Quotes about year
page 49

Alfred P. Sloan photo

“The industry has not grown much during the past three or four years. It is practically stabilized at the present [1927]. What has taken place is a shift from one manufacturer to another.”

Alfred P. Sloan (1875–1966) American businessman

Source: Alfred P. Sloan in The Turning Wheel, 1934, p. 210. Sloan in his Proving Ground address in 1927 to automobile editors, in discussing the so-called saturation point.

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
Richard Brinsley Sheridan photo

“Date not the life which thou hast run by the mean of reckoning of the hours and days, which though hast breathed: a life spent worthily should be measured by a nobler line, — by deeds, not years…”

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) Irish-British politician, playwright and writer

Pizarro (first acted 24 May 1799), Act iv, Scene 1. Compare: "Who well lives, long lives; for this age of ours / Should not be numbered by years, daies, and hours", Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas, Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.

Noam Chomsky photo
Kent Hovind photo
Nigel Farage photo

“Absolutely none. But rather more than the BBC do. We could have had this interview in England a couple of years ago, although I wouldn’t have met with such hatred that I’m getting from your questions, and frankly I’ve had enough of this interview. Goodbye.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

During a phone call on BBC's Good Morning Scotland radio show (regarding the incident in Edinburgh), in which an angry Nigel Farage hung up after stating that the interview was unpleasant and offensive, 17 May 2013 - 'Scottish nationalists are fascist scum': Farage rages against pub protesters before hanging up on BBC for 'hate' filled interview. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2326042/Nigel-Farage-ends-BBC-interview-calling-Scottish-nationalists-fascist-scum.html
2013

“On June 20, 2009, twenty-six-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan was shot to death in Iran while participating in a peaceful demonstration in Tehran. Her death became a “galvanizing symbol, both within Iran and increasingly around the world,” Rachel Maddow said on MSNBC. Video images of her plight circled the globe. The same day Roger Cohen denounced the killing on the editorial page of the New York Times. Only fifteen days later, nineteen-year-old Isis Obed Murillo was shot dead by the Honduran military during a peaceful protest in Honduras. Like Agha-Soltan’s, his death was recorded in video images that circulated on the Internet. The differential media interest in US newspaper coverage was 736-8 in favor of Agha-Soltan; the TV differential was 231-1 in favor of Agha-Soltan. The dramatic video images of Murillo’s killing never caught hold in the world beyond Honduras. The social media, which had displayed such potential for organizing protest in Iran, failed to come to life in Honduras. The Propaganda Model is as strong and applicable as it was thirty years ago. […] the performance of the MSM [mainstream media] in treating the run-up to the Iraq War, the conflict with Iran, and Russia’s alleged election “meddling” and “aggression” in Ukraine and Crimea, offer case studies of biases as dramatic as those offered in the 1988 edition of Manufacturing Consent. The Propaganda Model lives on.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

the last published words in Herman’s lifetime
Herman (2017), “Still Manufacturing Consent: The Propaganda Model at Thirty” in Roth and Huffman, eds., Censored 2018. p. 221.
2010s

Francis Escudero photo
Billy Bragg photo
John Bright photo

“Anything you do from the heart enriches you, but sometimes not till years later.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Maneka Gandhi photo

“We are changing the law and I am personally working on it to bring 16-year-olds into the purview. According to the police, 50 per cent of the crimes are committed by 16-year-olds who know the Juvenile Justice Act. But now for premeditated murder, rape, if we bring them into the purview of the adult world, then it will scare them.”

