I Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with I. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“In 1866, the Vicar Apostolic of the Galla region in southern Ethiopia asked the Congregation for Doctrine: 'Is slavery in harmony with Catholic doctrine?' It should be remembered that at the time slavery had already been abolished in Great Britain and all its dominions, in the USA, in Austria, France, Prussia, Russia, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela and most other civilized countries. In spite of this, the Congregation answered with an emphatic 'Yes'.
"Slavery itself, considered as such in its essential nature, is not at all contrary to the natural and divine law, and there can be several just titles of slavery and these are referred to by approved theologians and commentators of the sacred canons.”
Source: The Ordination of Women in the Catholic Church ; Unmasking a Cuckoo's Egg Tradition
“In 1867, George Campbell, Duke of Argyll, had published The Reign of Law, a book that Darwin found deeply annoying. A supporter of Richard Owen, Campbell argued that while evolution (or Development) might be observable in the fossil record, it was merely evidence of God's purpose. God, for example, would cause horses and oxen to evolve in time to meet human needs. The brightly colored plumage of birds, Campbell went on, were simply God's decorations of nature for humanity's enjoyment.”
“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.”
Source: A People’s History of the United States: 1492 - Present
“In 1870, came the victory of the short-service troops of Prussia over the long-service troops of France, where conscription had but recently been reintroduced in a partial form and as a supplementary measure. That obvious contrast carried more weight into the world than all the other factors which tilted the scales against France. As a result, universal peace-time conscription was adopted by almost all countries as the basis of their military system. This ensured that wars would grow bigger in scale, longer in duration, and worse in effects. While conscription appeared democratic, it provided autocrats, hereditary or revolutionary, with more effective and comprehensive means of imposing their will, both in peace and war. Once the rulp of compulsory service in arms was established for the young men of a nation, it was an obvious and easy transition to the servitude of the whole population. Totalitarian tyranny is the twin of total warfare—which might aptly be termed a reversion to tribal warfare on a larger scale.”
Source: The Revolution in Warfare.
“In 1870, the throne was offered to Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen. Had the Prince rejected the offer at once, there might have been no Franco-Prussian war, and Napoleon III might have ended his days still on the throne. Alas, he accepted. France was appalled, how possibly could she accept being the sausage the middle of a German sandwich.”
Source: France: A History: from Gaul to de Gaulle
“In 1879 the Bengali scholar S.M. Tagore compiled a more extensive list of ruby colors from the Purana sacred texts: ‘like the China rose, like blood, like the seeds of the pomegranate, like red lead, like the red lotus, like saffron, like the resin of certain trees, like the eyes of the Greek partridge or the Indian crane…and like the interior of the half-blown water lily.’ With so many gorgeous descriptive possibilities it is curious that in English the two ancient names for rubies have come to sound incredibly ugly.”
“In 1881, being on a visit to Boston, my wife and I found ourselves in the Parker House with the Ingersoll's, and went over to Charleston to hear him lecture. His subject was 'Some Mistakes of Moses,' and it was a memorable experience. Our lost leaders, -- Emerson, Thoreau, Theodore Parker, -- who had really spoken to disciples rather than to the nation, seemed to have contributed something to form this organ by which their voice could reach the people. Every variety of power was in this orator, -- logic and poetry, humor and imagination, simplicity and dramatic art, moral and boundless sympathy. The wonderful power which Washington's Attorney-general, Edmund Randolph, ascribed to Thomas Paine of insinuating his ideas equally into learned and unlearned had passed from Paine's pen to Ingersoll's tongue. The effect on the people was indescribable. The large theatre was crowded from pit to dome. The people were carried from plaudits of his argument to loud laughter at his humorous sentences, and his flexible voice carried the sympathies of the assembly with it, at times moving them to tears by his pathos.
