Star Spangled Banner Quotes

Our Catholic church here split into three pieces: (1) the American Catholic Church whose new Rome is Cicero, Illinois; (2) the Dutch schismatics who believe in relevance but not God; (3) the Roman Catholic remnant, a tiny scattered flock with no place to go. The American Catholic Church, which emphasizes property rights and the integrity of neighborhoods, retained the Latin mass and plays The Star-Spangled Banner at the elevation. ~ Walker Percy

The man who can face vilification and disgrace, who can stand up against the popular current, even against his friends and his country when he know he is right, who can defy those in authority over him, who can take punishment and prison and remain steadfast-that is a man of courage. The fellow whom you taunt as a 'slacker' because he refuses to turn murderer-he needs courage. But do you need much courage just to obey orders, to do as you are told and to fall in line with thousands of others to the tune of general approval and the Star Spangled Banner? ~ Alexander Berkman

Barry, let me give you a history lesson, Ladybird Hope-style. When the Vietnamese got kids hooked on drugs and we had to fight a war to stop it, did we give in? No! We said, "Crack is wack!" and we made sure everybody could have guns instead of drugs. Back before the British were our friends, and they had a mean king who made us pay too much tax instead of just having hot princes who go to nightclubs, they wanted to keep us from bringing freedom to the people of Mexico and making it a state, and George Washington had to chop down that cherry tree and write the "Star-Spangled Banner," and that's the reason we fought World War II, and why we keep fighting, because those freedom-hating people out there want to take away our right to be rich and good-lookin' and have gated communities and designer sweatpants like the ones from my Ladybird Hope Don't Sweat it line, and they want us all to learn to speak Muslim and let the lawyers stop us from teaching about Adam and Eve and that will be the day that every child gets left behind. ~ Libba Bray

But as they stared into "The Star Spangled Banner," the music was blessedly drowned out by the squeal and moan of the barking train, iron on iron, a truer anthem of America. ~ Victoria Wilcox

The Battle of Gettysburg was fought in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in 18-something-or-nother. The year doesn't matter.They considered it the turning point of the war, and President Lincoln showed up to give his big speech. Who really cares what it was called? I don't. After it was all over and the North won, Congress passed the 13th amendment to free the slaves. It outlawed owning another person, yada, yada, yada, but it was a waste of time. All of it. Every bit. Completely pointless. All those people died and it didn't change anything, because it doesn't work if they don't enforce it. They just ignore it, turn their backs and say it's not their problem, but it is. It's everyone's problem. They can say slavery ended all they want, but that doesn't make it true. People lie. They'll tell you what they think you wanna hear, and you'll believe it. Whatever makes you feel better about your dismal little lives. So, whatever. Go on being naive. Believe what the history book tells you if you want. Believe what Mrs. Anderson wants me to tell you about it. Believe the land of the free, blah, blah, blah, star spangled banner bullshit. Believe there aren't any slaves anymore just because a tall guy in a big ass top hat and a bunch of politicians said so. But I won't believe it, because if I do too, we'll all fucking be wrong, and someone has to be right." -Carmine DeMarco ~ J.M. Darhower

I sing the 'Star Spangled Banner,' so I can get into football, basketball and baseball games for free. ~ John Cullum

Nobody's truly free. Everyone is prisoner to a secret, a sin, a lie. It wasn't by accident that, in the Star Spangled Banner, Francis Scott Key set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could attain it. ~ J. Matthew Nespoli

Pervy and redundant, don't you think?" I asked the big gay cop, who wouldn't know a va-jay-jay if it bounced up to him and sang the "Star-Spangled Banner." (You ever notice that hardly anything besides the "Star-Spangled Banner" is spangled? There's no, like, the Raisin-Spangled Scone, or the Flea-Spangled Beagle. I'm just saying.)
Being the Journal of Abby Normal ~ Christopher Moore

As for the Yankees, they had no other ambition than to take possession of this new continent of the sky, and to plant upon the summit of its highest elevation the star- spangled banner of the United States of America. ~ Jules Verne

I probably won't play a song the same way tomorrow as I play it today. Only a pitchman says the same thing the same way twice, without varying a word. If music is a language, why don't people use it with the same subtlety, nuance, and facility as they do the spoken language? Probably because they don't verbalize with the same vocabulary and tone they once did. It has been said that a people's character is reflected in their music. Our culture is a perfect example. If people here walk around using one-syllable words with no color, no variety, no shading, how can we expect our musical language to be any different? It's like the emperor's new clothes – sure they can sit and make wild noises on their synthesizers and call it music – who questions? But ask them to pull up a chair and play 'Gal in Calico' or Temptation,' or even a straight dramatic version of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' and they can't do it. They're too pretentious. They can't just play songs. ~ Anton Szandor LaVey

After months of playing air guitar to 'Free Bird', what really got me into guitar was watching a documentary about Jimi Hendrix and picking up the Woodstock soundtrack. Listening to his version of 'Star Spangled Banner' and 'Purple Haze.' My brother played acoustic guitar and, idolising him, I thought, 'I'm going to get a guitar.' ~ Kirk Hammett

History likewise shows that sometimes the 'monetary standard of the victors' can prove to be very bad. There have seldom been more brilliant victories than those eventually achieved by the American insurgents under Washington against the English troops. But the American 'continental dollar did not benefit from them. The more proudly the star-spangled banner rose on high, the lower did the exchange-rate fall, until, at the very moment when the victory of the rebels was secured, the dollar became entirely valueless. The course of events was no different not long afterwards in France. In spite of the victories of the revolutionary army, the metal premium rose. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

When Ronald Reagan was elected I was on a bus traveling with a band in France. I wrote a little arrangement of The Star Spangled Banner in a minor key. ~ Carla Bley

I'll rip the fucking asshole's dick off and stuff it down his douche-bag throat. Take my whip and cornhole the bastard peckerheaded fuckwad till his ass whistles "The Star Spangled Banner." Then I'll break the dried-up piece of jackwad's leg off and shove it up his ass. ~ Cherise Sinclair

When I pour a bowl of Uncle Sam's cereal, I never know if I should stand when I eat, salute it first, or simply hum the Star Spangled Banner between mouthfuls. ~ Chila Woychik

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave! ~ Francis Scott Key

The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards-somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the 'Star Spangled Banner', but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. ~ Douglas Adams

I wondered how many people had sung By the dawn's early light' yesterday and were dead today. ~ Susan Beth Pfeffer

Milo carefully said nothing when Major de Coverley stepped into the mess hall with his fierce and austere dignity the day he returned and found his way blocked by a wall of officers waiting in line to sign loyalty oaths. At the far end of the food counter, a group of men who had arrived earlier were pledging allegiance to the flag, with trays of food balanced in one hand, in order to be allowed to take seats at the table. Already at the tables, a group that had arrived still earlier was singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in order that they might use the salt and pepper and ketchup there. ~ Joseph Heller

One Day:

One day, you will heal
One day, you will be grateful for the deepest cuts of pain
One day, you will glance at yourself
And see a stronger person through your reflection
One day, you will kiss away your hurt... gently, and with grace
Until then, use it all to propel you forward
Like a white-hot pyre through your star-spangled eyes
A fire to regenerate every shadowy cell
And open your heart to every experience
Knowing that one day
You will search your heart
And understand that love is the only thing to ever hold onto ~ Christine Evangelou

Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls. ~ Thomas Guthrie

You've got
some 'Star-Spangled'
nails
in your coffin, kid.
That's what
they've done for you,
son. ~ Richard Brautigan

When I was a kid, back in the '40s, I was a voracious comic book reader. And at that time, there was a lot of patriotism in the comics. They were called things like 'All-American Comics' or 'Star-Spangled Comics' or things like that. I decided to do a logo that was a parody of those comics, with 'American' as the first word. ~ Harvey Pekar

Mr. Duffy Napp has just transmitted a nine-word e-mail asking that I immediately send a letter of reference to your firm on his behalf; his request has summoned from the basement of my heart a star-spangled constellation of joy, so eager am I to see Mr. Napp well established at Maladin IT.

As for the basis of our acquaintanceship: I am a professor in an English department whose members consult Tech Help - aka Mr. Napp - only in moments of desperation. For example, let us imagine that a computer screen, on the penultimate page of a lengthy document, winks coyly, twice, and before the "save" button can be deployed, adopts a Stygian façade. In such a circumstance one's only recourse - unpalatable though it may be - is to plead for assistance from a yawning adolescent who will roll his eyes at the prospect of one's limited capabilities and helpless despair. I often imagine that in olden days people like myself would crawl to the doorway of Tech Help on our knees, bearing baskets of food, offerings of the harvest, the inner organs of neighbors and friends - all in exchange for a tenuous promise from these careless and inattentive gods that the thoughts we entrusted to our computers will be restored unharmed.

Colleagues have warned me that the departure of Mr. Napp, our only remaining Tech Help employee, will leave us in darkness. I am ready. I have girded my loins and dispatched a secular prayer in the hope that, given the abysmal job market, a former maso ~ Julie Schumacher

So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore Flames in the forehead of the morning sky. ~ John Milton

According to the traditional philosophy of the Magicians, every man is a unique autonomous center of individual consciousness, energy, and will - a soul, in a word. Like a star shining and existing by its own inward light, it pursues its way in the star-spangled heavens, solitary, uninterfered with, except in so far as its heavenly course is gravitationally modified by the presence, near or far, of other stars. Since in the vast stellar spaces seldom are there conflicts between the celestial bodies, unless one happens to stray from its appointed course - a very rare occurrence - so in the realms of humankind there would lie no chaos, little conflict, and no mutual disturbance were each individual content to be grounded in the reality of his own high consciousness, aware of his ideal nature In the his true purpose in life, and eager to pursue the road which he must follow. Because men have strayed from the dynamic sources inhering within themselves and the universe, and have forsaken their true spiritual wills, because they have divorced themselves from the celestial essences, betrayed by a mess of more sickly pottage than ever Jacob did sell to Esau, the world in this day presents a people with so hopeless an aspect, and a humanity impressed with so despondent a mien. Ignorance of the course of the celestial orbit, and the significance of that orbit inscribed in the skies forever, is the root which is at the bottom of universal dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and race-nostalgia ~ Israel Regardie

A star-spangled sky and you were looking the other way,
the night beckoned and waited and you waited for the day. ~ Saleem Sharma

We are particularly frustrated that so much of our politics today consists of lines first written during the clashes, domestic and foreign, of the 1960s. This "Groundhog Day" approach to replaying the culture war's tropes is perhaps nowhere in greater evidence than in how Americans talk about patriotism. Patriotism, as an idea, has been co-opted over the course of a generation by right-wingers who use the flag not as a symbol of transcendent national unity, but as a sectarian cudgel against the hippies, Francophiles, free-lovers and tree-huggers who constitute their caricature of the American left. The American left, for its part, has been so beaten down by this star-spangled caricature that it has largely ceded the very notion of patriotism to the right. As a result, the first reaction of far too many progressives to any talk of patriotism is automatic, allergic recoil. Needless to say, this reaction simply tightens the screws of the right's imprisoning caricature. ~ Eric Liu

The villages were lighting up, constellations that greeted each other across the dusk. And, at the touch of his finger, his flying-lights flashed back a greeting to them. The earth grew spangled with light signals as each house lit its star, searching the vastness of the night as a lighthouse sweeps the sea. Now every place that sheltered human life was sparkling. And it rejoiced him to enter into this one night with a measured slowness, as into an anchorage. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

Evil Hall had been transformed into a magnificent ballroom, glittering with green tinsel, black balloons, thousands of green-flamed candles, and a spinning chandelier streaking wall murals with emerald bursts of light. Around a towering ice sculpture of two entwined snakes, Hort and Dot stumbled through a waltz, Anadil wrapped her arms around Vex, Brone tried not to step on Mona's green feet, and Hester and Ravan swayed and whispered as more villainous couples waltzed around them. Ravan's bunk mates picked up the music on reed violins as more pairs flooded onto the floor, clumsy, bashful, but aglow with happiness, dancing beneath a spangled banner:
THE 1ST ANNUAL VILLAINS NO BALL ~ Soman Chainani

Tasteful illumination of the night, Bright scattered, twinkling star of spangled earth. ~ John Clare

He wonders by what process virtually any discussion about the war seems to profane these ultimate matters of life and death. As if to talk of such things properly we need a mode of speech near the equal of prayer, otherwise just shut, shut your yap and sit on it, silence being truer to the experience than the star-spangled spasm, the bittersweet sob, the redeeming hug, or whatever this fucking closure is that everybody's always talking about. They want it to be easy and it's just not going to be. ~ Ben Fountain

I don't want to brag or anything, but I'm sorta like a rock star to these people. ~ Matthew Quick

The Universe is a pretty big place ... And the one thing I know about nature is it hates to waste anything. So I guess I'd say if it is just us, an awful lot of space is going to waste. The earth is not alone, it is not like a single apple on a tree; there are many apples on the tree, and there are many trees in the orchard. ~ John Burroughs

People need to understand. If they go to a show on Broadway and find seventy people working but only fifty spectators, how much would the ticket cost? That's what El Bulli's about. There are seventy actors who are playing for just fifty spectators. Is the price expensive? It's relative. How much does a normal dinner at a five-star hotel restaurant cost? Four hundred dollars. It's the same as El Bulli. But you can also think of it this way: How much would it cost to eat something that nobody else is eating? ~ Ferran Adria

There are movies where actors aren't characters but movie stars, being cool beyond belief throughout the whole movie. That is what it is. And we reveal ourselves when we act, very often without noticing. But if I can manage to do a character without showing anything of myself, then that's the ultimate goal for me. No leakage. ~ Christian Bale

Stone knew more about Death than most. He knew of delusions that could plague the soul at such a time. It was a time of transition, consciousness shifted dimensions and delusions were common. He knew of the nature of reality, the impermanence of perception, and he was not perturbed, at least not completely. This delusion was sweet and genuine and urged him to follow his soul's purpose. ~ Shradhdha. S

Ronald Reagan has a stack of three-by-five cards in his lap. He skids up a new one: "What advice do you, as the youngest American fighting man ever to win both the Navy Cross and the Silver Star, have for any young marines on their way to Guadalcanal?"
Shaftoe doesn't have to think very long. The memories are still as fresh as last night's eleventh nighmare: ten plucky Nips in Suicide Charge!
"Just kill the one with the sword first."
"Ah," Reagan says, raising his waxed and penciled eyebrows, and cocking his pompadour in Shaftoe's direction. "Smarrrt
you target them because they're the officers, right?"
"No, fuckhead!" Shaftoe yells. "You kill 'em because they've got fucking swords! You ever had anyone running at you waving a fucking sword? ~ Neal Stephenson

The star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention. ~ Bruce Springsteen

Myrnin wasn't especially tall, but he was just . . . strangely cool. Long, curling, lush black hair that fell to his shoulders. His face was vampire-pale, but it suited him, somehow, and he had the kind of sharp features that would have made him a star if he'd wanted to be in the movies. Big, expressive dark eyes and full lips. Definitely cover-model material. ~ Rachel Caine

I'm not superstitious. I don't really believe in star signs, sorry, or superstitions. ~ Richard Branson

The astronomer is, in some measure, independent of his fellow astronomer; he can wait in his observatory till the star he wishes to observe comes to his meridian; but the meteorologist has his observations bounded by a very limited horizon, and can do little without the aid of numerous observers furnishing him contemporaneous observations over a wide-extended area. ~ James Pollard Espy

When we had closed the door to the star room, Amar reached up to brush his fingers against the constellation in my hair.
"It suits you," he said.
Warmth crept to my cheeks. For a long moment, we stood in that alcove. The mirror portals faintly shimmered. In the distance, I could see the lines of cities and flush of daybreaks, but everything felt dim compared to the space between us. It felt so charged it could have been alive. ~ Roshani Chokshi

I was going to Homecoming with the one person in this school who made my skin crawl, I was getting attention from a gorgeous, star football player that I could care less about, and I was having wet dreams about a potential sociopath who acted like he hated me most of the time. ~ Penelope Douglas

Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. You, don't be afraid. I said that it was intended that you should perish in the ghetto, perish by never being allowed to go behind the white man's definitions, by never being allowed to spell your proper name. You have, and many of us have, defeated this intention; and, by a terrible law, a terrible paradox, those innocents who believed that your imprisonment made them safe are losing their grasp of reality. But these men are your brothers - your lost, younger brothers. And if the word integration means anything, this is what it means: that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it. For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and damned rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. You come from a long line of great poets, some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said, The very time I thought I was lost, My dungeon shook and my chains fell off. ~ James Baldwin

tattooed on Kirsten's arm, "Survival is insufficient," is from Star Trek: Voyager, episode 122, which aired for the first time in September 1999 and was written by Ronald D. Moore. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

I'd die for you," he repeats, quieter.
"I'd rather you not," I admit with a smile. "I would ... really miss your heartbeat. ~ Daryl Banner

The bigger the smile, the sharper the knife. ~ Star Trek Deep Space Nine Rules Of Aquision

If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

When you reach for a star, only angels are there. And it's not very far, just a step on a stair. ~ Kate Bush

One minute you've got a lucky star watching over you and the next instant it's done a bunk. ~ Salman Rushdie

Here is the soundless cypress on the lawn:
It listens, listens. Taller trees beyond
Listen. The moon at the unruffled pond
Stares. And you sing, you sing.
That star-enchanted song falls through the air
From lawn to lawn down terraces of sound,
Darts in white arrows on the shadowed ground;
And all the night you sing.
My dreams are flowers to which you are a bee
As all night long I listen, and my brain
Receives your song, then loses it again
In moonlight on the lawn.
Now is your voice a marble high and white,
Then like a mist on fields of paradise,
Now is a raging fire, then is like ice,
Then breaks, and it is dawn. ~ Harold Monro

Remember that true beauty comes from within - from within bottles, jars, compacts, and lipstick tubes ~ Jeffree Star

The generalized theory of relativity has furnished still more remarkable results. This considers not only uniform but also accelerated motion. In particular, it is based on the impossibility of distinguishing an acceleration from the gravitation or other force which produces it. Three consequences of the theory may be mentioned of which two have been confirmed while the third is still on trial: (1) It gives a correct explanation of the residual motion of forty-three seconds of arc per century of the perihelion of Mercury. (2) It predicts the deviation which a ray of light from a star should experience on passing near a large gravitating body, the sun, namely, 1".7. On Newton's corpuscular theory this should be only half as great. As a result of the measurements of the photographs of the eclipse of 1921 the number found was much nearer to the prediction of Einstein, and was inversely proportional to the distance from the center of the sun, in further confirmation of the theory. (3) The theory predicts a displacement of the solar spectral lines, and it seems that this prediction is also verified. ~ Albert Abraham Michelson

'We're doing it because he's trying to look like a respectable member of the family and not the fucking mafia,' Dex snapped. He grimaced at Ethan. 'Sorry, man, but seriously
this is some fuckin' suit.'
Ethan looked at himself and his spiffy shiny cuffs and sighed. 'I was going for grown-up,' he confessed.
Kane was the one who said it. 'Well, what you got was connected, but that's okay, right? Because, you know, better a hired killer than a porn star.' ~ Amy Lane

Eliot's own reflections on the primitive mind as a model for nondualistic thinking and on the nature and consequences of different modes of consciousness were informed by an excellent education in the social sciences and philosophy. As a prelude to our guided tour of the text of The Waste Land, we now turn to a brief survey of some of his intellectual preoccupations in the decade before he wrote it, preoccupations which in our view are enormously helpful in understanding the form of the poem. Eliot entered Harvard as a freshman in 1906 and finished his doctoral dissertation in 1916, with one of the academic years spent at the Sorbonne and one at Oxford. At Harvard and Oxford, he had as teachers some of modern philosophy's most distinguished individuals, including George Santayana, Josiah Royce, Bertrand Russell, and Harold Joachim; and while at the Sorbonne, he attended the lectures of Henri Bergson, a philosophic star in Paris in 1910-11. Under the supervision of Royce, Eliot wrote his dissertation on the epistemology of F. H. Bradley, a major voice in the late-nineteenth-, early-twentieth-century crisis in philosophy. Eliot extended this period of concentration on philosophical problems by devoting much of his time between 1915 and the early twenties to book reviewing. His education and early book reviewing occurred during the period of epistemological disorientation described in our first chapter, the period of "betweenness" described by Heidegger and Ortega y Gasset, the ~ Jewel Spears Brooker

No, she doesn't look like she's from anywhere near Central, does she? You a dirt-muncher too, newbie, fresh off the farm? Or are you more of a river rat?"
"Why?" Rosie said. "You looking for lost relatives?"
Gillian snorted and San's face became an angry shade of puce. ~ Lara Morgan

The setting sun had turned the blue sky a brilliant orange, then soft pink merging to pearl; the plum velvet of night had come out of the east, spangled with stars. ~ Paul Gallico

I'm loving saying 'I'm not a big movie star, but I play one on television.' ~ Johnathon Schaech