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Washington Dc Quotes

Browse 86 quotes about Washington Dc.

Washington Dc Quotes

“It was night time, Inspector Thompson wrote. Those in the plane were transfixed with delight to look down from the windows and see the amazing spectacle of a whole city lighted up. Washington represented something immensely precious. Freedom, hope, strength. We had not seen an illuminated city for two years. My heart filled.”

AmericaHopeFreedomStrengthWorld War IiUnited KingdomWashington DcChurchill
Book:The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz
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“Washington hides its poverty better than any city in the world. Just blocks from the mall and Capitol Hill, where thousands of tourists mill about each day, people cover their windows with towels to keep out the rain, and nail boards across their doors when they lock up at night. Though my sister lived up above Adams-Morgan, she practiced in Southeast, "where the people lived." She was tougher than I could ever be.”

PovertyWashington DcDc
Book:Erasure
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“Watching the towers fall in New York, with civilians incinerated on the planes and in the buildings, I felt something that I couldn’t analyze at first and didn't fully grasp (partly because I was far from my family in Washington, who had a very grueling day) until the day itself was nearly over. I am only slightly embarrassed to tell you that this was a feeling of exhilaration. Here we are then, I was thinking, in a war to the finish between everything I love and everything I hate. Fine. We will win and they will lose. A pity that we let them pick the time and place of the challenge, but we can and we will make up for that.”

WarNew YorkTerrorismWar On TerrorWashington DcSeptember 11 Attacks2001
Book:Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left
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“The North Korean capital, Pyongyang, is a city consecrated to the worship of a father-son dynasty. (I came to think of them, with their nuclear-family implications, as 'Fat Man and Little Boy.') And a river runs through it. And on this river, the Taedong River, is moored the only American naval vessel in captivity. It was in January 1968 that the U.S.S. Pueblo strayed into North Korean waters, and was boarded and captured. One sailor was killed; the rest were held for nearly a year before being released. I looked over the spy ship, its radio antennae and surveillance equipment still intact, and found photographs of the captain and crew with their hands on their heads in gestures of abject surrender. Copies of their groveling 'confessions,' written in tremulous script, were also on show. So was a humiliating document from the United States government, admitting wrongdoing in the penetration of North Korean waters and petitioning the 'D.P.R.K.' (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) for 'lenience.' Kim Il Sung ('Fat Man') was eventually lenient about the men, but not about the ship. Madeleine Albright didn't ask to see the vessel on her visit last October, during which she described the gruesome, depopulated vistas of Pyongyang as 'beautiful.' As I got back onto the wharf, I noticed a refreshment cart, staffed by two women under a frayed umbrella. It didn't look like much—one of its three wheels was missing and a piece of brick was propping it up—but it was the only such cart I'd see. What toothsome local snacks might the ladies be offering? The choices turned out to be slices of dry bread and cups of warm water. Nor did Madeleine Albright visit the absurdly misnamed 'Demilitarized Zone,' one of the most heavily militarized strips of land on earth. Across the waist of the Korean peninsula lies a wasteland, roughly following the 38th parallel, and packed with a titanic concentration of potential violence. It is four kilometers wide (I have now looked apprehensively at it from both sides) and very near to the capital cities of both North and South. On the day I spent on the northern side, I met a group of aging Chinese veterans, all from Szechuan, touring the old battlefields and reliving a war they helped North Korea nearly win (China sacrificed perhaps a million soldiers in that campaign, including Mao Anying, son of Mao himself). Across the frontier are 37,000 United States soldiers. Their arsenal, which has included undeclared nuclear weapons, is the reason given by Washington for its refusal to sign the land-mines treaty. In August 1976, U.S. officers entered the neutral zone to trim a tree that was obscuring the view of an observation post. A posse of North Koreans came after them, and one, seizing the ax with which the trimming was to be done, hacked two U.S. servicemen to death with it. I visited the ax also; it's proudly displayed in a glass case on the North Korean side.”

