Quotes about weed

A collection of quotes on the topic of weed, likeness, use, good.

Quotes about weed

“I wish we were all hippies and did yoga, lived in cottages, smoked weed, accepted everyone for who they are, and listened to wonderful music. I wish money didn't make us who we are. I just wish we could redo society.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Money, Music

“Kind hearts are the gardens, Kind thoughts are the roots, Kind words are the flowers, Kind deeds are the fruits, Take care of your garden And keep out the weeds, Fill it with sunshine, Kind words, and Kind deeds.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Flowers, Heart

“So what if I'm smokin' weed onstage and doing what I gotta do? It's not me shooting nobody, stabbing nobody, killing nobody. It's a peaceful gesture and they have to respect that and appreciate that.”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Peace

“I have gone back to some things that can't possibly be done: water, with weeds waving at the bottom. It is a wonderful sight, but it drives one to crazy to try to paint it. But that is the kind of thing I am always a tackling.”

Claude Monet (1840–1926) French impressionist painter

Quote in Monet's letter to art-critic and his friend Gustave Geffroy, 22 June 1890; as cited in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 129
1890 - 1900

Water, Painting

“It is vital we rid ourselves of [homosexuals]; like weed we must pull them up, throw them on the fire and burn them. This is not out of a spirit of vengeance, but of necessity; these creatures must be exterminated.”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

18 Feb 1937
1930s

“It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine. Salt-n-Peppa, Heavy D up in tha limousine. Hangin' pictures on my wall, every Saturday rap attack, Mr. Magic Marley Marl. I let my tape rock till my tape pop, smoking weed and bamboo, sippin' on Private Stock. Way back, when I had the red-and-black lumberjack, with the hat to match. Remember Rappin' Duke? Duh-ha duh-ha, you never thought that hip hop would take it this far. Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight. Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade! Born sinner, the opposite of a winner. Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner.”

The Notorious B.I.G. (1972–1997) American rapper

Song lyrics, Ready to Die (1994), "Juicy"

World, Dreams, Way, Time

“Smoke weed, take pills, drop outta school, kill people and drink. Jump behind the wheel like it was still legal!”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Role Model" (Track 9).
1990s, The Slim Shady LP (1999)

People, School, Drink

“As withered weed through cruell winters tine,
That feeles the warmth of sunny beames reflection,
Liftes up his head, that did before decline
And gins to spread his leafe before the faire sunshine.”

Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene

Canto 12, stanza 34
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book IV

Feeling, Winter

“I also heard he got busted for smoking weed and he’s really sorry about it and people make mistakes and he’s never gonna do it again.”

Justin Bieber (1994) Canadian singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

Referring to himself, during a skit on SNL’s the Miley Cyrus Show, as quoted in Huffington Post "Justin Bieber Apologizes For Smoking Weed On 'Saturday Night Live'" http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/10/justin-bieber-apologizes-smoking-weed_n_2657314.html, February 2013

People

“Same thing happened in the punk movement in the late 70's…a punk band would start, play one gig, and get signed to a major label right away, 'cause it [was] a trend. That just shows there are a lot of old school dinosaurs in the record industry who need to be weeded out.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Date unknown, but believed to be 1992-06-30 in Sweden http://www.livenirvana.com/official/index.html. Interviews (1989-1994), Video

School

“Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free!”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

"Marriage and Love" in Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
Context: Love, the strongest and deepest element in all life, the harbinger of hope, of joy, of ecstasy; love, the defier of all laws, of all conventions; love, the freest, the most powerful moulder of human destiny; how can such an all-compelling force be synonymous with that poor little State and Church-begotten weed, marriage?
Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere.

