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Race Quotes

“When I was trained as a journalist, as a race-relations reporter in Nashville covering the end of the civil-rights movement, we were strictly forbidden to use the first-person pronoun. There was kind of an electric charge around it. To come out from hiding and use the word 'I' carried a lot of fright for me.”

“On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal parents, Cain, snapped and popped the first metaphorical cap in another human being. The attack was a bloody, brutal, violent, reprehensible killing. Cain's brother Abel probably never saw it coming. As I opened the door to my apartment, I was filled with a sense of empathic sympathy and intuitive understanding. For freaking Cain.”

Source: Dead Beat: A Novel of The Dresden Files

“Horseshoes are lucky. Horses have four bits of lucky nailed to their feet. They should be the luckiest animals in the world. They should rule the country. They should win all their horse races, at least. 'In the fifth race today, every single horse was first equal...one horse threw a shoe came in third...the duck was ninth...and five ran.'”

World Should Firsts Country Today Winning Bits Animal Race Five Four Feet Lucky Equal Thirds Horse Shoes Ran Ducks Fifth Horseshoes

Author:Eddie Izzard

“We're first on executions. We're 49th in funding public education. We're in a race with Mississippi for the bottom, and we're winning.”

Firsts Winning Race Bottom Execution Funding Mississippi Public Education

Author:Kinky Friedman

“I was always accused of being too stiff. In 1974, when I ran my first primary race for state rep, I was chief aide to the speaker of the House, I knew the issues and understood state government. But what I found out the hard way is that you can know all the ins and outs but people want to know you, your family.”

People Knows Way Want Firsts Hard States Government Found House Race Issues Understood Chiefs Primaries Ran Our Family Speakers Accused State Government Hard Way

Author:Jim Edgar

“In the race for money some men may come first, but man comes last.”

Men Firsts May Lasts Race Greed Avarice

Book:But Will it Sell?

Source: But Will it Sell?

“There is a big risk for the Republicans in a race, especially with Hillary Clinton as a likely Democratic nominee in a contest that will focus on the possibility of the first woman president to be six months suspending up the nomination of a black woman, who is imminently qualified.”

Firsts Bigs Black President Race Focus Risk Possibility Months Republican Six Democratic Clinton Contests Black Women Six Months Qualified Nominations

Author:Barack Obama

“There is a certain race of men that either imagine it their duty, or make it their amusement, to hinder the reception of every work of learning or genius, who stand as sentinels in the avenues of fame, and value themselves upon giving Ignorance and Envy the first notice of a prey.”

Source: The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius

“California has become the first American state where there is no majority race, and we're doing just fine. If you look around the room, you can see a microcosm of what we can do in the world. . . . You should be hopeful on balance about the future. But it's like any future since the beginning of time -- you're going to have to make it.”

Ifs World Should Firsts Looks States Can Do Rooms Race Fine Balance Majority California Hopeful Microcosm

Author:William J. Clinton

“In 1964, when Lee Iacocca said, 'Shelby, I want you to make a sports car out of the Mustang,' the first thing I said was, 'Lee, you can't make a race horse out of a mule. I don't want to do it.' He said, 'I didn't ask you to make it; you work for me.'”

Want Firsts Said Asks Sports Race Car Horse I Want You Mules Sports Cars Mustang Race Horses

Author:Carroll Shelby

“Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliff-walled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race.”

Firsts Natural Race Feet Fine Development Mountain Conservative Forests Lakes Cliffs Brooks Fertile Playgrounds

Book:The Works of Theodore Roosevelt

Source: The Works of Theodore Roosevelt

“It's been an incredible few weeks for Emma Pooley, first winning three stages in the Giro Rosa to demonstrate that she's the best climber in the women's peloton, then lining up for La Course - a race she helped to make happen - on the Champs-Elyses. So, it may come as a surprise to hear that she will retire after the Commonwealth Games road race on Sunday.”

Firsts May Happens Three Courses Games Winning Race Week Stage Surprise Incredibles Sunday Retiring Commonwealth Emma Climbers Rosa Lining Up Commonwealth Games

Author:Emma Pooley

“I ran my first race the end of March, 1976. And less than four months later I was Olympic champion. But I had the background. It's not like I just ran one day and all of a sudden became a champion. It was a lot of work.”

Firsts Ends Race Four Months One Day Backgrounds Ran Champion March

Author:Edwin Moses

“From its first faint glimmerings, History shews Man's constant progress as a beast of prey. As such he conquers every land, subdues the fruit-fed races, founds mighty realms by subjugating other subjugators, forms states and sets up civilisations, to enjoy his prey at rest.”

Men Firsts States Form Found Enjoy Race Progress Land Constant Fruit Conquer Realms Beast Feds Prey Civilisation

Book:Religion and Art

Source: Religion and Art

“The dumpling-eaters are a race sprung partly from the old Epicurean and partly from the Peripatetic Sect; they were first brought into Britain by Julius Caesar; and finding it a Land of Plenty, they wisely resolved never to go home again.”

Firsts Home Race Land Findings Plenty Britain Sects Julius Sprung Epicurean Dumplings

Author:John Arbuthnot

“I am dedicating the majority of my wealth to improving education. It is the key to the survival of the human race. We have to plan for our collective future - and the first step begins with the social, emotional, and intellectual tools we provide to our children. As humans, our greatest tool for survival is our ability to think and to adapt - as educators, storytellers, and communicators our responsibility is to continue to do so.”

“The Irish are a philosophic as well as a practical race. Their first and strongest impulse is to make the best of a bad situation to put a better face on evil than it normally wears.”

Firsts Wells Faces Evil Race Situation Practicals Impulse Strongest Philosophic Bad Situations

Book:The Financier

Source: The Financier

“I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.”

Source: Foreign & Colonial Speeches

“And then there's this guy, Barack Obama, who lost - I could take up a whole afternoon talking about his failures, but - he lost his first race for Congress, and now he gets to call himself my husband.”

Firsts Whole Guy Lost Race Talking Husband Congress Barack My Husband Afternoon This Guy

Author:Michelle Obama

“I know that so many of us hoped that, by electing our first black president, we had turned the page on this chapter in our history. But, despite our best efforts and our highest hopes, America's long struggle with race is far from finished.”

Knows Firsts Long America Black President Effort Race Struggle Highest Pages Finished Despite Chapters Best Effort

Author:Hillary Clinton

“Funny thing about Americans. They are the first to adopt weird lifestyles and radical views but they are the most conservative race on earth.”

Firsts Earth Views Race Conservative Lifestyle Radical Funny Things

Author:Ralph Steadman

“CREATIVITY first of all aims to achieve a REVOLUTION OF VALUES THROUGH RELIGION, therefore it completely and categorically rejects the Judeo-Christian-democratic-Marxist-liberal-feminist values of today and supplants them with new and basic values of which RACE IS THE FOUNDATION.”

Firsts Today Christian Values Race Creativity Achieve Revolution Aim Foundation Democratic Feminist Rejects Marxist

Author:Ben Klassen

“The more serious poetry of the race has a philosophical structure of thought. It contains beliefs and conceptions in regard to the nature of man and the universe, God and the soul, fate and providence, suffering, evil and destiny. Great poetry always has, like the higher religion, a metaphysical content. It deals with the same august issues, experiences and conceptions as metaphysics or first philosophy.”

Source: The Field of Philosophy: An Outline of Lectures on Introduction to Philosophy

“I have two hopes for the future. The first and lesser one is that game commissions will one day have sense enough to set limits that measurably reflect the sport safely available. The second and deeply urgent one is that we shall grow a race of sportsmen no one of whom will ever consider it a matter of pride to have killed a limit.”

Firsts Two Matter Enough Games Grows Sports Race Sea Pride One Day Limits Rivers Fishes Available Boat Lakes Fishing Urgent Hope For The Future Sportsman

Author:Roderick Haig-Brown

“In recent times, modern science has developed to give mankind, for the first time in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking away from someone else.”

Way Giving Firsts Humans Doe Wisdom Politics Race Economy Modern Mankind First Time Human Race Liberalism Modern Science Abundant Life

Author:Karl Taylor Compton

“It's funny, though, because when I first started going to races after we met, I was extremely nervous. It's like being backstage and hoping you don't trip over something or break an amp or accidentally speak into a live microphone, so I was really hesitant.”

Firsts Speak Race Break Mets Nervous Microphones Hesitant

Author:Ashley Judd

“To a sprinter, the hundred-yard dash is over in three seconds, not nine or ten. The first 'second' is when you come out of the blocks. The next is when you look up and take your first few strides to attain gain position. By that time the race is actually about half over. The final 'second' - the longest slice of time in the world for an athlete - is that last half of the race, when you really bear down and see what you're made of. It seems to take an eternity, yet is all over before you can think what's happening.”

Source: I Have Changed

“The man who runs from his office to the golf club, gulps a sandwich, belches and races to the first tee has no business howling in anguish when he puts his first two shots in the woods, then tops a 3-iron shot into the pond.”

Men Firsts Two Running Race He Man Office Shots Golf Clubs Woods Iron Anguish Sandwiches Ponds Tees Golf Clubs

Author:Tony Lema

“The first race of mankind used to dispute, as our ordinary people do now-a-days, in a kind of wild logic, uncultivated by rule of art.”

People Firsts Kind Art Used Race Mankind Ordinary Argument Logic Ordinary People Disputes

Book:The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator

Source: The Works of Joseph Addison: The Spectator

“My father couldn't speak English when he went to the first grade and I had to work in a factory over Christmas and summer vacations. And I think that's the American way and one of the things that excites me about this race is that pretty much everything I've done I've started at the bottom and been able to finish at the top.”

Thinking Way Firsts Done Able Father Speak Race Summer Bottom Grades Vacation Factories Speak English Summer Vacation

Author:George Pataki

“No, there is nothing on the face of the earth that can, for a moment, bear a comparison with Christianity as a religion for man. Upon this the hope of the race hangs. From the very first, it took its position, as the pillar of fire, to lead the race onward. The intelligence and power of the race are with those who have embraced it; and now, if this, instead of proving indeed a pillar of fire from God, should be found but a delusive meteor, then nothing will be left to the race but to go back to a darkness that may be felt, and to a worse than Egyptian bondage.”

Source: Evidences of Christianity: Lectures Before the Lowell Institute, Revised as a Text Book, with a Supplementary Chapter Considering Some Attacks on the Critical School, the Corroborative Evidence of Recently Discovered Manuscripts, Etc., and the Testimony of Jesus on His Trial

“The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?”

Source: Lectures on the Evidences of Christianity

“American business, while it does not frown on helping the human race, frowns on people who start right in helping the human race without first proving that they can sell things to it.”

People Firsts Humans Doe Helping Business Race Prove Sells Charity Human Race American Business

Book:The Folks at Home

Source: The Folks at Home

“in race relations, the single gesture and the single individual are more often than not doomed to failure. Only the group and the long-term, undeviating policy make much headway. ... if you want to make the world a better place, the first thing you must accept is the fact that you cannot transcend your limitations as an individual.”

Source: Color blind: a white woman looks at the Negro

“When I first started racing, my father said, "Win the race as slow as you can.”

Firsts Said Father Winning Race Racing

Author:Richard Petty

“It was at Inver Slane, to the north of Leinster, the sons of Gaedhal of the Shining Armour, the Very Gentle, that were called afterwards the Sons of the Gael, made their first attempt to land in Ireland to avenge Ith, one of their race that had come there one time and had met with his death.”

Firsts Made Race Land Son Mets Shining Gentle One Time Ireland Armour

Book:Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland

Source: Gods and Fighting Men: The Story of the Tuatha de Danaan and of the Fianna of Ireland

“The changes in thinking about same-sex marriage have come slowly at first and then in rapid course. If such change is possible in this area, is it also possible in the vexed and sordid realm of race relations?”

Ifs Thinking Firsts Courses Sex Race Areas Relation Realms Rapids Race Relations

Author:Barack Obama

“A single word indicative of doubt, that any thing, or every thing, in that country is not the very best in the world, produces an effect which must be seen and felt to be understood. If the citizens of the United States were indeed the devoted patriots they call themselves, they would surely not thus encrust themselves in the hard, dry, stubborn persuasion, that they are the first and best of the human race, that nothing is to be learnt, but what they are able to teach, and that nothing is worth having, which they do not possess.”

Source: Domestic Manners of the Americans: Complete in One Volume

“First generation Indian immigrants are mass guinea pigs. When a race that subsisted on plants for centuries subsists on a meat-dominated diet, it scares me to know what's in store for them”

Knows Firsts Race Generations Century Mass Plant Stores Indian Meat Diets Immigrants Scare Pigs Guinea Guinea Pigs

Author:Siddharth Katragadda

“The day of the Nativity of the Mother of God is a day of universal joy, because through the Mother of God, the entire human race was renewed, and the sorrow of the first mother, Eve, was transformed into joy.”

Firsts Humans Joy Mother Religious Race Sorrow Universal Human Race Transformed Virgin Mary Blessed Mother Nativity

Author:John of Damascus

“As a Formula One driver, you dream about winning your first race all your life. I am desperate to know what it feels like.”

Knows Feels Firsts Dream Winning Race Desperate Drivers Formulas Formula One

Author:Sergio Perez

“Vietnam was the first time that Americans of different races had to depend on each other. In the Second World War, they were segregated; it was in Vietnam that American integration happened in the military - and it wasn't easy.”

World Firsts Different War Easy Race Happened Military Depends First Time War Of The Worlds Vietnam Integration Second World War Different Races

Author:Karl Marlantes

“I tend to get very nervous before the first races of the year. It takes you a bit of time to get into the season.”

Years Firsts Bits Race Seasons Nervous

Author:Alistair Brownlee

“In the early days of the world, the Almighty said to the first of our race "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread"; and since then, if we except the light and the air of heaven, no good thing has been, or can be enjoyed by us, without having first cost labour.”

Ifs World Firsts Has Beens Said Light Faces Heaven Work Race Air Cost Labor Good Things Bread Enjoyed Labour Sweat Almighty

Book:Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45

Source: Abraham Lincoln: Speeches & Writings Part 1: 1832-1858: Library of America #45

“Twenty-two years ago Judge [then-Senator Stephen] Douglas and I first became acquainted. We were both young then; he a trifle younger than I. Even then, we were both ambitious; I, perhaps, quite as much so as he. With me, the race of ambition has been a failure--a flat failure; with him it has been one of splendid success.”

Years Firsts Has Beens Two Young Race Judging Ambition Years Ago Twenties Two Years Flats Ambitious Senators Autobiography Splendid Trifles Twenty Two Two Years Ago

Author:Abraham Lincoln

“First, in the history of words there is much that indicates the history of men, and in comparing the speech of to-day with that ofyears ago, we have a useful illustration of the effect of external influences on the very words of a race.”

Men Firsts Language Race History Influence Effects Speech Compare Illustration External Influences

Book:Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of James Joyce (Illustrated)

“For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices.... The prejudiced against color finds several hundred millions of people of all shades of color, and all degrees of intellect, rank, and social worth, generals, judges, priests, and kings, and learns to give up his foolish prejudice.”

Source: Piazza Tales and Other Prose Pieces, 1839-1860: Volume Nine, Scholarly Edition

“They were more than hostile. In the first place, I was a south Georgian and I was looked upon as a fiscal conservative, and the Atlanta newspapers quite erroneously, because they didn't know anything about me or my background here in Plains, decided that I was also a racial conservative.”

Knows Firsts Politics Race Decided South Conservative Newspapers Backgrounds Hostile Atlanta Georgians

Author:Jimmy Carter

“It is fitting that the Government of the United States should assume the obligation of the establishment and maintenance of a first-class university for the education of colored menand I wish to put in this caveatthat the colored race today, all of them, would be better off if they all had university education.... Of course, the basis of education of the colored people is in the primary schools and in industrial schools.... In those schools must be introduced teachers from such university institutions as this.”

“With Nietzsche, the black pirates' flag appears for the first time on the high sea of German knowledge. (He is) a different man, from a different race, (his,) a new kind of heroism, philosophywith bellicose weapons and armor.”

Men Firsts Kind Different Black Race Knowledge Sea Weapons First Time Philosophical Flags Heroism Pirate Armor Different Races High Seas

Author:Stefan Zweig