WarPoliticsUnited StatesChinaNuclear WeaponsTotalitarianismNorth KoreaWashington Dc1968South KoreaKorean War1976United States ArmyMao Zedong20002001Kim Jong IlSeoulKim Il SungPyongyangMadeleine AlbrightChinese PeopleAxe Murder IncidentKorean Demilitarized ZoneLand MinesSichuanKorean PeninsulaOttawa TreatyTaedong RiverUnited States And WmdUss Pueblo Ager 2
Book:Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays
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“Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great dead American would be scandalized over some crime against How It Used to Be. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).”

PoliticsMediaNostalgiaJournalismComparisonGossipSpeculationWashington DcClichésContrastsScandalsSensibilitiesEdward R MurrowGreat AmericansPolitical GossipScandalizationSpinning In Their Grave
Book:This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral — plus plenty of valet parking! — in America's Gilded Capital
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“Margo Brinker always thought summer would never end. It always felt like an annual celebration that thankfully stayed alive long day after long day, and warm night after warm night. And DC was the best place for it. Every year, spring would vanish with an explosion of cherry blossoms that let forth the confetti of silky little pink petals, giving way to the joys of summer. Farmer's markets popped up on every roadside. Vendors sold fresh, shining fruits, vegetables and herbs, wine from family vineyards, and handed over warm loaves of bread. Anyone with enough money and enough to do on a Sunday morning would peruse the tents, trying slices of crisp peaches and bites of juicy smoked sausage, and fill their fisherman net bags with weekly wares. Of all the summer months, Margo liked June the best. The sun-drunk beginning, when the days were long, long, long with the promise that summer would last forever. Sleeping late, waking only to catch the best tanning hours. It was the time when the last school year felt like a lifetime ago, and there were ages to go until the next one. Weekend cookouts smelled like the backyard- basil, tomatoes on the vine, and freshly cut grass. That familiar backyard scent was then smoked by the rich addition of burgers, hot dogs, and buttered buns sizzling over charcoal.”

SummerJuneWashington DcFarmers MarketBackyardCookoutBarbecues
Book:The Cookbook Club: A Novel of Food and Friendship
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“*Poem: Washington D.C. (The District)* I love it In this square of columns and obelisks… and monuments designed to align with constellations: To symbolize our protection. Serius. Virgo. Sun. Washington, Here where Virginia and Maryland meet, and greet. Streets and corner-stones laid In the glorious shapes of Pentagrams and Christian crosses And cubes and pyramids, And the Blazing Star set on a ley line, And the temple in the eye. Homes, made of red-brick, and granite Stones. Laus Deo! Answers May be somewhere Off the shores Of the Potomac; Where my father Once baptized me, And the waters Of the district Touched my skin. And the consciousness of America Was rebirthed in me.”

PoetryCapitolAmerican LiteratureWashington DcCapitol HillWashingtonPulitzer Prize
Book:The Pursuit of Happiness: A Book of Poems Honoring Our American Values
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“If you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have [sic] been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear, so that nobody will bring accountability to them. It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.”

PoliticsFearUnited StatesAccountabilitySecrecyTransparencyWashington DcThreatsNational Security AgencyDianne FeinsteinGlobal Surveillance Disclosures
Author:Glenn Greenwald
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“He believed something that he could hardly explain, even to himself. He thought it was a tragedy that would have to be played out, in the sense that water always seeks its own level. In some ultimate sense, there was no one at the controls. The war ran on its own motion...But the thing would not be stopped, because to stop it, simply to end it, would be to repudiate too much. Too many words to eat, too many unforeseen consequences, too much shame, too many unrequited dead. So the war was a force of nature, a wand of the gods...”

PoliticsVietnam WarAmerican LiteratureWashington Dc
Author:Ward Just
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“Excerpt from page 3 of "Wicked Washington" Shelly Williams, the main character, speaking about her life: And close and dangerous calls were almost my last name. Yet I felt as comfortable among the street hustlers, junkies, thieves, and criminals of D.C. as I did dining with my white-collar, college-pedigreed friends over filet mignon, Maine lobster, and strawberry cheesecake at LaMermaid Seafood Restaurant.”