Love, Life, Marriage, Law

“Summer is the season of motion, winter is the season of form. In summer everything moves save the fixed and inert. Down the hill flows the west wind, making wavelets in the shorter grass and great billows in the standing hay; the tree in full leaf sways its heavy boughs below and tosses its leaves above; the weed by the gate bends and turns when the wind blows down the road. It is the shadow of moving things that we usually see, and the shadows are themselves in motion. The shadow of a branch, speckled through with light, wavers across the lawn, the sprawling shadow of the weed moves and sways across the dust.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Northern Farm: A Glorious Year on a Small Maine Farm

Tree, Light, Grass, Winter

“One of my favorite album covers is On the Beach. Of course that was the name of a movie and I stole it for my record, but that doesn't matter. The idea for that cover came like a bolt from the blue. Gary and I traveled around getting all the pieces to put it together. We went to a junkyard in Santa Ana to get the tail fin and fender from a 1959 Cadillac, complete with taillights, and watched them cut it off a Cadillac for us, then we went to a patio supply place to get the umbrella and table. We picke up the bad polyester yellow jacket and white pants at a sleazy men's shop, where we watched a shoplifter getting caught red-handed and busted. Gary and I were stoned on some dynamite weed and stood there dumbfounded watching the bust unfold. This girl was screaming and kicking! Finally we grabbed a local LA paper to use as a prop. It had this amazing headline: Sen. Buckley Calls For Nixon to Resign. Next we took the palm tree I had taken around the world on the Tonight's the Night tour. We then placed all of these pieces carefully in the sand at Santa Monica beach. Then we shot it. Bob Seidemann was the photographer, the same one who took the famous Blind Faith cover shot of the naked young girl holding the airplane. We used the crazy pattern from the umbrella insides for the inside of the sleeve that held the vinyl recording. That was the creative process at work. We lived for that, Gary and I, and we still do.”

Neil Young book Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Source: Waging Heavy Peace: A Hippie Dream

Men, World, Faith, Travel

“Fear is a strange soil. It grows obedience like corn, which grow in straight lines to make weeding easier. But sometimes it grows the potatoes of defiance, which flourish underground.”

Terry Pratchett book Small Gods

Source: Small Gods

Fear

“It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea. The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine tonight in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock, the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds. And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are sleeping now.”

Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood

Source: " Under Milk Wood http://www.undermilkwood.net/prose_umw1.html" (1954)

People, Spring, Cats, Sleep

“For sweetest things turn sourest by their deeds; Lillies that fester smell far worse than weeds.”

William Shakespeare book Shakespeare's Sonnets

Source: The Sonnets

“A weed is a plant out of place.”

Jim Thompson book The Killer Inside Me

Source: The Killer Inside Me

“And the weed loud, like a lion's roar.”

Lil Wayne (1982) American rapper, singer, record executive and businessman

Intro, written with Willie Hodge and Jermaine Preyan
2010s, Tha Carter IV (2011)

“Who fain would sow the fallow field,
And see the growing corn,
Must first remove the useless weeds,
The bramble and the thorn.”
Qui serere ingenuum uolet agrum liberat arua prius fruticibus, falce rubos filicemque resecat, ut noua fruge grauis Ceres eat.

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (480) philosopher of the early 6th century

Poem I, lines 1-4; translation by H. R. James
The Consolation of Philosophy · De Consolatione Philosophiae, Book III

“Anger is a weed; hate is the tree.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

58
Sermons

Hate, Tree, Anger

“That is the secret of all culture: it does not provide artificial limbs, wax noses or spectacles—that which can provide these things is, rather, only sham education. Culture is liberation, the removal of all the weeds, rubble and vermin that want to attack the tender buds of the plant.”

Friedrich Nietzsche Untimely Meditations

Untimely Meditations (1876)

Education, Secret

“Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 110
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Evil

“The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there”

Oscar Wilde book The Ballad of Reading Gaol

Pt. V, st. 30
The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898)
Context: The vilest deeds like poison weeds
Bloom well in prison-air:
It is only what is good in Man
That wastes and withers there:
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate,
And the Warder is Despair.

