Privilege Quotes
More Privilege Quotes
If we had had the privilege of giving hospitality to a Ho Chi Minh, with what respect and interest we would have served him, as a man of vision, as a patriot, a rebel against foreign invaders.
dorothy day— "On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker (January 1970)
In many instances the conduct of colored workmen, and those who have spoken for them, has not been in asking or demanding that equal rights be accorded to them as to white workmen, but somehow conveying the idea that they are to be petted and coddled and given special consideration and special privilege. Of course that can't be done.
samuel gompers— The Samuel Gompers Papers: The American Federation of Labor and the Great War, 1917-18. Stuart Bruce Kaufman, Peter J. Albert, and Grace Palladino, eds. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 2006, p. 348.
I am prepared to waive the privilege against self-incrimination and to tell you everything you wish to know about my views or actions if your committee will agree to refrain from asking me to name other people. If the committee is unwilling to give me this assurance, I will be forced to plead the privilege of the fifth amendment at the hearing.
lillian hellman— Letter to The House Committee on Un-American Activities (May 21, 1952).
I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.
grace hopper— As appeared in the October 1986 issue of Chips, a Department of the Navy information technology magazine
Marriage as a community of interests unfailingly means the degradation of the interested parties, and it is the perfidy of the world's arrangements that no one, even if aware of it, can escape such degradation. The idea might therefore be entertained that marriage without ignominy is a possibility reserved for those spared the pursuit of interests, for the rich. But the possibility is purely formal, for the privileged are precisely those in whom the pursuit of interests has become second-nature they would not otherwise uphold privilege.
theodor adorno— E. Jephcott, trans. (1974), § 10
Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy.
wendell berry— "Economy and Pleasure"
Gratitude is one of the least articulate of the emotions, especially when it is deep. I can express with very limited adequacy the passionate devotion to this land that possesses millions of our people, born, like myself, under other skies, for the privilege that that this county has bestowed in allowing them to partake of its fellowship.
felix frankfurter— Speech accepting an award from the National Institute for Immigrant Welfare, Biltmore Hotel, New York (May 11, 1933).
When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love … then make that day count!
steve maraboli— p. 144 (Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010))
Let us award a just, a brilliant homage to those rare men whom nature has endowed with the precious privilege of arranging a thousand isolated facts, of making seductive theories spring from them; but let us not forget to state, that the scythe of the reaper had cut the stalks before one had thought of uniting them into sheaves!
françois arago— Joseph Fourier, p. 409
We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality.
mikhail bakunin— "Federalism, Socialism, Anti-Theologism", presented by Bakunin as a Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom, at the League's first congress held in Geneva (September 1867).
— Variant translation: We are convinced that freedom without Socialism is privilege and injustice, and that Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality.As quoted in The Political Philosophy of Bakunin : Scientific Anarchism (1953) edited by Grigori? Petrovich Maksimov, p. 269
Beware of privilege. It stinks of rotten rotten fish heads, many of which were lapping the shore beneath the jetties.
ralph steadman— The America's Cup, p. 47
Representing the people of Oregon's Second District is an honor and a privilege. Covering more than 70,000 square miles in twenty counties throughout eastern, southern and central Oregon, our district is breathtaking and diverse.
— Greg Walden, Welcome Message, United States House of Representatives, page, United States Congressman Greg Walden.
It is not earthly rank, nor birth, nor nationality, nor religious privilege, which proves that we are members of the family of God; it is love, a love that embraces all humanity.
ellen g. white— Thoughts From The Mount Of Blessing (1896) Ch. 3, "The Spirituality of the Law", p. 75
The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.
Simone Weil— p. 64 (Human Personality (1943))
Representing the people of Oregon's Second District is an honor and a privilege. Covering more than 70,000 square miles in twenty counties throughout eastern, southern and central Oregon, our district is breathtaking and diverse.
— Greg Walden, Welcome Message, United States House of Representatives, page, United States Congressman Greg Walden.
Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being’s entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign... you must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.
— Mother Teresa, in her amicus brief filed before the U.S. Supreme Court in the cases of Loce v. New Jersey and Krail et al. v. New Jersey in February 1994.
Humanitydoesnot passthrough phases as a train passes through stations: being alive, it has the privilege of always moving yet never leaving anything behind.
— 1936 The Allegory of Love, ch.1.
Membership in the bar is a privilege burdened with conditions.
benjamin n. cardozo— In re Rouss, 221 N.Y. 81, 84 (N.Y. 1917).
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.
john kenneth galbraith— Chapter 1, p. 22
I would much rather sit, dimmed by inattention, and study the atmosphere and the silence and dance between people, but often times I’m not offered this privilege. The necessity for isolation, and the striving for attention is the only contradiction I find in being a writer and an actress.
masiela lusha— On her role as an actress and a writer
Attempts to juggle domestic responsibilities with artistic production have often resulted in smaller bodies of work, and often works smaller in scale, than those produced by male contemporaries. Yet art history continues to privilege prodigious output and monumental scale or conception over the selective and the intimate.
whitney chadwick— Women, Art, and Society: Fourth Edition (2007) (ISBN 0-500-20393-8)
For two years now, my office has had the honour and the privilege of sponsoring seminars on the functioning of government in this country for Eastern Europeans. These seminars and exchanges have brought together representatives from such nations as Bulgaria, Hungary, the Czech and Slovak Republic, Roumania, Poland, Russia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and the Ukraine, all of them anxious to learn what makes a society as diverse as Canada work and how our institutions make it governable.
john allen fraser— Afterword, p. 173
Nature has not implanted any power in man that was not meant to be exercised at times, though too often our powers have been abused. The privilege, inborn and inalienable, that every man has of dying himself, and inflicting death upon another, was not given to us without a purpose. These are the last resources of an insulted and unendurable existence.
Herman Melville— Ch. 67 (White-Jacket (1850))
To permit every lawless capitalist, every law-defying corporation, to take any action, no matter how iniquitous, in the effort to secure an improper profit and to build up privilege, would be ruinous to the Republic and would mark the abandonment of the effort to secure in the industrial world the spirit of democratic fair dealing.
theodore roosevelt— Eighth State of the Union Address (8 December 1908).
Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely-read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely.
— Hesketh Pearson, Common Misquotations (1934)
Education is necessary to unlearn privilege, unlearn exclusion, unlearn discrimination, unlearn prejudice, unlearn war.
— Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas [10]
It is the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their rights, when invaded.
— Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.
The most intelligent men, like the strongest, find their happiness where others would find only disaster: in the labyrinth, in being hard with themselves and with others, in effort; their delight is in self-mastery; in them asceticism becomes second nature, a necessity, an instinct. They regard a difficult task as a privilege; it is to them a recreation to play with burdens that would crush all others.
friedrich nietzsche— Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist, § 57 (H. L. Mencken trans.).
Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries.
— Julius Robert Oppenheimer
