Mayflower Quotes

And so, whether they came here on the Mayflower, on a slave ship, or on an airplane from Havana, we are all descendants of the men and women who built here the nation that saved the world. ~ Marco Rubio

So (if) some cracker come and tell you 'Well, my mother and father blood go back to the Mayflower,' you better hold your pocket. That ain't nothing to be proud of. That means their forefathers was crooks. ~ Al Sharpton

You got to remember, this is the United States. Practically ninety percent of your friends and neighbors are right-wing, fundamentalist, un-Christian, Nazi-bastard, racist dogs. No one sunk the Mayflower when we had the chance, and we are stuck with those attitudes. ~ Dan O'Neill

The improved American highway system isolated the American-in-transit. On his speedway he had no contact with the towns which he by-passed. If he stopped for food or gas, he was served no local fare or local fuel, but had one of Howard Johnson's nationally branded ice cream flavors, and so many gallons of Exxon. This vast ocean of superhighways was nearly as free of culture as the sea traversed by the Mayflower Pilgrims. ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

My ancestors came over on the boat. Oh, not the Mayflower, but the boat after that. What did your ancestors come over on, Godfrey? ~ Morrie Ryskind

A friend of ours has a hobby doing genealogy, and we found out that we were cousins in the ninth degree, that we had a common ancestor on the Mayflower. ~ Marion Zimmer Bradley

The shy little Mayflower weaves her nest, But the south wind sighs o'er the fragrant loam, And betrays the path to her woodland home. ~ Sarah Helen Whitman

Along the way we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans, although the Haitians and the Cubans appeared in history as new people a century befire the Mayflower pilgrims settled on the Plymouth coast. For the world today, America is just the United States; the region we inhabit is a sub-America, a second-class America of nebulous identity. ~ Eduardo Galeano

America was founded by the refuse of the religious fanatics of England, these undesirable elements that came over on the Mayflower. Ignorant, religious fanatics who land here and abuse the Indians. ~ Frank Zappa

The Pilgrims landed the Mayflower at Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on a cold November day in 1620 because they were running out of beer. ~ Susan Cheever

The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturing outward. ~ Buzz Aldrin

Whether our ancestors came here on the Mayflower, on slave ships, whether they came to Ellis Island or LAX in Los Angeles, whether they came yesterday or walked this land a thousand years ago our great challenge for the 21st century is to find a way to be One America. We can meet all the other challenges if we can go forward as One America. ~ William J. Clinton

Win. He was often described in the society pages as an "international playboy," and she guessed that fit. He was blue-blooded old money, very old money, the kind of old money that disembarked from the Mayflower and immediately called for a caddy and a tee time. ~ Harlan Coben

My forefathers didn't come over on the Mayflower, but they met the boat. ~ Will Rogers

THE PILGRIM MOTHERS AND FATHERS Provincetown's first settlers were, in fact, the Pilgrims, who sailed the Mayflower into Provincetown Harbor in 1620. They spent the winter there but, finding too little fresh water, sailed that spring to Plymouth, which has gone into the history books as the Pilgrims' initial point of disembarkation. Provincetown is, understandably, not happy about this misrepresentation of the facts. ~ Michael Cunningham

For all they had suffered during those first terrible winters in America, their best years were behind them, in Leiden. Never again would they know the same rapturous sense of divine fellowship that had first launched them on this quest. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

All you need to build a house, Is blood and bricks and plaster. ~ Harriet Jones

Indeed, if you look around you on a bus or in a park or cafe or any crowded place, most of the people you see are very probably relatives. When someone boasts to you that he is descended from William the Conqueror or the Mayflower Pilgrims, you should answer at once: "Me, too!" In the most literal and fundamental sense we are all family. ~ Bill Bryson

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. My folks were Indian. Both my mother and father had Cherokee blood in them. I was born and raised in Indian Territory. 'Course we're not the Americans whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, but we met them at the boat when they landed. ~ Will Rogers

All of our people all over the country-except the pure-blooded Indians-are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, including even those who came over here on the Mayflower. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

One of our ancestors came over on the Mayflower, and we had family in Jamestown as well ... I was raised where service was a part of the fabric of life. It wasn't one-upmanship. No one bragged about their medals, but you could see the look in the eyes, the tip of the hat. You served your country first, then you went to work and had a family. ~ Steve Daines

But the closer we study their lives, and the better we know their deeds, the more profound is our admiration and the greater our reverence for the Pilgrim fathers. Between the drafting of their immortal charter of liberty in the cabin of the Mayflower and the fruition of their principles in the power and majesty of the republic of the United States of to-day is but a span in the records of the word, and yet it is the most important and beneficent chapter in history. To be able to claim descent from them, either by birth or adoption, is to glory in kinship with God's nobility. ~ Chauncey Depew

