The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and conducted in the interest of adventurers.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Variant: The white men of the South were aroused by the mere instinct of self-preservation to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes and conducted in the interest of adventurers.
Source: 1900s, A History of the American People, Vol. 9 (1902), p. 58

Men