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Category: united-states-of-america
Quotes of Category: united-states-of-america
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  1. Ta-Nehisi Coates _ Between the World and Me

    It is truly horrible to understand yourself as the essential below of your country. It breaks too much of what we would like to think about ourselves, our lives, the world we move through and the people who surround us. The struggle to understand is our only advantage over this madness.
    book-quoteracismknowledgelearning

  2. Ta-Nehisi Coates _ Between the World and Me

    You may have heard the talk of diversity, sensitivity training, and body cameras. These are all fine and applicable, but they understate the task and allow the citizens of this country to pretend that there is real distance between their own attitudes and those of the ones appointed to protect them. The truth is that the police reflect America in all of its will and fear, and whatever we might make of this country's criminal justice policy, it cannot be said that it was imposed by a repressive minority. The abuses that have followed from these policies-the sprawling carceral state, the random detention of black people, the torture of suspects-are the product of democratic will. And so to challenge the police is to challenge the American people who send them into the ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream. The problem with the police is not that they are fascist pigs but that our country is ruled by majoritarian pigs."
    book-quoteracismunited-states-of-americapolice

  3. Colson Whitehead _ The Underground Railroad

    Cora had heard Michael recite the Declaration of Independence back on the Randall plantation many times, his voice drifting through the village like an angry phantom. She didn't understand the words, most of them at any rate, but 'created equal' was not lost on her. The white men who wrote it didn't understand it either, if 'all men' did not truly mean all men.
    book-quotefreedomunited-states-of-americaslavery

  4. Colson Whitehead _ The Underground Railroad

    The other patrollers were boys and men of bad character; the work attracted a type. In another country they would have been criminals, but this was America.
    book-quoteunited-states-of-americaslaverycriminals

  5. Colson Whitehead _ The Underground Railroad

    If niggers were supposed to have their freedom, they wouldn't be in chains. If the red man was supposed to keep hold of his land, it'd still be his. If the white man wasn't destined to take this new world, he wouldn't own it now.Here was the true Great Spirit, the divine thread connecting all human endeavor--if you can keep it, it is yours. Your property, slave or continent. The American imperative.
    book-quoteunited-states-of-americaslaverypossessions

  6. Colson Whitehead _ The Underground Railroad

    And America, too, is a delusion, the grandest one of all. The white race believes--believes with all its heart--that it is their right to take the land. To kill Indians. Make war. Enslave their brothers. This nation shouldn't exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.
    book-quotewarunited-states-of-americaslavery

  7. George Saunders _ Lincoln in the Bardo

    Across the sea fat kings watched and were gleeful, that something begun so well had now gone off the rails {as down South similar kings watched}, and if it went off the rails, so went the whole kit, forever, and if someone ever thought to start it up again, well, it would be said {and said truly}: The rabble cannot manage itself.Well, the rabble could. The rabble would.He would lead the rabble in managing.The thing would be won.
    book-quotewarunited-states-of-americacivil-war

  8. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    In 1868, the Georgia legislature voted to expel all its Negro members-two senators, twenty-five representatives-and Turner spoke to the Georgia House of Representatives {a black woman graduate student at Atlanta University later brought his speech to light}:Mr. Speaker. . . I wish the members of this House to understand the position that I take. I hold that I am a member of this body. Therefore, sir, I shall neither fawn or cringe before any party, nor stoop to beg them for my rights. . . I am here to demand my rights, and to hurl thunderbolts at the men who would dare to cross the threshold of my manhood.
    book-quotepoliticsunited-states-of-america

  9. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    Some newspapers, at the very start of the war, protested. Horace Greeley wrote in the New York Tribune, May 12, 1846:We can easily defeat the armies of Mexico, slaughter them by thousands, and pursue them perhaps to their capital; we can conquer and "annex" their territory; but what then? Have the histories of the ruin of Greek and Roman liberty consequent on such extensions of empire by the sword no lesson for us? Who believes that a score of victories over Mexico, the "annexation" of half her provinces, will give us more Liberty, a purer Morality, a more prosperous Industry, than we now have? . . . Is not Life miserable enough, comes not Death soon enough, without resort to the hideous enginery of War?
    book-quotewarunited-states-of-america

  10. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    Speaking of California, the Illinois State Register asked: "Shall this garden of beauty be suffered to lie dormant in its wild and useless luxuriance? . . . myriads of enterprising Americans would flock to its rich and inviting prairies; the hum of Anglo-American industry would be heard in its valleys; cities would rise upon its plains and sea-coast, and the resources and wealth of the nation increased in an incalculable degree.
    book-quoteunited-states-of-americawealth

  11. Howard Zinn _ A People's History of the

    I was a Shoemaker, & got my living by my Labor. When this Rebellion come on, I saw some of my Neighbors got into Commission, who were no better than myself. I was very ambitious, & did not like to see those Men above me. I was asked to enlist as a private Soldier. . . I offered to enlist upon having a Lieutenants Commission; which was granted. I imagined my self now in a way of Promotion: if I was killed in Battle, there would be an end of me, but if my Captain was killed, I should rise in Rank, & should still have a Chance to rise higher. These Sir! were the only Motives of my entering into the Service; for as the Dispute between Great Britain & the colonies, I know nothing of it. . .
    book-quoterevolutionunited-states-of-americagreat-britain

  12. Joan Didion _ Slouching Towards Bethlehem

    It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and the market was steady and the G.N.P. high and a great many articulate people seemed to have a sense of high social purpose and it might have been a spring of brave hopes and national promise, but it was not, and more and more people had the uneasy apprehension that it was not.
    book-quotepurposeunited-states-of-americasocial
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