Colonists Quotes

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  Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.

  Samuel Adams

  Rights, Liberty, Together

  Samuel Adams (1946). “Samuel Adams: selections from his writings”

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• The colonists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history.

  Amilcar Cabral

  Progress, Today, Made

  210 Copy quote
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  I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

  Nathan Hale

  Inspirational, Life, Country

  Before being executed as a spy by the British, 22 September 1776, in Henry Phelps Johnston 'Nathan Hale, 1776' (1914) ch. 7.

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• All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another.

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Men, Long

  "The Rights of the Colonists". The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, November 20, 1772.

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• If the colonists hadn't rejected British militarism and the massive financial burden of maintaining the British military, America wouldn't exist.

  Rachel Maddow

  Military, America, Maintaining

  7 Copy quote

• I pass over the toil and suffering and danger which attended the redemption and cultivation of their lands by the colonists, and turn to their civil condition and to the conduct and history of the government.

  William H. Wharton

  Government, Land, Suffering

  7 Copy quote

• Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists.

  Orson Welles

  Film, Colony

  Orson Welles, Mark W. Estrin (2002). “Orson Welles: Interviews”, p.42, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• The colonists are by the law of nature free-born, as indeed all man are, white or black...It is a clear truth that those who every day barter away other men's liberty will soon care little for their own.

  James Otis

  Men, Law, White

  17 Copy quote

• Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: first, a right to life; second, to liberty; third, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of ... the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please; and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and ernter into another.... Now what liberty can there be where property is taken away without consent?

  Samuel Adams

  Religious, Taken, Men

  "The Rights of the Colonists". The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting, history.hanover.edu. November 20, 1772.

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• In my last I contended that none of those ties which are necessary to bind a people together and make them one, existed between the colonists and Mexicans.

  William H. Wharton

  Ties, People, Together

  7 Copy quote

• Britons are good, though often brutal, colonists where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized tribes whose past is so remote as to be forgotten. But they trample with their heavy boots over the sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly civilized and cultured nation, such as India.

  Annie Besant

  Past, India, Boots

  8 Copy quote

• I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.

  John Adams

  Education, Philosophy, War

  John Adams (2003). “The Letters of John and Abigail Adams”, p.264, Penguin

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• These are the times that try men's souls.

  Thomas Paine

  Veterans Day, Time, Motivation

  The American Crisis, 19 Dec. 1776

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• By today's standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today's U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence.

  Joseph Sobran

  Kings, Impact, Government

  24 Copy quote

• [Robinson Crusoe] is the true prototype of the British colonist. The whole Anglo-Saxon spirit is in Crusoe: the manly independence, the unconscious cruelty, the persistence, the slow yet efficient intelligence, the sexual apathy, the calculating taciturnity.

  James Joyce

  Persistence, Independence, Apathy

  "Daniel Defoe". Book by James Joyce, translated from Italian manuscript and edited by Joseph Prescott, pp. 24-25, 1964.

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• It was a feature peculiar to the colonial wars of North America, that the toils and dangers of the wilderness were to be encountered, before the adverse hosts could meet. A wide, and, apparently, an impervious boundary of forests, severed the possessions of the hostile provinces of France and England. The hardy colonist, and the trained European who fought at his side, frequently expended months in struggling against the rapids of the streams, or in effecting the rugged passes of the mountains, in quest of an opportunity to exhibit their courage in a more martial conflict.

  James F. Cooper

  War, Struggle, Book

  "The Last of the Mohicans". Book by James F. Cooper, 1826.

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• The gaze that the colonized subject casts at the colonist's sector is a look of lust, a look of envy. Dreams of possession. Every type of possession; of sitting at the colonist's table and sleeping in his bed, preferably with his wife. The colonized man is an envious man.

  Frantz Fanon

  Dream, Sleep, Men

  Frantz Fanon (2007). “The Wretched of the Earth”, p.5, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The colonists had no library at their disposal; but the engineer was a book which was always at hand, always open at the page which one wanted, a book which answered all their questions, and which they often consulted.

  Jules Verne

  Book, Hands, Library

  Jules Verne (2016). “The Mysterious Island (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.127, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• Americans are not only a less homogenous population than we were when we were 3 million ex-colonists, but we're less educated. On top of that, we have constant misinformation and manipulation by media.

  Gore Vidal

  Media, Manipulation, Population

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• The right of ordinary citizens to possess weapons is the most extraordinary, most controversial, and least understood of those liberties secured by Englishmen and bequeathed to their American colonists. It lies at the very heart of the relationship between the individual and his fellows, and between the individual and his government.

  Joyce Lee Malcolm

  Lying, Heart, Government

  Joyce Lee Malcolm (1996). “To Keep and Bear Arms: The Origins of an Anglo-American Right”, p.11, Harvard University Press

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• The categories within which the colonists thought about the social foundations of politics were inheritances from classical antiquity, reshaped by seventeenth century English thought.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Foundation, Inheritance, Social

  Bernard Bailyn (2017). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition”, p.273, Harvard University Press

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• The ideas that the colonists put forward, rather than creating a new condition of fact, expressed one that has long existed; they articulated and in so doing generalized, systematized, gave moral sanction to what had emerged haphazardly, incompletely and insensibly, from the chaotic factionalism of colonial politics.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Creating, Ideas, Long

  "The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution". Book by Bernard Bailyn, 1967.

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• The fact that the ministerial conspiracy against liberty had risen from corruption was of the utmost importance to the colonists.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Liberty, Facts, Corruption

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.138, Harvard University Press

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• That by 1774 the final crisis of the constitution, brought on by political and social corruption, had been reached was, to most informed colonists, evident.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Political, Finals, Constitution

  Bernard Bailyn (2012). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution”, p.132, Harvard University Press

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• The right to freedom is the gift of God Almighty....The rights of the Colonists as Christians may be best understood by reading, and carefully studying the institutes of the great Lawgiver and head of the Christian Church: which are to be found clearly written and promuligated in the New Testament.

  Samuel Adams

  Bible, God, Christian

  74 Copy quote