“The need, therefore, was for the Communist Parties to be ever-vigilant against opportunism and to weed it out by welding themselves ever more closely with the working class, by enlisting the support of the working class in thoroughly smashing all that remained of the old bourgeois state structure. This could only have been done by getting rid of bourgeois parliamentarism and putting into effect the principles of the Paris Commune; all officials to be fully elected and subject to recall; public service to be discharged at the wage rate of the working class uniting within its hands the legaslative and executive arms of the state; and breaking up the instrument of spiritual oppression, the power of the priests.”

Harpal Brar (1939) British politician

Harpal Brar, Perestroika - The complete collapse of revisionism, pg. 274-75.

Communication, Support

“The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.
Something very like fright had come over all the explorers before anything more definite than rock and ooze and weed was seen.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

Sun, Sea

“In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. … The only method compatible with our notions of civilization and the race is to prevent the breeding of the unfit by sterilization and the deliberate guidance of the mating instinct. … The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny. A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

A Machine to End War (1937)

Marriage, Age, Law, Nature

“I wish you were my sister. I'd teach you to have some confidence in yourself. The different people are not like other people, but being different is nothing to be ashamed of. Because other people are not such wonderful people. They're one hundred times one thousand. You're one times one! They walk all over the earth. You just stay here. They're common as — weeds, but — you — well, you're — Blue Roses!”

Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie

Jim, Scene Seven
The Glass Menagerie (1944)

People, Confidence, Sister, Time

“And he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduc'd, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man.”

John Locke book Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Sec. 105
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)
Context: Another thing wherein they shew their love of dominion, is, their desire to have things to be theirs: They would have propriety and possession, pleasing themselves with the power which that seems to give, and the right that they thereby have, to dispose of them as they please. He that has not observ's these two humours working very betimes in children, has taken little notice of their actions: And he who thinks that these two roots of almost all the injustice and contention that so disturb human life, are not early to be weeded out, and contrary habits introduc'd, neglects the proper season to lay the foundations of a good and worthy man.

Life, Thinking, Season

“When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

1900s, Address at Providence (1901)
Context: We are passing through a period of great commercial prosperity, and such a period is as sure as adversity itself to bring mutterings of discontent. At a time when most men prosper somewhat some men always prosper greatly; and it is as true now as when the tower of Siloam fell upon all alike, that good fortune does not come solely to the just, nor bad fortune solely to the unjust. When the weather is good for crops it is also good for weeds.

Weather

“We have in ourselves tendencies that are not good and which flourish like weeds in a field. (Original sin). These tendencies are many; they fall into seven groups, known of old as the Seven deadly sins. All deadly sins tend to separate us from the child; for the child compared to us, is not only purer but has mysterious qualities, which we adults as a rule cannot perceive, but in which we must believe with faith, for Jesus spoke to them so clearly and insistently that all the Evangelists recorded His words: Unless ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall nor enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

That which the educator must seek is to be able to see the child as Jesus saw him. It is with this endeavour, thus defined and delimited, that we wish to deal.
The Secret of Childhood, p. 108

Faith, Children

“You ignorant little slug!" the Trunchbull bellowed. "You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue!”

Roald Dahl book Matilda

Source: Matilda

Stupidity

“Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

“When you wear the weed of impatience in your heart instead of the flower Acceptance-with-Joy, you will always find your enemies get an advantage over you.”

Hannah Hurnard book Hinds' Feet on High Places

Source: Hinds' Feet on High Places

Flowers, Heart, Joy

“First, you start carrying a man satchel. Next thing you know, you're running around in a bathrobe and pink bunny slippers, chasing chickens with a weed whacker.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts. Such grace, such dignity, such a tragedy.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Variant: The desert weed lives on, but the flower of spring blooms and wilts.
Source: The Kite Runner

Spring, Flowers

“A weed is just a flower growing in the wrong place”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: Perfect

Flowers

“i shall imagine life
is not worth dying, if
(and when)roses complain
their beauties are in vain

but though mankind persuades
itself that every weed's
a rose, roses(you feel
certain)will only smile”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Source: Complete Poems, 1904-1962

Life, Smile, Beauty, Feeling

“O grant me a house by the beach of a bay,
Where the waves can be surly in winter, and play
With the sea-weed in summer, ye bountiful powers!
And I'd leave all the hurry, the noise, and the fray,
For a house full of books, and a garden of flowers.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Books, Flowers, Winter, Summer

“You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“I hate it when men go to strip bars. It lowers the rest of us that know if a man has to pay to see a woman naked, he is a loser and probably should get weeded out.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: Solipsist

Men, Hate

“When people will not weed their own minds, they are apt to be overrun by nettles.”