Maneka Gandhi (1956) Indian politician and activist

On the Juvenile Justice Act, as quoted in "Juveniles who commit rape should be tried as adults: Maneka Gandhi" http://ibnlive.in.com/news/juveniles-who-commit-rape-should-be-tried-as-adults-maneka-gandhi/485770-37-64.html, IBNLive (14 July 2014)
2011-present

Gloria Estefan photo

“My family was musical on both sides. My father's family had a famous flautist and a classical pianist. My mother won a contest to be Shirley Temple's double -- she was the diva of the family. At 8, I learned how to play guitar. I used to play songs from the '20s, '30s and '40s in the kitchen for my grandmother. After my dad was a prisoner in Cuba for two years, we moved to Texas, where I was the only Hispanic in the class. I remember hearing "Ferry Cross the Mersey," by Gerry and the Pacemakers, and thinking, "that had bongos and maracas -- that was really a bolero." And the Beathles song, "Till There was You"… also Latin. I wrote poetry, which got me into lyrics. Stevie Wonder, Carole King, Elton John pulled me into pop. I started singing with a band -- just for fun -- when I 17. And pretty soon, I was thinking I could sing pop in English as well as Spanish. And as you know, we did that and we broke through. But we waited until 1993 to release "Mi Tierra" -- we wanted my fans to be rady for the traditional Cuban music. And then we kept adding: more Cuban influences, more Latin America. And, underneath it all, African drums and rhythm. The concept of "90 Millas" starts with the songs of the '40s. We invited 25 masters of Latin music -- giants on the cutting edge of creativity, musicians who pushed it out to the world, young Cuban artists and Puerto Ricans who are huge -- so we could blend cultures and generations. So it is like coming home, but not exactly to the old Cuba.”

Gloria Estefan (1957) Cuban-American singer-songwriter, actress and divorciada

www.huffingtonpost.com (September 7, 2007)
2007, 2008

Charles Kingsley photo

“Sad, sad to think that the year is all but done.”

Charles Kingsley (1819–1875) English clergyman, historian and novelist

The Starlings, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Attributed

Cat Stevens photo
Jonathan Swift photo
Roger Waters photo
James A. Michener photo
K. R. Narayanan photo
Edward Teller photo
Saxby Chambliss photo

“You can truly see that there is some melting going on. When you see it, all of a sudden you say, 'Hey, that issue that we've been talking about off and on over the years, there really is something to it.”

Saxby Chambliss (1943) American politician

Global warming fear lights fire under Congress http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/09/23/MNGOGLBFPB1.DTL&type=science SF Chronicle (September 23, 2006)

Leo Ryan photo

“Mr. Speaker, the activities of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church continue to cause distress for many of us. As you know, the House Subcommittee on International Organizations, chaired by my distinguished colleague, Donald Fraser, is investigating allegations of close ties between the Reverend Moon and some of his organizations and the South Korean government, including the KCIA. As a member of the subcommittee, I am, of course, disturbed over such allegations. My greatest concern, however, is for those young people who have been converted by these religious cults and for their parents, who have suffered the loss of their children. One of these parents, Mrs. Ida Watson Camburn of Sunnyvale, Calif., brought to my attention the testimony of John G. Clark, Jr., M. D., assistant professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, before a Vermont Senate committee, which was investigating religious cults. Dr. Clark's remarks, based on 2 ½ years of research, deal with the effects of some religious cults on the mental and physical health and welfare of their converts. I highly recommend his conclusions to my colleagues.”

Leo Ryan (1925–1978) American teacher and politician

Statement read into the United States Congressional Record (3 November 2007), "The Effects of Religious Cults on the Health and Welfare of Their Converts", United States Congressional Record, Vol. 123 Part 29, No. 181 Proceedings and Debates of 95th Congress (First Session).

“One of the most clearly marked trends for over twenty years has been the decline in civil liberties.”

Source: The Greening of America (1970), Chapter XI : Revolution By Consciousness, p. 301

Erving Goffman photo
Mario Bunge photo

“Bunge: In September I will be 90 years old.
Reporter: You look very youthful.
Bunge: That's because I avoid alcohol, tobacco, and postmodernism.”

Mario Bunge (1919) Argentine philosopher and physicist

"La desigualdad provoca enfermedad," interview to elPeriódico.com (in Spanish), July 29, 2009.
2000s

Joe Biden photo

“There's good reason to be excited. You have the first woman running who is qualified, and a very attractive African-American who has demonstrated crossover appeal. I got involved in politics 40 years ago during the civil rights movement, so yes, it's an exciting thing.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Biden officially running for president, MSNBC.com, January 31, 2007, 2007-02-01 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16901147/,
The average voter out there understands that the next president is going to have to be prepared to immediately step in without hesitation and end our involvement in Iraq. It's very difficult to figure out how to move on to broader foreign policy concerns without fixing Iraq first.