{Conway's thoughts on the great Robert Ingersoll}”
Source: My Pilgrimage to the Wise Men of the East
“In 1882 I was in Vienna, where I met an American whom I had known in the States. He said: 'Hang your chemistry and electricity! If you want to make a pile of money, invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each others' throats with greater facility.'”
“In 1890...the Magnolia State passed the Mississippi Plan, a dizzying array of poll taxes, literacy tests, understanding clauses, newfangled voter registration rules, and "good character" clauses—all intentionally racially discriminatory but dressed up in the genteel garb of bringing "integrity" to the voting booth.”
Source: One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy
“In 1890, nearly everyone died on the job, and if they lived long enough not to die on the job, the average age of retirement was 85.”
“In 1891, during the Presidency of William Henry Harrison [Benjamin Harrison], electric lights were first installed in the White House, the residence of the leaders of our country. At that time, commercial electricity was not economically feasible, but President Harrison wanted to affirm his confidence in the technological capability of our country.”
Source: Jimmy Carter
“In 1892, a Belgian trader and his entire caravan of six Europeans and 40 porters were beheaded by a thug controlled by the notorious slaver and warlord Msiri, who asked that their heads be returned to him to decorate his compound. The trader had tried to persuade Msiri and other local tyrants to sell their ivory to his company, which could transport it by river, thus obviating the need for slaves.”
Source: King Hochschild’s Hoax: An absurdly deceptive book on Congolese rubber production is better described as historical fiction.
“In 1893 I founded a chemical company which I ran until 1899.”
“In 1895 Lady Londonberry commented acidly on a bridegroom who had 'married the 10,000 a year as well as the lady.”
Source: Life As a Victorian Lady
“In 1897, Elder Joseph F. Smith... was speaking of Brigham Young's idea that Adam was the God of this world, a teaching sometimes referred to as the 'Adam-God theory.' It was something that Brigham Young taught repeatedly but that did not mesh with scriptural understandings and was eventually denounced as 'false doctrine." Joseph F. Smith explained, 'While I am not authorized to sit in judgment upon Pres[iden]t Young, I am at liberty to test the truths of his words or utterances by the revealed and accepted word of God. Anything uttered by man which is contrary to the Divine law must fall, while that only which is in harmony with it can remain, or stand.”
Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood
“In 1897, troops from the greatest empire the world had ever seen marched down London’s mall for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee. Seventy years later, Britain had government health care, a government-owned car industry, massive government housing, and it was a shriveled high-unemployment socialist basket-case living off the dwindling cultural capital of its glorious past. In 1945, America emerged from the Second World War as the preeminent power on earth. Seventy years later . . . Let’s not go there.”
“In 1898 the clouds of war between Spain and the United States accumulated over Cuba. President McKinley decided to deploy the battleship USS Maine to Havana, to insure the safety of Americans. As a backup, other ships were deployed to Key West and many other hot spots around the world involving Spain. Most Americans allied themselves with the Cuban people, and identified their movement with our American Revolutionary War. The arrival of the battleship Maine in Havana harbor with only 18 hours of advanced warning was contrary to diplomatic convention. At 9:40 p.m. on February 15, 1898, a massive explosion sank the ship while she was at anchor and took the lives of 268 sailors. Although the cause of the explosion was never proven to be sabotage, and was most likely caused by a smoldering fire in one of the ship’s coal bunkers, “Remember the Maine, To Hell with Spain!” became an American battle cry. What was termed “yellow journalism” had fired up the American public so much, that on April 11, 1898, President McKinley asked Congress for authority to send troops to Cuba to support the Cuban people in their revolt against Spain. The situation spun out of control when Spain declared war on the United States on April 23, 1898, and in turn, Washington declared war on Spain two days later.”
“In 1898, tijdens het bewind van Leopold II, werd het contract getekend voor de aanleg van de spoorweg van Beijing naar Hankou, nu het fameuze Wuhan. Leopold deed niet minder dan vijf pogingen om in China een concessie te krijgen, maar hij werd telkens gedwarsboomd door kortzichtige Belgische regeringen.”
