Colonial America Quotes

Unlike others before him, Oglethorpe felt the disadvantaged could be reclaimed if they were given a fair chance. ~ Nancy Isenberg

Colonial America had looked upon (lawyers) as mere tradesmen who earned a questionable living by cleverness and chicanery. ~ Catherine Drinker Bowen

It is difficult to picture the rich, hard-nosed advisors of James I being overly concerned about the rights of vagabonds and felons. But this was a period that was especially suspicious of arbitrary acts by the Crown against individuals. There was no law enabling the crown to exile anyone, including the baser convict, into forced labour. According to legal scholars, the Magna Carta itself protected even them. The Privy Councillors therefore dressed up what was to befall the convicts and presented the decree authorising their transportation as an act of royal mercy. The convicts were to be reprieved from death in exchange for accepting transportation. (71-71) ~ Don Jordan

Nobody in Colonial America, to be sure, believed that society owed every child the ultimate in education, but intelligence, industry, and thrift combined with ambition got many a poor man's son into the colonial colleges. ~ Louis B. Wright

We have been gradually finding out that there is more democracy in letting a committee or representative ten to details than in making everybody's business nobody's business. ~ Edward Pearson Pressey

disabilities. In colonial America, the settlement of a vast new rural society meant that early colonists put a premium on physical stamina. The early colonies tried to prevent the immigration of those who could not support themselves and would have to rely on state help. People with physical or mental disabilities who were potentially dependent could be deported, forced to return to England. ~ Joseph P. Shapiro

New Englanders began the Revolution not to institute reforms and changes in the order of things, but to save the institutions and customs that already had become old and venerable with them; and were new only to a few stupid Englishmen a hundred and fifty years behind the times. ~ Edward Pearson Pressey

[Enoch Root] hadn't really known what to expect of America. But people here seem to do things - hangings included - with a blunt, blank efficiency that's admirable and disappointing at the same time. Like jumping fish, they go about difficult matters with bloodless ease. As if they were all born knowing things that other people must absorb, along with faery-tales and superstitions, from their families and villages. Maybe it is because most of them came over on ships.
(Boston Common, October 12, 1713, 10:33:52 a.m.) ~ Neal Stephenson

More than any other colonial founder, Oglethorpe made himself one of the people, promoting collective effort. ~ Nancy Isenberg

The important point of this report [Montague, Massachusetts; July 7, 1774] may be summed up in six resolutions: 1. We approve of the plan for a Continental Congress September 1, at Philadelphia. 2. We urge the disuse of India teas and British goods. 3. We will act for the suppression of pedlers and petty chapmen (supposably vendors of dutiable wares). 4. And work to promote American manufacturing. 5. We ought to relieve Boston. 6. We appoint the 14th day of July, a day of humiliation and prayer. ~ Edward Pearson Pressey

p. 39 Rum, in fact, was the unspoken demon in most negotiations and failed treaties with the Delaware nation. That evil influence has been largely expunged from histories. Access to rum, or its prohibition, assured or canceled oaths and pacts no sooner than they were sworn. ~ Daniel Mark Epstein

Annie's message is timeless, her shining spirit and healing gift from the Spiritual Universe will capture your heart. She was born with birth defects in a time when special children and their mothers were put to death or banished. But have things changed really that much? Have they changed enough? "No!" Bullying, abuse, ridicule, and inequality thrives in the lives of women and children in our global modern society, just as surely as it did in the mid-1600s Colonial America. Based on factual research. ~ Deborah A.Bowman

The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them. ~ George W. Bush

The theft of brown women's narratives is not only an injustice placed on them, but also one extended to their male counterparts; by insisting they need to be liberated from their 'barbaric' civilization, Laura [Bush] summoned the colonial assertion that brown women need saving from brown men, when, in actuality, brown women have suffered at the hands of white men more than at those of any other oppressor in history. ~ Amani Al-Khatahtbeh

If you don't have that science and technology and brains as an input, as you don't have in large parts of Latin America, if you don't focus your education on that, if you don't find your 10,000 best scientists, but you do find your 10,000 best soccer players, the consequences are, you become a World Cup Champion in Soccer, like Brazil, but you don't become Korea, which earned 1/5 of what a Mexican did in 1975 and today earns five times more. ~ Juan Enriquez

I'm convinced that Sanford and Son shows middle-class America a lot of what they need to know. ~ Redd Foxx