Horace Walpole (1717–1797) English art historian, man of letters, antiquarian and Whig politician

People

“Some men, under the notion of weeding out prejudice, eradicate virtue, honesty and religion.”

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

Men, Religion

“Like anyone nostalgic for a time he didn't live through, I chose to weed out the little inconveniences: polio, say, or the thought of eating stewed squirrel. The world was simply grander back then, somehow more civilized, and nicer to look at.”

David Sedaris When You Are Engulfed in Flames

Source: When You Are Engulfed in Flames

World, Time

“She thought of the orchids spreading across the plains below, choking the life out of other plants, out of the soil itself, selfish and unstoppable. Tally Youngblood was a weed. And, unlike the orchids, she wasn't even a pretty one.”

Scott Westerfeld book Uglies

Source: Uglies

Life, Selfishness

“It’s the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Tree, Painting, Forgetting

“There are no weeds, and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Deep, Men

“Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.”

A.A. Milne (1882–1956) British author

Flowers

“The master of the garden is the one who waters it, trims the branches, plants the seeds, and pulls the weeds. If you merely stroll through the garden, you are but an acolyte.”

Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer

Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

Water

“Yeah I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

Death, Sex, Feeling, Freedom

“Wet towel under the door,' said Barry. 'It's what you do when you're smoking weed in a hotel and you don't want everyone calling security. You're always supposed to have a towel. I read about it in a guide for hitchhiking through the galaxy.”

Christopher Moore (1957) American writer of comic fantasy

Source: Bite Me

Reading

“What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" Inversnaid http://www.bartleby.com/122/33.html, lines 13-16 Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918) Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Complete Poems

World

“They had nothing to say to each other. A five-year age gap between siblings is like a garden that needs constant attention. Even three months apart allows the weeds to grow up between you.”

Zadie Smith On Beauty

Source: On Beauty

Age, Siblings

“It is a time of quiet joy, the sunny morning. When the glittery dew is on the mallow weeds, each leaf holds a jewel which is beautiful if not valuable. This is no time for hurry or for bustle. Thoughts are slow and deep and golden in the morning.”

John Steinbeck book Tortilla Flat

Source: Tortilla Flat

Beauty, Time, Joy

“Like a mermaid in sea-weed, she dreams awake, trembling in her soft and chilly nest.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Dreams, Sea

“The woman wears a floral print blouse with lots of leaves and pink flowers. Risa would like to attack her with a weed whacker.”

Neal Shusterman book Unwind

Source: Unwind

Flowers

“Go oft to the house of thy friend, for weeds choke the unused path.”

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

Housing

“One person's weed is another person's wildflower.”

Susan Wittig Albert (1940) writer

Source: An Unthymely Death and Other Garden Mysteries

Personality

“What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have yet to be discovered.”

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

Fortune of the Republic (1878)

“I see now that when Norma flowered in our garden I became a weed, allowed to exist only where I would not be seen, in corners and dark places.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon

Flowers

“You're waiting because you thought it would follow, you thought there would be some logic, perhaps, something to pull it all together but here we are in the weeds again, here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

World, Sense, Waiting

“It's disturbing how fast weeds take root in my garden of worthiness.
They're so hard to pull.
And grow back so easily.”