MysteryChick LitWashington Dc
Book:Wicked Washington
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“The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can't handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn't stay in the government at that level, or you're made aware of it, a week. ... The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth—essentially, never say the whole truth—of what they expect and what they're doing and what they believe and why they're doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.”

Vietnam WarGovernment CorruptionPolitics Of The United StatesWashington Dc
Author:Daniel Ellsberg
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“At a national political convention, you have hundreds of people who consider themselves at least as important as the Secretary of Commerce. If it's a Democratic convention, you also have dozens of A-list Hollywood and music celebrities. (If it's a Republican convention, you have Bo Derek.) Also you have swarms of lower-ranking Washington minions with titles like Deputy Assistant to the Associate Deputy Assistant Chief of Staff who are trying to move up the ladder to Deputy Associate to the Assistant Acting Deputy Assistant Understudy.”

PoliticsWashington Dc
Book:I'll Mature When I'm Dead: Dave Barry's Amazing Tales of Adulthood
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“America acknowledged the greatness of Confucius through a trio of ancient lawgivers—Moses flanked by Confucius to his right and Solon on his left—on the monument to “Justice, the Guardian of Liberty” displayed on the eastern pediment of the U.S. Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C.”

AmericaJusticeChinaMosesUsWashington DcConfuciusSolonUs Supreme CourtAncient LawgiversEastern PedimentThe Guardian Of Liberty
Book:Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order
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“There are seemingly parallel origins of Nature’s God in America and China’s Mandate of Heaven. These twin concepts created socio-political forces for public good and orderly governance, and a unique cultural ethos (related to the Creator of the Universe in America and the Son of Heaven in China) is deeply rooted in both societies. Each concept is physically yet stealthily manifested in the architectural designs of the two capital cities, Beijing and Washington.”

AmericaChinaGovernanceUsPublic GoodBeijingWashington DcCreator Of The UniverseMandate Of HeavenNature S GodSon Of Heaven
Book:Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order
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“In a city that attracted protesters, organizers, and activists of every variety, debating issues across the political spectrum and with a huge population of black people, the messages in his lyrics were received with enthusiasm. “This was Chocolate City. People in DC were pretty sophisticated and they liked his political wit, and I think he liked speaking truth to power in the heart of the government.”

PoliticsSongwritingLyricsWashington DcSongwriterGil Scott Heron
Book:Gil Scott-Heron: Pieces of a Man
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“To-do list: 1. Science – stop people from getting sick and dying. 2. Keep people economically solvent – as you request their help in fighting the pandemic. Some states do better at one. Others, at the other. None strike the right balance. Everything collapses. Utter failure. One party is full of bad ideas that their rivals merely rubber-stamp. Like a reverse Robin Hood, they scapegoat the powerless, while simultaneously handing out checks to the richest stakeholders. The other party has few ideas, except for a few bad ones of their own that they throw into the mix. Businesses, flush with cash, appear almost embarrassed to take public money. But they soon get over their initial shame.”

Covid 19Government CorruptionWashington Dc
Book:Eyes Open With Your Mask On
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“Wells supposed the United States had been lucky to have D.C. If the capital had stayed in the North, the South might have seceded a decade earlier, before the Union Army could bring it to heel. And if the South had broken away, at least three countries would have formed in the area now occupied by the United States - a North, a South, and a West. Then the United States wouldn't have been the dominant world power in the twentieth century. Perhaps World War I or even World War II would have ended differently. On and on the counterfactual history ran.”

Civil WarWashington Dc
Book:The Midnight House
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“Like the mouse creeping out of the scarlet crack, the sunset gnaws hungrily the electric cheese of the outskirts, erected by those who clearly trust their knack for surviving everything: by termites. Warehouses, surgeries. Having measured there the proximity of the desert, the cinnamon-tinted earth waylays its horizontality in the fake pyramids, porticoes, rooftops' ripple, as the train creeps knowingly, like a snake, to the capital's only nipple.”

