US Culture Quotes

Question 1

“Having undertaken for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith, and honor of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the Northern parts of Virginia;”

Answer 1

Mayflower Compact
Author: William Bradford, William Brewster and other pilgrim leaders

Question 2

“do by these presents, solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one another, covenant, and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick,”

Answer 2

Mayflower Compact
Author: William Bradford, William Brewster and other pilgrim leaders

Question 3

“And by virtue, hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. “

Answer 3

Mayflower compact
Author: William Bradford, William Brewster and other pilgrim leaders

Question 4

“GOD ALMIGHTY in his most holy and wise providence, hath so disposed of the condition of’ mankind, as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity; others mean and in submission.”

Answer 4

A Model of Christian Charity: A City Upon a Hill (John Winthrop)
the text: a sermon

Question 5

“when there is no other means whereby our Christian brother may be relieved in his distress, we must help him beyond our ability rather than tempt God in putting him upon help by miraculous or extraordinary means.”

Answer 5

A Model of Christian Charity: A City Upon a Hill (John Winthrop)

Question 6

“rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together, always having before our eyes our commission and community in the work, as members of the same body.”

Answer 6

A Model of Christian Charity: A City Upon a Hill (John Winthrop)

Question 7

“… that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”

Answer 7

The Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson

Question 8

“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Answer 8

The Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson

Question 9

“When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bans which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s god entitle them a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

Answer 9

The Declaration of Independence: Thomas Jefferson

Question 10

“The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward, explain American development”

Answer 10

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 11

“The frontier is the outer edge of the wave - the meeting point between savagery and civilization. The most significant thing about the American frontier is, that it lies at the hither edge of free land.”

Answer 11

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 12

“winning a wilderness”

Answer 12

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 13

“To the frontier the American intellect owes its striking characteristics: that coarseness & strength combined with acuteness and inquisitiveness; that practical, inventive turn of the mind, that masterful grasp of material things, lacking in the artistic but powerful to effect great ends; that restless, nervous energy, that dominant individualism, working for good and for evil, that buoyancy and exuberance which comes from freedom - these are traits of the frontier, or traits called out elsewhere because of the existence of the Frontier“

Answer 13

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 14

“Limiting our attention to the Atlantic coast, we have the familiar phenomenon of the evolution of institutions in a limited area, such as the rise of representative government; the differentiation of simple colonial governments into complex organs; the progress from primitive industrial society, without division of labor, up to manufacturing civilization. But we have in addition to this a recurrence of the process of evolution in each western area reached in the process of expansion…”

Answer 14

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 15

“American social development has been continually beginning over again on the frontier. This perennial rebirth, this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character.”

Answer 15

The Significance of The Frontier in American History
Author: Frederick J. Turner
A lecture

Question 16

“We have listened too long for the Courtly muses of Europe.”

Answer 16

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 17

“To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, —that is genius.”

Answer 17

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 18

“A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages.”

Answer 18

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 19

“There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide;”
“Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.”

Answer 19

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 20

“But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account.”

Answer 20

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 21

“Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most requests is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.”

Answer 21

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 22

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.”

Answer 22

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 23

“What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil’s child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.”

Answer 23

Self-Reliance
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
The text: an essay

Question 24

“Insist on yourself; never imitate.”

Answer 24

Civil Disobedience
Author: Henry David Thoreau
The text: an essay

Question 25

“Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine.”

Answer 25

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 26

“What is the best government?” , “One that rules not at all.”.

Answer 26

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 27

"Is a democracy, such as we know it, the last improvement possible in government? Is it not possible to take a step further towards recognizing and organizing the rights of man? There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived and treats him accordingly."

Answer 27

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 28

A man “cannot for an instant recognize [this] political organization as [his] government which is the slave’s government also.”

Answer 28

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 29

"But, to speak practically and as a citizen, unlike those who call themselves no-government men, I ask for, not at once no government, but at once a better government. Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step toward obtaining it."

Answer 29

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 30

"Even voting for the right is doing nothing for it. It is only expressing to men feebly your desire that it should prevail. A wise man will not leave the right to the mercy of chance, nor wish it to prevail through the power of the majority[…] Only his vote can hasten the abolition of slavery who asserts his own freedom by his vote.

Answer 30

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 31

“It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume, is to do at any time what I think right.”

Answer 31

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 32

A truly moral government is “just to all men” and “treat[s] the individual with respect as a neighbor.”

Answer 32

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 33

"Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."

Answer 33

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 34

True patriots “serve the state with their consciousness […though] they are commonly.

Answer 34

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 35

“I do not hesitate to say, that those who call themselves abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their support, both in person and property, from the government.”treated by it as enemies.”

Answer 35

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 36

"I know this well, that if one thousand, if one hundred, if ten men whom I could name, —if ten honest men only, —aye, if one HONEST man, in this State of Massachusetts, ceasing to hold slaves, were actually to withdraw from this co-partnership, and be locked up in the county jail therefor, it would be the abolition of slavery in America. For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever."

Answer 36

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 37

“You must hire or squat somewhere, and raise but a small crop, and eat that soon. You must live within yourself and depend upon yourself always tucked up and ready for a start, and not have many affairs.”

Answer 37

Civil Disobedience Author: Henry David Thoreau The text: an essay

Question 38

"That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination- time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above."

Answer 38

Du Bois: “The Souls of Black Folks”

Question 39

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight* in this American world, a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder."

Answer 39

Slavery and Black Americans: Du Bois: “The Souls of Black Folk”

Question 40

"The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.”

Answer 40

Slavery and Black Americans: Du Bois: “The Souls of Black Folk”

Question 41

“government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Answer 41

Abraham Lincoln: “Gettysburg Address” Author: Abraham Lincoln The text: a speech

Question 42

“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth, on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Answer 42

Abraham Lincoln: “Gettysburg Address” Author: Abraham Lincoln The text: a speech

Question 43

“To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the Southern white man, who is their next door neighbor, I would say: "Cast down your bucket where you are" — cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.”

Answer 43

Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Exposition Speech”, September 18, 1895 Author: Booker. T. Washington

Question 44

“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.”

Answer 44

Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Exposition Speech”, September 18, 1895 Author: Booker. T. Washington

Question 45

“To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, "Cast down your bucket where you are.” …… Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories………. ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defense of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one.”

Answer 45

Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Exposition Speech”, September 18, 1895 Author: Booker. T. Washington

Question 46

“In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress”

Answer 46

Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Exposition Speech”, September 18, 1895 Author: Booker. T. Washington

Question 47

“If anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen.”

Answer 47

Booker T. Washington's “Atlanta Exposition Speech”, September 18, 1895 Author: Booker. T. Washington