On October 4, 1963, Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia, gave a speech to the United Nations General Assembly that includes a famous quotation you almost surely know if you’re…
Category: Historical quotes
“Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”
The quote “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” is often mistakenly attributed to the Irish lawyer and politician John Philpot Curran and frequently to Thomas Jefferson. In fact, Curran’s…
“Bury my heart at Wounded Knee.”
On December 29, 1890, U.S. Seventh Cavalry troopers gunned down more than 200 Lakota Indians — including men, women and children — at Wounded Knee Creek on the Pine Ridge…
“There, but for the grace of God, goes John Bradford.”
It is often claimed that the familiar expression of compassion “There, but for the grace of God, go I” is based on a quote by the 16th Century English Protestant…
President Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech
One of the famous quotations linked to the date June 26th is a line President John F. Kennedy spoke in German on June 26, 1963: “Ich bin ein Berliner.” Kennedy…
The origin of the proverbial political “smoke-filled room”
Although smoking is either banned or not tolerated in most meetings today, the idea of a meeting of power brokers making deals behind closed doors “in a smoke-filled room” is…
Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” quote
On May 17, 2012, Republican presidential candidate, Senator Mitt Romney (R-Utah), said something that was later cited as one of the factors that caused him to lose the election…
“Now he belongs to the ages” – or maybe to the angels…
Three famous quotations are linked to the assassination and death of President Abraham Lincoln. Many history and quotation books say that after John Wilkes Booth shot Lincoln on April 14,…
The 1941 New Yorker cartoon that created the expression “Back to the old drawing board!”
Drawing boards have been used by engineers and architects for more than two centuries. But the saying “back to the old drawing board” is more recent and can actually be…
“Workers of the World, Unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!”
You can find many different lists of “books that changed the world” on the Internet. Those lists vary considerably. But there are some books that show up on almost all…