Source: A Belgian Passage to China
“In 19 years Stockton never once lost a suicide drill in practice. Well, there was one day. He was sick. But he still ran it”
“In 1900 Americans on average lived for only 49 years and most working people died still on the job.”
“In 1902 I left the A.E.G. in order to enter finance. I joined the management of one of our big banks, the Berliner Handelsge-Sellschaft, and reorganized a great part of its industrial undertakings. I gained an insight into German and foreign industry, and belonged at that time to nearly a hundred different concerns. To recognize and create a demand is the secret of all sound business.”
“In 1902, Marcellin P. Berthelot, often called the founder of modern organic chemistry, was one of France's most celebrated scientists—if not the world's. He was permanent secretary of the French Academy, having succeeded the giant Louis Pasteur, the renowned microbiologist. Unlike Delage, an agnostic, Berthelot was an atheist—and militantly so.”
Source: The Truth About the Shroud of Turin: Solving the Mystery
“In 1903, Sir James Power, Lord Mayor of Dublin, was surprised to note on a transatlantic trip that the typical Irish immigrant in America was now "not merely a hewer of wood and a drawer of water." In fact, he remarked that they are "found occupying...respectable positions in society.”
Source: F*ck You I'm Irish: Why We Irish Are Awesome
“In 1903 the Wright brothers invented airplanes, because in 1902 they took a road trip across the country with their family.”
“In 1904, the newly created Los Angeles Department of Water and Power issued its first public report. 'The time has come,' it said, 'when we shall have to supplement the supply from another source.' With that simple statement, William Mulholland was about to become a modern Moses. But instead of leading his people to the promised land, he would cleave the desert and lead the promised waters to them.”
Source: Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water
“In 1904, 20 per cent of journeys were made by bicycle in London. I want to see a figure like that again. If you can't turn the clock back to 1904, what's the point of being a Conservative?”
“In 1905 Albert discovered Relativity, in 1906 he invented Rock and Roll.”
“In 1905, more than 1,700 young women made Portland their home. That trickle soon became a flood, and by 1907 more than 7,000 women a year were coming to Portland look for new lives.”
Source: Murder & Scandal in Prohibition Portland: Sex, Vice Misdeeds in Mayor Baker's Reign
“In 1905, when you went motoring, you took your mechanic. Twenty-five years later, mass production revolutionized the role of the automobile, but buying a Ford wouldn't have made sense if everyone still needed a mechanic on board. In 1955, when you used your computer, you took your programmer. Twenty-five years later, mass production revolutionized the role of the computer, but buying a micro wouldn't have made sense if everyone still needed a programmer.”
“In 1907... Joseph Fielding Smith, then serving as assistant Church historian, argued that the teaching... [of neutrality, inadequate valiance, or evil in the premortal realm] was 'not the official position of the Church, merely the opinion of men.”
Source: Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood
“In 1908 Handy didn't know anything about the blues and he doesn't know anything about jazz and stomps to this day. I myself figured out the peculiar form of mathematics and harmonies that was strange to all the world but me.”
“In 1908, you could easily earn $20 to $200 as a cartoonist. What's amazing is that it's still true!”
“In 1910, eighty-two-year-old Leo Tolstoy flees from his wife and dies in a railway station of exposure.”
“In 1911 the little town of Nakhla in Egypt was the scene of one of the most remarkable events in historym when a chunk of rock fell from the sky and killed a dog. This is the only known canine fatality caused by a cosmic object. Improbably though this encounter was already, its truly extraordinary nature was revealed only decades later when scientists found that the culprit was not a common-or-garden meteorite, but a piece of the planet Mars.”
Source: The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life
“In 1913 many believed that there would never again be a war in Europe. The great powers of the continent were so closely intertwined economically that the view was widespread that they could no longer afford to have military confrontations.”
“In 1913, when Anthony Patch was twenty-five, two years were already gone since irony, the Holy Ghost of this later day, had, theoretically at least, descended upon him. Irony was the final polish of the shoe, the ultimate dab of the clothes-brush, a sort of intellectual «There!» yet at the brink of this story he has as yet gone no further than the conscious stage. As you first see him he wonders frequently whether he is not without honor and slightly mad, a shameful and obscene thinness glistening on the surface of the world like oil on a clean pond, these occasions being varied, of course, with those in which he thinks himself rather an exceptional young man, thoroughly sophisticated, well adjusted to his environment, and somewhat more significant than any one else he knows.”
“In 1914, Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian imperial heir, was shot and killed by a Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo. Do you know the motive behind the act?
It was in retaliation for the subjugation of the Sebs in Austria.
It was not.Franz Ferdinand had stated his intention to introduce reforms favorable to the Serbs in his empire. Had he survived to ascend the throne, he would have made a revolution unnecessary. In plain terms, he was killed because he was going to give the rebels what they were shouting for. They needed a despot in the palace in order to seize it.
What's good for reform is bad for the reformers”
Source: Gas City
“In 1915, Theodore Roosevelt stated tht many imgrant Americans were loyal only to their mother countries and therefore untrustworthy, especially in a time of war.”….Wilson’s attitude encouraged carte blanche for discrimination and violence against minorities, and xenophobia began to permeate the American atmosphere.”
Source: Frank Little and the IWW: The Blood That Stained an American Family
“In 1916 I was discharged from military service, or rather, given a sort of leave of absence on the understanding that I might be recalled within a few months. And so I was a free man, at least for a while.”
Source: The autobiography of George Grosz: a small yes and a big no
“In 1916, when Johnny Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my studio at the south end of the town at five o'clock one May morning, we had no idea of the immense possibilities, or of the thorny but successful career, that awaited the new invention. On a piece of cardboard we pasted a mishmash of advertisements for hernia belts, student song books and dog food, labels from schnaps and wine bottles, and photographs from picture papers, cut up at will in such a way as to say, in pictures, what would have been banned by the censors if we had said it in words.”
“In 1917 - as we have seen, - Italy suffered a great reverse, losing 200,000 soldiers and immense supplies.”
Source: Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights
“In 1917 European history, in the old sense, came to an end. World history began. It was the year of Lenin and Woodrow Wilson, both of whom repudiated the traditional standards of political behaviour. Both preached Utopia, Heaven on Earth. It was the moment of birth for our contemporary world.”
“In 1917 there was not a single Bolshevik who considered possible the realization of a socialist society in a single country, and least of all in Russia.”
“In 1918 Mao landed a job in a library, the ideal location for a cash strapped nascent megalomaniac in need of easy access to inspirational bad ideas.”
Source: The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy
“In 1918, the Spanish flu killed about 2.7 percent of the world's population. [60] The risk of an outbreak of influenza against which we do not have a vaccine remains a threat constant, which we should take extremely seriously.
During the first months of 2009, thousands of people died from swine flu. For two weeks, it was a recurring topic on the news. However, unlike Ebola in 2014, the number of cases was not doubling, not even increasing in a linear fashion. Some researchers concluded that the flu was not as aggressive as the first warning signs had indicated. However, journalists continued to stoke fear for several weeks.”
Source: Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World – and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
“In 1918, when I was 6 or 7 years old, radio was just coming into use in the Great War.”
“In 1919 I woke up famous. I'd never guessed it. If I'd known I was famous, I'd have stolen away and wept. I was stupid. I was supposed to be intelligent. I was sensitive and very dumb.”
“In 1920 [H.G. Wells] described human history as becoming more and more a race between education and catastrophe.”
Source: Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies -- and What It Means to Be Human
“In 1920, the West ruled huge amounts of the world.”
“In 1921, Harry Houdini started his own film company called - wait for it - the Houdini Picture Corporation.”
Source: Ancient Rockets: Treasures and Train Wrecks of the Silent Screen