Wendelin Van Draanen (1965) American writer

Source: The Running Dream

“A weed is but an unloved flower.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) American author and poet

Flowers

“I have looked attentively at chickens raised in this [battery] fashion, and to me they seem to be unhappy and in poor health. Their combs are dull and lifeless except for glaring and unnatural patches of color that appear occasionally … The battery chickens I have observed seem to lose their minds about the time they would normally be weaned by their mothers and off in the weeds chasing grasshoppers on their own account. Yes, literally, actually, the battery becomes a gallinaceous madhouse. The eyes of these chickens through the bars gleam like those of maniacs. Let your hand get within reach and it receives a dozen vicious peeks—not the love peck or the tentative peek of idle curiosity bestowed by the normal chicken, but a peck that means business, a peck for flesh and blood, for which in their madness they are thirsting.”

Roy Bedichek (1878–1959) American writer and naturalist

Adventures with a Texas Naturalist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010. Orig. pub. 1947), pp. 101 https://books.google.it/books?id=4WuzlD0hkSgC&pg=PA101-102.

Love, Health, Color, Fashion

“Like to Diana in her summer-weed,
Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye,
Goes fair Samela;
Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed
When wash'd by Arethusa Fount they lie,
Is fair Samela.”

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

"Doron's Description of Samela", line 1, from Menaphon; Dyce p. 287.

Lie, Summer

“Colored people are like human weeds and are to be exterminated.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

Unknown source, attributed by Life Education and Resource Network (LEARN) http://www.blackgenocide.org/planned.html and by Roger L. Roberson, Jr, The Bible & the Black Man: Breaking the Chains of Prejudice (2007), p. 18. Seems to take "human weeds" from "a garden of children instead of a disorderly back lot overrun with human weeds" or from "the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks– those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization" and "exterminated" from "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea" (see above). Misattributed

People, Color

“I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Source: 1990s, Palimpsest : A Memoir (1995), Ch. 12: The Guest of the Blue Nuns, p. 162

Age, Business, Memory

“For I hate, yet love thee, so,
That, whichever thing I show,
The plain truth will seem to be
A constrained hyperbole,
And the passion to proceed
More from a mistress than a weed.”

Charles Lamb (1775–1834) English essayist

A Farewell to Tobacco (1805)

Love, Hate, Truth, Passion

“These sprays, dusts, and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forests, and homes — nonselective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect, the "good" and the "bad," to still the song of birds and the leaping of fish in the streams, to coat the leaves with a deadly film, and to linger on in soil — all this though the intended target may be only a few weeds or insects. Can anyone believe it is possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons on the surface of the earth without making it unfit for all life? They should not be called "insecticides," but "biocides."”

Rachel Carson book Silent Spring

Silent Spring (1962)

Life, Home, Bird, Fish

“Birth control itself, often denounced as a violation of natural law, is nothing more or less than the facilitation of the process of weeding out the unfit, of preventing the birth of defectives or of those who will become defectives. So, in compliance with nature’s working plan, we must permit womanhood its full development before we can expect of it efficient motherhood. If we are to make racial progress, this development of womanhood must precede motherhood in every individual woman.”

Margaret Sanger book Woman and the New Race

Source: Woman and the New Race, (1922), Chapter 18, "The Goal"

Law, Birth, Nature

“What are needed are the development of an ideological-cultural mechanism which permits both free inquiry and the uprooting of the weeds which multiply so easily in the fertile soil of state subsidies.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Man and Socialism in Cuba (1965)

“Where's the meat? This sandwich is full of weeds! I ain't eatin' nothing I don't understand!”

Mr. T (1952) American actor and retired professional wrestler

Quotes from acting

Understanding

“Far far from gusty waves these children's faces.
Like rootless weeds the torn hair round their paleness.”