I knew I was the second-best tennis player in the state of Florida and No. 8 in the United States of America when I was 12 years old and I couldn't tell you what I was in baseball, but I liked my chances in tennis of getting a scholarship to college. ~ Jim Courier

One of the causes of unhappiness among intellectuals in the present day is that so many of them, especially those whose skill is literary, find no opportunity for the independent exercise of their talents, but have to hire themselves out to rich corporations directed by Philistines, who insist upon their producing what they themselves regard as pernicious nonsense. If you were to inquire among journalists in either England or America whether they believed in the policy of the newspaper for which they worked, you would find, I believe, that only a small minority do so; the rest, for the sake of a livelihood, prostitute their skill to purposes which they believe to be harmful. Such work cannot bring any real satisfaction, and in the course of reconciling himself to the doing of it, a man has to make himself so cynical that he can no longer derive whole-hearted satisfaction from anything whatever. I cannot condemn men who undertake work of this sort, since starvation is too serious an alternative, but I think that where it is possible to do work that is satisfactory to man's constructive impulses without entirely starving, he will be well advised from the point of view of his own happiness if he chooses it in preference to work much more highly paid but not seeming to him worth doing on its own account. Without self-respect genuine happiness is scarcely possible. And the man who is ashamed of his work can hardly achieve self-respect. ~ Bertrand Russell

If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act of heroic virtue? ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

The color blue fills the entire mirror and, watching it, I think that is how a small northern town in America works. It enlists one beautiful thing like the ocean or the mountains or the snow to keep people stuck and stagnant and staring out to sea forever. ~ Samantha Hunt

For the first time in its history, Western Civilization is in danger of being destroyed internally by a corrupt, criminal ruling cabal which is centered around the Rockefeller interests, which include elements from the Morgan, Brown, Rothschild, Du Pont, Harriman, Kuhn-Loeb, and other groupings as well. This junta took control of the political, financial, and cultural life of America in the first two decades of the twentieth century. ~ Carroll Quigley

The great Jewish scientists and philosophers of the last few generations - Spinoza, Einstein, Freud, Robert Oppenheimer and others - were natives of Europe and America. ~ David Ben-Gurion

I explained that he was Chinese, and she asked if the movie would be in Chinese.
"No," I said, "he lives in America. In California. He's been there since he was a baby."
"Then what does it matter if he's Chinese?"
"Well," I said, "he's got ... you know, a sensibility. ~ David Sedaris

On 11 September 2012 crowds of friendly locals in Kabul, Afghanistan, were chanting the usual 'Death to America' slogans. At the same time American flags were torched from London to Sydney. And in Benghazi, Libya, a group of 'spontaneous protesters' arrived at the US consulate with rocket-propelled grenades and savagely murdered the US ambassador. In Washington, members of the Obama administration were, as we have already seen, showing that they weren't taking any of this personally. It wasn't about them and it certainly wasn't about their ambassador, who had in fact been murdered by terrorists in a pre-planned attack. The administration was still claiming all this was caused by an excerpt from an amateur film which had been up on YouTube for weeks. ~ Douglas Murray

Because the myth that America is a Christian nation has led many to associate America with Christ, many now hear the good news of Jesus only as American news, capitalistic news, imperialistic news, exploitive news, antigay news, or Republican news. And whether justified or not, many people want nothing to do with any of it. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

A lot of the times when I've auditioned for parts in America, the answer is, 'Sorry, we need a bigger name.' ~ Michael Sheen

Good presidents, people like George Bush, they SEND people to war. They don't bring them a rescue. This is America. We rescue insurance companies and banks. ~ Bill Maher

There are five issues that make a fist of a hand that can knock America out cold. They're lack of jobs, obesity, diabetes, homelessness, and lack of good education. ~ Will.i.am

(As I, in memory, think back now upon those girls and their lives I feel that for white America to understand the significance of the problem of the Negro will take a bigger and tougher America than any we have yet known. I feel that America's past is too shallow, her national character too superficially optimistic, her very morality too suffused with color hate for her to accomplish so vast and complex a task. Culturally the Negro represents a paradox: Though he is an organic part of the nation, he is excluded by the entire tide and direction of American culture. ~ Richard Wright

In America they really do mythologise people when they die. ~ Robin Williams

If Scotland and America go to war, I'm afraid I've already sworn in. ~ Craig Ferguson