Vasily Grossman photo

“It is impossible to publish your book, and it will not be published in the next 200 years.”

Vasily Grossman (1905–1964) Soviet writer and journalist who originally trained as an engineer

1960s

Archibald Hill photo

“In the last few years there has been a harvest of books and lectures about the "Mysterious Universe." The inconceivable magnitudes with which astronomy deals produce a sense of awe which lends itself to a poetic and philosophical treatment. "When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy hands, the moon and the starts, whuch thou hast ordained: what is man that thou art mindful of him? The literary skill with which this branch of science has been exploited compels one's admiration, but alos, a little, one's sense of the ridiculous. For other facts than those of astronomy, oother disciplines than of mathematics, can produce the same lively feelings of awe and reverence: the extraordinary finenness of their adjustments to the world outside: the amazing faculties of the human mind, of which we know neither whence it comes not whither it goes. In some fortunate people this reverence is produced by the natural bauty of a landscape, by the majesty of an ancient building, by the heroism of a rescue party, by poetry, or by music. God is doubtless a Mathematician, but he is also a Physiologist, an Engineer, a Mother, an Architect, a Coal Miner, a Poet, and a Gardener. Each of us views things in his own peculiar war, each clothes the Creator in a manner which fits into his own scheme. My God, for instance, among his other professions, is an Inventor: I picture him inventing water, carbon dioxide, and haemoglobin, crabs, frogs, and cuttle fish, whales and filterpassing organisms ( in the ratio of 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1 in size), and rejoicing greatly over these weird and ingenious things, just as I rejoice greatly over some simple bit of apparatus. But I would nor urge that God is only an Inventor: for inventors are apt, as those who know them realize, to be very dull dogs. Indeed, I should be inclined rather to imagine God to be like a University, with all its teachers and professors together: not omittin the students, for he obviously possesses, judging from his inventions, that noblest human characteristic, a sense of humour.”

Archibald Hill (1886–1977) English physiologist and biophysicist

The Ethical Dilemma of Science and Other Writings https://books.google.com.mx/books?id=zaE1AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false (1960, Cap 1. Scepticism and Faith, p. 41)

Washington Irving photo
Gordon Moore photo
Antonio Sabàto Jr. photo
Norman Mailer photo
Titian photo

“I have been expecting the bull of the benefice of Medole which your Excellency gave me for my son Pomponio last year, and seeing that the matter is delayed beyond measure, and what is worse, that I have not received the income of the benefice — I find myself in a state of great discontent. It would be greatly to my dishonour and infamy, if my boy should be forced to change the priest's dress, which he wears with so much pleasure, after all Venice has been made acquainted with the gift made to him of this benefice by your Excellency.”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

In a letter of Titian to the Marquess Gonzaga of Mantua, from Venice, 12 July, 1531; published by Pungileoni in the 'Giornale Arcadico' in 1831 and reprinted in Cadorin, 'Dello Amore', p. 37; transl. J.A.Y. Crowe & G.B. Cavalcaselle
The gift made it possible that his son Pomponio could start a career in the catholic church. A fortnight later Titian's note has become humble and thankful, for the Duke has written him, to say that the benefice and its income are his
1510-1540

Alison Lohman photo

“He's not really a difficult interview. You just have to catch the essence and rhythm of what he's saying. I'd ask him how baseball has changed over the past 25 years and he'd start telling me about his life as a dental student in Kansas City.”