Washington Dc
Book:To Urania: Poems
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“Later, Tara and other leaders, roughly the same age, lead marches through the streets. Like lambs to the slaughter, we follow. We target the banks. They’re put on notice that their day is over. It’s street theater and people who work there watch the show from windows, high above. Next, the girls lead us to the Chamber of Commerce where plainclothes ex-military protect the movers and shakers from a scattering of college girls and a collection of workers who need better jobs. They watch us through mirrored sunglasses and communicate via hidden microphones and listening devices. It’s a routine that everyone, except us, knows.”

Washington DcProtestsMarches
Book:Liberté: The Days of Rage 1990-2020
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“I have never really liked this city. It was forced on me against my will by ambitious parents in search of greater opportunities and better lives. That’s why everyone comes here, to this seductive monument to self-advancement or at the very least, self-preservation. It’s a city that doesn’t take risks. Men wear boxy suit jackets over golf shirts tucked into khakis. Women wear sensible skirts, pantsuits and pumps. They all pull roller backpacks behind them because of subway ads enumerating the signs and evils of scoliosis as they walk to big-box buildings made of similarly colored sandstone. You can’t get lost here because there’s nothing to lose yourself in. These avenues, at least downtown, are not built for wanderers, and these monuments are constructed to inspire awe not contemplation. But things have changed if only to protect the desire to remain the same. The streets have more barricades because the streets have more impromptu protesters, a dismal lot with their posterboard signs and hoarse-voiced chants against the monster in power and his minions. There are more armored vehicles now and more police officers in tactical gear and body armor wielding large black guns. It’s a brave new world wrapped around the old one to make it great again.”

Washington Dc
Book:Speak No Evil
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“Four years to the day after Fairchild's 1908 gift of the trees to Washington's schools, on March 27, 1912, Mrs. Taft broke dirt during the private ceremony in West Potomac Park near the banks of the Potomac River. The wife of the Japanese ambassador was invited to plant the second tree. Eliza Scidmore and David Fairchild took shovels not long after. The 3,020 trees were more than could fit around the tidal basin. Gardeners planted extras on the White House grounds, in Rock Creek Park, and near the corner of Seventeenth and B streets close to the new headquarters of the American Red Cross. It took only two springs for the trees to become universally adored, at least enough for the American government to feel the itch to reciprocate. No American tree could rival the delicate glamour of the sakura, but officials decided to offer Japan the next best thing, a shipment of flowering dogwoods, native to the United States, with bright white blooms. Meanwhile, the cherry blossoms in Washington would endure over one hundred years, each tree replaced by clones and cuttings every quarter century to keep them spry. As the trees grew, so did a cottage industry around them: an elite group of gardeners, a team to manage their public relations, and weather-monitoring officials to forecast "peak bloom"---an occasion around which tourists would be encouraged to plan their visits. Eventually, cuttings from the original Washington, D.C, trees would also make their way to other American cities with hospitable climates. Denver, Colorado; Birmingham, Alabama; Saint Paul, Minnesota.”

JapanTreesWashington DcCherry BlossomsSakuraHistorical MomentPeace Offering
Book:The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats
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“America isn’t the picture of barbecues, guns, freedom, and hot girls eating hamburgers you probably saw on TV. That’s the old America and one I’m not even sure ever existed. The glowies parade that picture around every time they want to put people at ease and push them back into place. DC is especially made of glowies. You can’t talk to anyone because maybe they’re gonna send you to the dungeon or maybe they know someone who can.”

AmericaPoliticalPoliticsPropagandaPatriotismWashington DcUs GovernmentFederal Agents
Book:Boom, Boom, Boom
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“The cost of living is first on all of our minds this important year. Yet the President [Nixon] has decided that it is a year for travel. I ask–when is he going to make a "Trip to Peking" in regard to the basic problems facing us in the United States this year? He is willing to go halfway 'round the world--yet he doesn't have time to walk ten blocks from the White House in Washington and look at the lives people are living under Phase II. (From Voices of Multicultural America)”

White HouseWashington DcRichard NixonNixon
Author:Shirley Chisholm
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