Class, I'd like us all to give a warm mayflower elementary welcome to your new friend and classmate Jing Jang!"
"Jin Wang"
"Jin wang!"
"He and his family recently moved to our neighborhood all the way from China!"
"San Francisco."
"San Francisco!"
"Yes, Timmy."
"My momma says Chinese people eat dogs."
"Now be nice, Timmy!" -km sure Jin doesn't do that! In fact, Jin's family probably stopped that sort of thing as soon as they came to the united states!"
The only other asian in my class was Suzy Nakamura.
When the class finally figured out that we weren't related, rumors began to circulate that suzy and I were arranged to be married on her thirteenth birthday.
We avoided each other as much as possible.
(30-31) ~ Gene Luen Yang

The American experience works when people embrace a set of shared values, you come, you work hard, you embrace these values and you're as American as anybody that came on the Mayflower. ~ Jeb Bush

The librarian is a caricature of librarian - short white hair, horn-rimmed glasses, a bosom you could hide Christmas presents under and a New England-tight-ass face that looks like she hasn's taken a shit since her family came over on the Mayflower. ~ Bart Yates

I didn't offer to help him carry any of his stuff. That's the unwritten code between cabbies and movers ... It's his punishment for tricking the cab driver into playing Mayflower, because he knows he's not going to give you a tip, and so do you. ~ Gary Reilly

My mother had been baking more often in general, but she took plates of desserts to the carpentry studio, where her boss, thank God, had a sweet tooth. He just loved the cheesecake, she'd tell me, shining. He ate all of my oatmeal cookies. Some charmed combination of the woodwork, and the studio people, and the splinter excising time with her son kept her going back to Silver Lake even when she hit her usual limits, and every night, tucked into bed, I would send out a thank-you prayer to the carpentry boss for taking in what I could not. But this morning I was the only one, and it was the weekend, and carpentry rested, and the whole kitchen smelled of hometown America, of Atlanta's orchards and Oregon's berry bushes, of England's pie legacy, packed with the Puritans over the Mayflower. ~ Aimee Bender

On their way to America, the Pilgrims argued about the best maximum length for a routine. After arguing about it for the entire trip, they arrived at Plymouth Rock and started to draft the Mayflower Compact. They still hadn't settled the maximum-length question, and since they couldn't disembark until they'd signed the compact, they gave up and didn't include it. The result has been an interminable debate ever since about how long a routine can be. ~ Steve McConnell

The Mayflower sped across the white-tipped waves once the voyage was under way, and the passengers were quickly afflicted with seasickness. The crew took great delight in the sufferings of the landlubbers and tormented them mercilessly. "There is an insolent and very profane young man, Bradford wrote, "who was always harrassing the poor people in their sickness, and cursing them daily with greivous execrations." He even laughed that he hoped to 'throw half of them overboard before they came to their journey's end.'
The Puritans believe a just God punished the young sailor for his cruelty when, halfway through the voyage, 'it pleased God ... to smite the young man with a greivous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner." He was the first to be thrown overboard. ~ Tony Williams

Faint not, poor soul, in God still trust;
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all tears wipes from their eyes.

William Bradford
Plymouth Colony Governor ~ Nathaniel Philbrick

I shuddered at the mention of Mrs. Steiger.
"What's that about?" Ranger asked.
"Mrs. Steiger is the Antichrist."
"Damn," Ranger said. "I left my Antichrist gun at home."
"Looks like you brought everything else."
"Never know when you'll need some tear gas."
"If we have to gas Mrs. Steiger, it"ll ruin my chances of being Miss Burg in the Mayflower parade. ~ Janet Evanovich

After Hymns and tears, they boarded the brig Thaddeus, a vessel so crappy, it made the Mayflower look like the QE2. ~ Sarah Vowell

f While Mr. William Bradford was absent in the shallop, his wife Dorothy accidentally fell overboard from the Mayflower at Cape Cod and was drowned. ~ James Thacher

This is the snobbery of the people on the Mayflower looking down their noses at the people who came over ON THE SECOND BOAT! ~ Mitchell Kapor

They were a most unusual group of colonists. Instead of noblemen, craftsmen, and servants - the types of people who had founded Jamestown in Virginia - these were, for the most part, families - men, women, and children who were willing to endure almost anything if it meant they could worship as they pleased. ~ Nathaniel Philbrick