Arnold Hano (1922) American writer

On Casey Stengel, as quoted in "Loquacious Sportswriter: Arnold Hano Calls 'em as He Sees 'em in World of Sports" by Earl Gustkey, in The Los Angeles Times (April 23, 1970), p. D1
Sports-related

Báb photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“For tonight, as so many nights before, young Americans struggle and young Americans die in a distant land. Tonight, as so many nights before, the American Nation is asked to sacrifice the blood of its children and the fruits of its labor for the love of its freedom. How many times—in my lifetime and in yours—have the American people gathered, as they do now, to hear their President tell them of conflict and tell them of danger? Each time they have answered. They have answered with all the effort that the security and the freedom of this nation required. And they do again tonight in Vietnam. Not too many years ago Vietnam was a peaceful, if troubled, land. In the North was an independent Communist government. In the South a people struggled to build a nation, with the friendly help of the United States. There were some in South Vietnam who wished to force Communist rule on their own people. But their progress was slight. Their hope of success was dim. Then, little more than six years ago, North Vietnam decided on conquest. And from that day to this, soldiers and supplies have moved from North to South in a swelling stream that is swallowing the remnants of revolution in aggression. As the assault mounted, our choice gradually became clear. We could leave, abandoning South Vietnam to its attackers and to certain conquest, or we could stay and fight beside the people of South Vietnam. We stayed. And we will stay until aggression has stopped.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Mark Lemon photo
Richard J. Evans photo
Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Whittaker Chambers photo
Murray Bookchin photo
Konrad Heiden photo
A. James Gregor photo
Mahmud of Ghazni photo
Herman Cain photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Alex Jones photo

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

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

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

Nigel Farage photo

“The situation in Greece just goes from bad to worse. We’ve now got a situation where there was the big suicide a few weeks ago, where a 77-year-old man shot himself in the head outside the Greek Parliament. That was the public face of what’s gone wrong.”

Nigel Farage (1964) British politician and former commodity broker

Segment from an article on the UKIP website, 31 May 2012. On the edge of social breakdown http://www.ukip.org/content/latest-news/2681-on-the-edge-of-social-breakdown
2012

Michael T. Flynn photo

“One night at Socko and a year of probation were no comparison to the punishment at home. My rehabilitation was one of the fastest in adolescent history. I had it coming, and it taught me that moral rehab is possible. I behaved during my term of probation and stopped all of my criminal activity. But I would always retain my strong impulse to challenge authority and to think and act on my own whenever possible. There is room for such types in America, even in the disciplined confines of the United States Army. I’m a big believer in the value of unconventional men and women. They are the innovators and risk takers. Apple, one of the world’s most creative and successful high-tech companies, lives by the vision of transformation through exception. “Here’s to the crazy ones,” Apple’s campaign says. “The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you talk to my colleagues, they’ll tell you that I’m cut from the same cloth. My military biography starts badly. I was a miserable dropout in my freshman year of college (1.2 GPA), enlisted in a delayed-entry Marine Corps program, went to work as a lifeguard at a local beach, and then came the first of several miracles: an Army ROTC scholarship. Little did I know that my rebellious activities, such as skipping class and sundry other mistakes, would lead me to playing basketball (which I was very good at) with an ROTC instructor who saw something in me. Not only that, he took surprising initiative.”

Michael T. Flynn (1958) 25th United States National Security Advisor

Introduction
The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies (2016)

Sienna Guillory photo

“Everything I've done in the last few years has been grim and gritty and traumatic. I've played floozies, psychopaths, assassins, crackheads…. It's nice to do something with a lighter touch, something that makes you laugh but has a serious point to make. I get to wear a lot of great clothes as well.”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

Take a Girl Like You Cast and Credits http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/takeagirl/credits.html. pbs.org. 2000.
Guillory speaks about her role in the television film, w:Take a Girl Like You.

