The quote database

I learned the lesson that great men cultivate love, and that only little men cherish a spirit of hatred.

The Negro boy has obstacles, discouragements, and temptations to battle with that are little known to those not situated as he is.

I would permit no man, no matter what his colour might be, to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.

My experience has been that the time to test a true gentleman is to observe him when he is in contact with individuals of a race that is less fortunate than his own.

There is a vast difference between working and being worked.

The fact that the liberty of the press may be abused by miscreant purveyors of scandal does not make any the less necessary the immunity of the press from previous restraint in dealing with offical misconduct.

I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will

Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

That any living woman should prefer it to home and husband, to love and motherhood, throws a fierce light on what women must have suffered for lack of freedom before.

Little by little, very slowly, and with most unjust and cruel opposition, at cost of all life holds most dear, it is being gradually established by many martyrdoms that human work is woman’s as well as man’s.

To teach, to rule, to make, to decorate, to distribute,—these are not sex-functions: they are race-functions.

There is no female mind. The brain is not an organ of sex. As well speak of a female liver.

The extravagant expenditure of public money is an evil not to be measured by the value of that money to the people who are taxed for it.

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticise others.

This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government, but whether our government is controlled by the people.

It is not kind in you to desire an increase of my friendship; that is to doubt it is not as great already as it can be, than which you cannot do me a greater injury.

To separate them from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

The basic concept underlying the Eighth Amendment is nothing less than the dignity of man.

When the Government acts to take away the fundamental right of citizenship, the safeguards of the Constitution should be examined with special diligence.

To the extent that a citizen's right to vote is debased, he is that much less a citizen.

The economy of injustice is to furnish resources for the fund of corruption.

Tyrannous exaction brings on servile concealment; and that again calls forth tyrannous coercion.

Yet is it far better to light the candle than to curse the darkness.

Oh, if our friends would but put off anatomising one till after one was safely dead, and call to mind that, previously, we have nerves to be agonised and morbid brains to be driven mad!