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

"An Elementary School Classroom In A Slum" in Modern British Poetry (1962) edited by Louis Untermeyer (1962) variant : Like rootless weeds, the hair torn around their pallor.
Ruins and Visions (1942)

Children

“[Vegan lifestyle] just shows a different side of me that I love to express and the fact that I love my life so much and I look into it so much that I try to make everything as efficient as possible and do everything that I was put on earth to do. … Every five blocks there’s a McDonald’s, but there may be one Whole Foods every 30 blocks or every 30 miles. You’ve just got to have the dedication to where you’re like, ‘OK, I’m passing all these obstacles just to go to the goal.’ It’s just like living in the hood and somebody trying to get over the addiction of drugs. On every corner you’ve got somebody asking you, ‘Yo, you good?’ You’re just trying to make it to the bus stop and go to work and live a clean life, but somebody at every corner just keeps stopping you and saying, ‘We got this weed. We got this coke. I got that new s--t.’ It’s the same thing. You’ve just got to be strong, and you’ll fight through it and know what’s best for you.”

Bryant Jennings (1984) boxer

"Meet Bryant Jennings: The Vegan Gunning to Be Heavyweight Champion" https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2599932-meet-bryant-jennings-the-vegan-gunning-to-be-heavyweight-champion, interview with Bleacher Report (December 17, 2015).

Love, Life, Food, Strong

“Have hung
My dank and dropping weeds
To the stern god of sea.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Translation of Horace. Book i. Ode 5

God, Sea

“As superstition is the weed of the brain, it grows perfusely, once started.”

Joseph Lewis (1889–1968) American activist

The Ten Commandments

“What is needed is scientific analysis and convincing argument. Dogmatic criticism settles nothing. We are against poisonous weeds of all kinds, but we must carefully distinguish between what is really a poisonous weed and what is really a fragrant flower. Together with the masses of the people, we must learn to differentiate carefully between the two and to use correct methods to fight the poisonous weeds.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

VII: On "Let a Hundred Flowers Blossom Let a Hundred Schools of Thought Content" and "Long Term Coexistence and Mutual Supervision"
On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People

People, Flowers, Learning, Fight

“Yet if heretics be altogether uprooted by death, this is not contrary to Our Lord's command [in Matthew 13:30], which is to be understood as referring to the case when the cockle [weeds] cannot be plucked up without plucking up the wheat, as we explained above (10, 8, ad 1), when treating of unbelievers in general.”

Thomas Aquinas book Summa Theologica

II–II, q. 11, art. 3, ad. 3
Summa Theologica (1265–1274)

Death

“A black man would never dream of talking to the police high. That's a waste of weed. I'm serious. I mean, I'd be scared to talk to the police when I'm sleepy.”

Dave Chappelle (1973) American comedian

Comedy specials, Dave Chappelle: Killin' Them Softly (2000)

Dreams

“Birth control is not contraception indiscriminately and thoughtlessly practiced. It means the release and cultivation of the better racial elements in our society, and the gradual suppression, elimination and eventual extirpation of defective stocks— those human weeds which threaten the blooming of the finest flowers of American civilization.”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

"Apostle of Birth Control Sees Cause Gaining Here", The New York Times, , p. XII http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C01E1DF1F30E333A2575BC0A9629C946295D6CF.

Flowers, Birth

“Throughout the 200+ pages of this book Sanger called for the elimination of "human weeds," for the cessation of charity, for the segregation of "morons, misfits, and maladjusted," and for the sterilization of "genetically inferior races."”

Margaret Sanger (1879–1966) American birth control activist, educator and nurse

" Who Was Margaret Sanger? http://www.ewtn.com/library/prolife/pp04a.txt", brochure published by the American Life League, regarding The Pivot of Civilization http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1689/1689.txt. None of those quoted phrases actually appear in the book. Misattributed

Books

“The fact is, growing hemp for industrial purposes would make it a very useful plant. It can be a fiber for clothing, a source of paper, even an alternative fuel. Canada is already using hemp this way. I simply don't see that cannabis grows wild on earth just so humans can eradicate it.
Of course, the work of eradicating marijuana creates jobs within law enforcement. If we made it legal, and taxed it like we do tobacco and alcohol, maybe those law enforcement people could start paying more attention to murders and terrorism. I also think it's time for people to rise up against the prescription drug industry, the biggest opponent of legalization. You have to remember that they don't want anything out there that they can't make a profit from. Marijuana is a weed, and that means you can grow it, essentially free. This doesn't sit well with the pharmaceutical industry, and I think our Food and Drug Administration is nothing but a puppet whose strings the industry pulls.”

Jesse Ventura (1951) American politician and former professional wrestler

Source: Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! (2008), Ch. 10 (p. 190)

People, Alcohol, Law, Food

“I love the weed, blow that odour”

Fetty Wap (1991) American rapper and singer from New Jersey

"I Wonder"

Love

“Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”

William Howard Taft (1857–1930) American politician, 27th President of the United States (in office from 1909 to 1913)

"Anti-Semitism in the United States", address to the Anti Defamation League in Chicago, Illinois (23 December 1920).

“A million million worlds that move in peace;
A million mighty laws that never cease;
And one small ant-heap, hidden by small weeds,
Rich with eggs, slaves and store of millet-seeds.
They sleep beneath the sod
And trust in God.”

Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935) American feminist, writer, commercial artist, lecturer and social reformer

A Common Inference.
In this Our World : Poems (1898)

God, World, Peace, Law

“We sometimes live to three hundred years, but when we cease to exist here we only become the foam on the surface of the water, and we have not even a grave down here of those we love. We have not immortal souls, because Estelle is a star and we shall never live again; but, like the green sea-weed, when once it has been cut off, we can never flourish more. Human beings, on the contrary, have a soul which lives forever, lives after the body has been turned to dust. It rises up through the clear, pure air beyond the glittering stars. As we rise out of the water, and behold all the land of the earth, so do they rise to unknown and glorious regions which we shall never see.”

Hans Christian Andersen book The Little Mermaid

The Little Mermaid
Fairy Tales (1835)

Love, Soul, Star, Water

“I see weeds and flowers. I think of it in those terms, and we have to discriminate and distinguish between the two, to recognize and encourage those human qualities and attributes that are the more positive.”

Jonas Salk (1914–1995) Inventor of polio vaccine

Academy of Achievement interview (1991)

Flowers, Thinking

“[W]ithout hard work, nothing grows but weeds.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Farewell to a Prophet, Ensign, July 1994.

“When you wander, as you often delight to do, you wander indeed, and give never such satisfaction as the curious time requires. This is not caused by any natural defect, but first for want of election, when you, having a large and fruitful mind, should not so much labour what to speak as to find what to leave unspoken. Rich soils are often to be weeded.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

Letter of Expostulation to Coke, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Nature, Time

“Hell no, you can't smoke for free!
White Dawg make you bounce when you want that weed.”

White Dawg American rapper

"Bounce & Jump" on Thug Ride (1999)

Hell

“Look, if you like the freedom to play violent video games, watch internet porn, and grow weed in your house without police using thermal energy to bust you, you owe a debt to Antonin Scalia. You also probably work on my staff. Whether you loved or hated his narrow literalism about a document written before machine guns and gay people were invented, Scalia was by all accounts a nice guy with a wicked sense of humor. People liked him. … Good people do have bad ideas.”

Samantha Bee (1969) Canadian comedic actress and author

Full Frontal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bvl6spBVEc, February 15, 2016

Love, Hate, People, Guy

“The wayfarer,
Perceiving the pathway to truth,
Was struck with astonishment.
It was thickly grown with weeds.
"Ha," he said,
"I see that none has passed here
In a long time."
Later he saw that each weed
Was a singular knife.
"Well," he mumbled at last,
"Doubtless there are other roads."”

Stephen Crane (1871–1900) American novelist, short story writer, poet, and journalist

The Wayfarer, No. 13
War Is Kind and Other Lines (1899)

Truth, Time

“Persons without minds are like weeds that delight in good earth; they want to be amused by others, all the more because they are dull within.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Les gens sans esprit ressemblent aux mauvaises herbes qui se plaisent dans les bons terrains, et ils aiment d'autant plus être amusés qu'ils s'ennuient eux-mêmes.
Source: The Vicar of Tours (1832), Ch. I.

Personality