Ambrose Bierce photo
Alexander H. Stephens photo
Joseph Merrick photo
David Lloyd George photo

“Those insolent Germans made me very angry yesterday. I don't know when I have been more angry. Their conduct showed that the old German is still there. Your Brockdorff-Rantzaus will ruin Germany's chances of reconstruction. But the strange thing is that the Americans and ourselves felt more angry than the French and Italians. I asked old Clemenceau why. He said, "Because we are accustomed to their insolence. We have had to bear it for fifty years. It is new to you and therefore it makes you angry."”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Quoted in Lord Riddell's diary entry (8 May 1919), J. M. McEwen (ed.), The Riddell Diaries 1908-1923 (London: The Athlone Press, 1986), p. 275. At the opening of a conference the day before, the German delegate Count Brockdorff-Rantzau unexpectedly made a speech that was regarded as tactless.
Prime Minister

Enoch Powell photo
Richard Rodríguez photo
Umberto Eco photo
Yogi Berra photo
Olly Blackburn photo

“Director Olly Blackburn has, for the last ten years, been one of the most respected and in-demand directors of music videos and commercials.”

Olly Blackburn Film director and screenwriter

[The Skinny, Scotland, http://www.theskinny.co.uk/film/features/44237-director_olly_blackburn_talks_donkey_punch, Radge Media, 10 November 2008, 23 February 2012, Director Olly Blackburn talks Donkey Punch, Michael, Gillespie]
About

Warren Farrell photo
Friedrich Hayek photo

“I think there are three possible scenarios for the future of Chinese writing, in all of which the government plays a major role. In the first, and at present apparently the least likely scenario, the government abandons its hostility to an expanded role for Pinyin and instead fosters a climate of digraphia and biliteracy in which those who can do so become literate in both characters and Pinyin, and those who cannot are at least literate in Pinyin. This is essentially a reversion to the Latinization movement of the 1930s and 1940s, when Mao Zedong and other high Communist Party officials like Xu Teli, the commissioner of education in Yan'an, lent their prestigious support to the New Writing. Such a change within the governing bureaucracy would in all likelihood result in an explosion of activity that might end in Pinyin ascendancy in use over characters in less than a generation.
In the second scenario the government adopts a policy of benign indifference that involves abandoning its hostility toward Pinyin but without actively supporting it, leaving it up to the rival protagonists of the two systems to contest for supremacy among themselves. This is likely to result in a somewhat longer struggle.
In the third scenario the government continues its present policy of repression, resulting in a much more protracted struggle (though surely not as long as the fascinating parallel struggle between Latin and Italian in Italy, where it took 500 [! ] years after Dante’s start in 1292 for academics, the last holdouts, to finally abandon their long resistance and start using Italian in university lectures).47 In this long struggle, PCs and mobile phones and other innovations still to come will undoubtedly allow more and more advocates of writing reform to escape the stranglehold of officialdom, to the point where (in a century or so?) characters are finally relegated to the status of Latin in the West.
My own view is that this is actually the least likely scenario, the most probable one being that the Chinese pragmatism that has manifested itself so strongly in economics will extend further into writing, and that, perhaps sooner rather than later, given the success of the promotion of Mandarin, some influential Party bureaucrats will finally arrive at the conclusion that the "some day in the future" anticipated by Mao has arrived, and that wholehearted Party support should now be unleashed for his anticipated "basic reform."”

John DeFrancis (1911–2009) American linguist

In any case it is basically all a matter of time. And the decisive factor that will seal the ultimate fate of Chinese characters is the new reality, noted by a perceptive observer, that "the PC is mightier than the Pen."
"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006, p. 20-21) http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp171_chinese_writing_reform.pdf
"The Prospects for Chinese Writing Reform" (2006)

David Graeber photo

“The moment we begin to map the history of money across the last five thousand years of Eurasian history, startling patterns begin to emerge.”

David Graeber (1961) American anthropologist and anarchist

Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Eight, "Credit versus Bullion", p. 212

William James photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Alexej von Jawlensky photo

“It was very tiny, our house [ St. Prex ], and I had no room for my own, only a window, which I could call mine. But I was so gloomy and unhappy in my soul after all those dreadful experiences, that I was quite content to sit at the window and quietly collect my thoughts and feelings. I had a bit of paint but no easel, so I went into Lausanne – twenty minutes on the train – and bought a small easel from a photographer... It was highly unsuitable for painting but for more than twenty years I have painted my best work on that little easel”

Alexej von Jawlensky (1864–1941) Russian painter

in mainly small sizes
from: 'Lebenserinnerungen', 1938
This small house was in St. Prex, in Switzerland, lake Genova, where Jawlensky concentrated himself on the view around his house in the years after 1914.. ..he painted here more than 400 'Variations on a landscape theme', in St. Prex
Source: 1936 - 1941, Life Memories' (1938), p. 186

Richard Rodríguez photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
George W. Bush photo
Tim O'Brien photo
Edward O. Wilson photo
George Galloway photo
Gloria Estefan photo
George Herbert photo

“By no means run in debt: take thine own measure.
Who cannot live on twenty pound a year,
Cannot on forty.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

The Temple (1633), The Church Porch

John McCain photo
Abdullah Ensour photo
George Peacock photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Al Gore photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“He lived year after year. He attended only to himself and to God and this picture-but he did not understand himself.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1840s, Two Ethical-Religious Minor Essays (1849), p. 57

Frederick Douglass photo

“The story of our inferiority is an old dodge, as I have said; for wherever men oppress their fellows, wherever they enslave them, they will endeavor to find the needed apology for such enslavement and oppression in the character of the people oppressed and enslaved. When we wanted, a few years ago, a slice of Mexico, it was hinted that the Mexicans were an inferior race, that the old Castilian blood had become so weak that it would scarcely run down hill, and that Mexico needed the long, strong and beneficent arm of the Anglo-Saxon care extended over it. We said that it was necessary to its salvation, and a part of the “manifest destiny” of this Republic, to extend our arm over that dilapidated government. So, too, when Russia wanted to take possession of a part of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks were “an inferior race.” So, too, when England wants to set the heel of her power more firmly in the quivering heart of old Ireland, the Celts are an “inferior race.” So, too, the Negro, when he is to be robbed of any right which is justly his, is an “inferior man.” It is said that we are ignorant; I admit it. But if we know enough to be hung, we know enough to vote. If the Negro knows enough to pay taxes to support the government, he knows enough to vote; taxation and representation should go together. If he knows enough to shoulder a musket and fight for the flag, fight for the government, he knows enough to vote. If he knows as much when he is sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he knows enough to vote, on good American principles.”

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

1860s, What the Black Man Wants (1865)

Bill Clinton photo
El Lissitsky photo
Ernest Hemingway photo

“Yogi Johnson stood looking out of the window of a big pump-factory in Michigan. Spring would soon be here. Could it be that what this writing fellow Hutchinson had said, 'If winter comes, can spring be far behind?' would be true again this year? Yogi Johnson wondered.”

Part 1, Ch. 1 (the opening lines of the novel)
The line Yogi Johnson quotes is actually from Percy Bysshe Shelley's Ode to the West Wind. This is one of several misattributed quotes in the novel.
The Torrents of Spring (1926)

George William Curtis photo

“Mayor Macbeth, of Charleston, told General Howard that he did not believe that a bureau at Washington could manage the social relations of the people from the Potomac to the Rio Grande. But the answer to Mayor Macbeth is that he and his companions have managed those relations at a cost to the country of four years of civil war, three thousand millions of dollars, and hundreds of thousands of lives. The Freedmen's Bureau will hardly be as expensive as that. And while such a bureau merely defends the rights of a certain class under the laws, the aid societies give them that education which in the present state of local feeling would be inevitably withheld. The mighty arch of Sherman, wasting and taming the land, is followed by the noiseless steps of the band of unnamed heroes and heroines who are teaching the people. The soldier drew the furrow, the teacher drops the seed. There is many and many a devoted woman, hidden at this moment in the lowliest cabins of the South, whose name poets will not sing nor historians record, but whose patient toil the eye that marks the sparrow's fall beholds and approves. Not more noble, not more essential, was the work of the bravest and most famous of the heroes who fell in the wild storm of battle, than that of many a woman to us unknown, faithful through privation and exposure and disease, and perishing at the lonely outpost of duty in the act of helping the nation keep its word.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Donald J. Trump photo
Jay Samit photo