It's really unfair to working women in America who read celebrity news and think, 'Why can't I lose weight when I've had a baby?' Well, everyone you're reading about has money for a trainer and a chef. That doesn't make it realistic. ~ Rachel Zoe

The harsh reality is that America moves on four wheels, powered by conventional internal-combustion engines. At this point, while the elite media (excluding Newsweek) trumpet the benefits of hybrids and Ford and Toyota plan to lead the nation into a low-powered, high-mileage hybrid Utopia, the multitudes remain loyal to the gas-guzzling family bus in the driveway. ~ Brock Yates

Part of the reason why so many actors lose the plot when they go over to America is that they become part of an industry, so that's why they don't want to play weak, bad or vulnerable guys - because that's not sellable; that diminishes their profit margin. ~ Peter Mullan

I really, really don't think that, outside of maybe some pink wigs, [that] there's anything that separates me from every other woman in America. ~ Nicki Minaj

A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election. ~ Bill Vaughan

Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself. ~ Abraham Lincoln

When I came to America in the '60s, it was the place to be. I wonder if I'd come here today. ~ Helmut Jahn

Divorce is so common and accepted in America that beating myself up over it may sound ridiculous. But I was raised to believe that divorce wasn't an option; to me, divorce equaled failure. I wasn't able to change that equation until I found myself in the right relationship. ~ Trisha Yearwood

America was born out of despair & we'll all go through it in our lifetime. It's what we do with it that will help determine our greatness! ~ Timothy Pina

I worked, and I was excited about the next time the five of us had a joint class.
When that time came, Silvia started by asking us what we were passionate about. I scribbled down my family, music, and then, as if the word demanded to be written, justice. ~ Kiera Cass

The young whites, and blacks, too, are the only hope that America has, the rest of us have always been living in a lie. ~ Malcolm X

Congratulations, you may already be a winner! Your case has been selected from hundreds of other appellate cases to be heard by the Supreme Court of the United States of America. ~ Paul Beatty

would be made manifest nine years later, when America entered World War I and changed the course of both the war and the world. For the moment, it was enough to know that America was singularly equipped to lead the world into the twentieth century. The America in which the following stories occurred will be, in scattered glimpses, familiar to readers of 2008; if we squint, we might even mistake it for our own. ~ Jim Rasenberger

Not since the days of George W. Bush's 'Clear Skies' and 'Healthy Forests' initiatives has America been presented with a project as cravenly corporate and backward-looking as the Keystone XL pipeline. ~ Jeff Goodell

One of my great surprises when I was in America was about twenty-five years ago in Harvard, hearing Randall Jarrell deliver a bitter attack on the way poets were neglected. Yet there were about two thousand people present, and he was being paid five hundred dollars for delivering this attack. ~ Stephen Spender

The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism ... ~ George Washington

In her mind, her actions were treason to the false federation, but loyalty to the real United States of America, the one created by a document she had memorized. The real document was set on fire by what the news called "petty arsons" when the National Archives burned down. Bev knew better - she knew who was behind the destruction of the country's most important document. It was more than a document, it was a symbol - a symbol of freedom from tyranny, and one the Federal Government could no longer afford to abide by. ~ Jennifer Arnett

The federal government ... knows how to put a missile in someone's room half way around the world with technology. Why don't we use some of that technology to save some lives here in America? ~ Michael Nutter

This is America. We're proud. We're not afraid of a bunch of terrorists. But this government is all about terror alerts and scaring us at airports. We're changing the Constitution out of fear. We spend all our time looking up each other's dresses. Fear's the only issue the Republican Party has. Vote for them, or the terrorists will win. That's not what Reagan was about. I hate to think about our soldiers over in Iraq fighting for a country that's slipping away. ~ Merle Haggard

I think that in our earlier history
the Gettysburg Address or something
there was the conscious sense that democracy was an achievement. It was not simply the most efficient modern system or something. It was something that people collectively made and they understood that they held it together by valuing it. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Not that the Red Indian will ever possess the broad lands of America. At least I presume not. But his ghost will. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Science is the study of the admitted laws of existence, which cannot prove a universal negative about whether those laws could ever be suspended by something admittedly above them. It is as if we were to say that a lawyer was so deeply learned in the American Constitution that he knew there could never be a revolution in America.. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton