1960 Quotes & Sayings

Libraries should be open to all - except the censor.
[Response to questionnaire in Saturday Review, October 29 1960] — John F. Kennedy

[Father Dmitry] lived through collectivization, the crushing of the 80 percent of Russians that were peasants. He served as a soldier in World War Two, when millions of peasants died defending the government that had crushed them. He spent eight years in the gulag, the network of labour camps created to break the spirit of anyone who still resisted. He rose again to speak out for his parishioners in the 1960's and 1970's, striving to help young Russians create a freer and fairer society. — Oliver Bullough

One of the most treasured books that I own is Donald Allen's 'The New American Poetry, 1945-1960.' It was a totem of great importance and potency to my group of writer friends in college from 1960 to 1964. — Peter Coyote

In 1960, I enrolled in the chemical engineering program at UNAM, as this was then the closest way to become a physical chemist, taking math-oriented courses not available to chemistry majors. — Mario J. Molina

Music and herb go together. It's been a long time now I smoke herb. From 1960's, when I first start singing. — Bob Marley

I first became interested in women and religion when I was one of the few women doing graduate work in Religious Studies at Yale University in the late 1960's. — Carol P. Christ

When the Romantic Novelists' Association was founded 35 years ago (in 1960) the image was of pink fluffy bimbos. Now, the view of life through rose-coloured spectacles has gone out of the window. A realistic background and certainly a more realistic relationship between a man and a woman are the important things. — Jean Chapman

In 1960, when a survey asked American adults whether it would "disturb" them if their child married a member of the other political party, no more than 5 percent of either party answered "yes." But in 2010, 33 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans answered "yes." In fact, partyism, as some call it, now beats race as the source of divisive prejudice. — Arlie Russell Hochschild

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don't - whichever seems likelier to win an effect. — John Updike

The overall number of single women in America starts at a high of 34 percent in 1890, slides down one percent per decade, all the way to the bottom point of the V - 17 percent in 1960 - and then climbs back up and up, 2 percent per decade, to 53 percent in 2013. — Kate Bolick

The most significant civil rights problem is voting. Each citizen's right to vote is fundamental to all the other rights of citizenship and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 make it the responsibility of the Department of Justice to protect that right. — Robert Kennedy

Back in 1960, the paper dollar and the silver dollar both were the same value. They circulated next to each other. Today? The paper dollar has lost 95% of its value, while the silver dollar is worth $34, and produced a 2-3 times rise in real value. Since we left the gold standard in 1971, both gold and silver have become superior inflation hedges. — Mark Skousen

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state. — Noam Chomsky

The author's alliterative description of politics since the 1960 presidential debates: "Government by Gotcha". — David Pietrusza

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices - to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own - for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to The Twilight Zone.
[closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960 — Rod Serling

When I joined politics, I was arrested in Luanshya ... In 1960, I was with great people like Justine Chimba, Mazimba from Ndola and Dingiswayo Banda. — Michael Sata

In the period from 1945 to 1960, the number of orchestras in the country doubled, book sales rose some 250 percent, and art museums opened in most major cities. Ballet was quick to catch up: between 1958 and 1969 the number of ballet companies nationwide with more than twenty members nearly tripled. — Jennifer Homans

When I won the Golden Gloves in 1960, that made me realize I had a chance. And when I won at the Olympics, that sealed it: I was the champ. — Muhammad Ali

I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Perhaps the central question about [Eliot] Porter's work is about the relationship between science, aesthetics, and environmental politics. His brother, the painter and critic Fairfield Porter, wrote in a 1960 review of [Porter's] colour photographs: 'There is no subject and background, every corner is alive,' and this suggests what an ecological aesthetic might look like. — Rebecca Solnit

The most moving speech I have ever heard was Hugh Gaitskell saying he would 'fight, fight and fight again to save the party we love. That was the right message in 1960, and I believe it is still the right message today. — Roy Jenkins

Keep your head down, think small, look after yourself: these constituted the lessons of Leopold. The spirit, once comprehensively crushed, does not recover easily. For seventy-five years, from 1885 to 1960, Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch-doctor could have devised a better preparation for the coming of a second Great Dictator. — Michela Wrong

Back in 1960 at Christmas time, I did work loading and unloading boxcars for Railway Express. That was a kind of weight training that helped me. I weighed about 160 when I started. I began to gain weight and kept right on gaining until I reached 195 pounds. — Pete Rose

The children of the 1960's that you call the 'Manson Family' wanted to stop a war and turn the government and world to peace. They gave their lives when they took lives and they knew it. — Charles Manson

The lion's share of what I hear right now are people who, intentional or accidental, have avoided all jazz prior to 1960. And all the musicians who were successful in the '60s spent their entire lives, prior to 1960, listening to all the musicians these people avoid. — Branford Marsalis

For Mitt Romney, the complex question of anti-Mormon bias boils down to the practical matter of how he can make it go away. Facing a traditional American anti-Catholicism, John F. Kennedy gave a speech during the 1960 presidential campaign declaring his private religion irrelevant to his qualifications for public office. — Noah Feldman

There's nothing new about European anti-Americanism. To go to a dinner party of intellectuals in Paris in 1960 was like walking into a tiger's den with a piece of raw meat in your hands. — Charles McCarry

In 1960-61, a small group of female pilots went through many of the same medical tests as the Mercury astronauts and scored very well on them - in fact, better than some of the astronauts did. — Henry Spencer

Operation Peter Pan spanned from 1960-62 whereby over 14,000 children were sent away from their families in Cuba, some never to reunite again. Pan Am flights took the children to Miami FL, 'Never-Never Land', and the children became known as the 'Peter Pans.' I wrote this song for my daughter, and it is sung for all the daughters and mothers, fathers and brothers who felt this pain of separation all because of governments and their politics. — Tori Amos

The author commented that John F. Kennedy's 1960 presidential campaign team worked like a band of brothers, while Richard Nixon's campaign team worked like a band of brothers in law under the direction of a quarrelsome aunt. — David Pietrusza

To the voters in 1960, the name Nikita Khrushchev carried great emotional significance. To these students, he sounded like just another hockey player. — Leonard Mlodinow

In 1960, when I came out of prison as an ex-convict, I had more freedom under parolee supervision than there's available ... in America right now. — Merle Haggard

One of my favorite albums is Bob Gibson and Bob Camp, 'At the Gate of Horn.' It was a really dynamic album, almost like The Beatles, and way before its time ... around 1960 or so. — Roger McGuinn

The night before I began my career as a presidential campaign reporter, in September 2007, I finished Theodore White's 'The Making of the President,' the classic account of the 1960 race, which opened up a new era of campaign reporting. — Michael Hastings

In 1960, I went to St. Catherine's College, Oxford, and received the B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1964. — John E. Walker

The Olympics were produced absolutely the same way from 1960 through 1988. It was always the Western World against the Eastern Bloc. You didn't even have to spend one second developing the character of any of the Eastern Bloc athletes. It was just good guys and bad guys. — Dick Ebersol

In 1960, in Blackburn v. Alabama, the Court said, "Coercion can be mental as well as physical." In reviewing whether a confession was psychologically coerced by the police, the following factors are crucial: (1) the length of the interrogation, (2) whether it was prolonged in nature, (3) when it took place, day or night, with a strong suspicion around nighttime confessions, and (4) the psychological makeup - intelligence, sophistication, education, and so on - of the suspect. — John Grisham

Whatever I did in 1960, half a century ago, I couldn't do that today and enter the field. The field has changed so much, you have to adapt to the times whatever you're doing. That's the reality of life: you have to be a different person today than you had to be then. — Douglas Kirkland

Organizations like the ACLU fought and won the good fight back in the 1960's, but it's clear that nowadays they've run out of useful things to do since they now spend most of their time defending the scum of the Earth from getting what they rightly deserve. — Craig Bruce

It was a time period in the 1960, when a generation of souls looked at the established society, looked at the pettiness, the greed, the hate, and rejected it and tried to create something new. Their creation neither succeeded nor failed. It was another experience. — Frederick Lenz

In the 1960 campaign, Arthur Schlesinger wrote of Adlai Stevenson, who already lost twice as the party's presidential nominee, He has been away from power too long; he gives me an odd sense of unreality, a certain frivolity, distractedness, over-interest in words and phrases. — David Pietrusza

Once publishers got interested in it, it was a year in developing, and it was launched, I think, in 1960. But Willie Lumpkin didn't last long - it only last a little better than a year, maybe a year and a half. — Dan DeCarlo

So if 1960 had occurred under the old convention system, Kennedy would have had a very hard time getting the Democratic nomination because he would have been rejected by all those people who had worked with him in Washington. — Michael Beschloss

I was born in 1960 into a more violent America than we had in 2014. We haven't been in such a good place for more than 50 years. — James Comey

Relations between Terra and Luna had been strained since the Lunans had eaten Neil Armstrong in 1960. — A. Lee Martinez

Yes, 1960's North American sitcoms have led me to study the United States 1920's and 1930's crime bosses - QET Jenkins — Kim Welsman

And that John F. Kennedy uttered the first variation of "ask not what your country can do for you" in Detroit on Labor Day in 1960. So Detroit was really central to Democratic politics United States. Every Democratic candidate would start their fall campaigns in Cadillac Square. — David Maraniss

Until the end of the 1960's I do not recall ever seriously exchanging ideas with an articulate conservative. They were there, but not on my scope. I systematically avoided any contact with those who would have challenged my ideology. — Thomas C. Oden

JFK apparently felt genuine sympathy for his 1960 presidential opponent Richard Nixon. He felt that, with Nixon's frequent shifts in political philosophy and reinventions, he must have to decide which Nixon he will be at each stop. This, Kennedy reasoned, must be exhausting. — David Pietrusza

Having been aware of the Red Sox since the 1946 World Series, having been growled at by Ted Williams as a young reporter in 1960, having been present at the horror of 1986 and the comeback of 2004, I have seen the highs and lows of some other people's favorite team. — George Vecsey

The scale of marital breakdowns in the West since 1960 has no historical precedent that I know of, and seems unique, ... There has been nothing like it for the last 2,000 years, and probably longer. — Lawrence Stone

About 1960, it became clear that it was best for me to bring the experimental part of my research program to a close - there was too much to do on the theoretical aspects - and I began the process of winding down the experiments. — Rudolph A. Marcus

In 1960 I published a book that attempted to direct attention to the possibility of a thermonuclear war, to ways of reducing the likelihood of such a war, and to methods for coping with the consequences should war occur despite our efforts to avoid it. — Herman Kahn

I was not a great guitarist, so I sold my 1960 Fender Stratocaster in exchange for a Shure Microphone, made in Chicago, and a flute. — Ian Anderson

You couldn't really like a bad guitar in 1960 'cause everybody was pretty good. — Jakob Dylan

The average Harvard freshman in 1952 would have placed in the bottom 10 percent of the incoming class by 1960. — Charles Murray

It was the awakening summer of 1960 and the entire country was in labor. Something wonderful was about to be born, and we were all going to be good parents to the welcome child. Its name was Freedom. Then, — Maya Angelou

The Winter Kate-House of Harlow 1960 customer is a multi-tasker, therefore it's important that they are able to put together an outfit with ease and elegance. Pieces that are easy to mix within their own wardrobe. Easy dressing while maintaining a well put together look. — Nicole Richie

I have argued about the future of fiction with jaded novelists, far-seeing postmodernists, technologists, television critics. The argument that future generations will not know the pleasures of the novel has been a staple of book reviewing since at least 1960. — Russell Smith

Our family arrived in England in 1960. At that time I thought the war was ancient history. But if I think of 15 years ago from now, that's 1990, and that seems like yesterday to me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Carrying his books from one life into the next was nothing new to Zuckerman. He had left his family for Chicago in 1949 carrying in his suitcase the annotated works of Thomas Wolfe and Roget's Thesaurus. Four years later, age twenty, he left Chicago with five cartons of classics, bought secondhand out of his spending money, to be stored in his parents' attic while he served two years in the Army. In 1960, when he was divorced from Betsy, there were thirty cartons to be packed from the shelves no longer his; in 1965, when he was divorced from Virginia, there were just under sixty to cart away; in 1969, he left Bank Street with eighty-one boxes of books. — Philip Roth

Back in August 1960 an American pilot called Joe Kittinger climbed into the open gondola beneath a balloon called Excelsior III and floated up to 102,800 feet. At this point, 20 miles above the Earth in what is technically space, he jumped. Moments later he became the first man to go through the sound barrier without the benefit of a plane. It was, and still is, the highest parachute jump ever, and it proved you can 'abandon ship' even when you're in space. — Jeremy Clarkson

John F. Kennedy went to bed at 3:30 in the morning on November 9, 1960, uncertain whether he had defeated Richard Nixon for the presidency. He thought he had won, but six states hung in the balance, and after months of exhaustive campaigning, he was too tired to stay awake any longer. — Robert Dallek

If we are to begin to try and understand life as it will be in 1960,
we must begin by realizing that food, clothing and shelter will cost
as little as air — John Langdon-Davies

The percentage of people qualifying for federal disability benefits because they are unable to work rose from 0.7 percent of the size of the labor force in 1960 to 5.3% in 2010. — Charles Murray

It was sad leaving the BBC; not quite like being divorced, but you don't leave after a period stretching from 1960 to 1999 without feeling a certain number of pangs. — Richie Benaud

I fly my own airplane, and I have since 1960. I rarely fly anywhere other than my own airplane. — Arnold Palmer

THE LAST DROP 1960 WHERE: The Leela Palace New Delhi PRICE: Rs 35,000 for 30 ml, — Anonymous

The theory behind primate experimentation was that these animals were closer biologically to man. In the 1950's, several laboratories even attempted experiments on gorillas, going to great trouble and expense to work with these seemingly most human of animals. However, by 1960 it had been demonstrated that of the apes, the chimpanzee was biochemically more like man than the gorilla. (On the basis of similarity to man, the choice of laboratory animals is often surprising. For example, the hamster is preferred for immunological and cancer studies, since his responses are so similar to man's, while for studies of the heart — Anonymous

I died in 1960 from a prison sentence and poetry brought me back to life. — Etheridge Knight

John and Jenny's planes arrived in Rome only hours apart. They had never imagined, when they walked away from each other graduation night 1960, it would be forty years and five thousand miles away before they would meet again. — Thomas Allen

Cell phones are certainly not necessary, and "but I'm from the digital age, this is what everyone in my generation is doing!" isn't a very good excuse for being hooked on a glowing screen 24/7. In the 1960's every teen of the times was tripping on acid and running off to find themselves in communes and love buses. It was a fad, there was no excuse for it and it passed, just like I think that this generation's "cell phones are necessary for socialization" fad will eventually pass. What will it bring afterwards? I don't even want to know, but I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope that it isn't anything else digital. — Rebecca McNutt

I was born on a bench in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, in the early spring of 1960. — Andre Brink

The thing about her is, she's good-natured. He knew it the second he saw her standing by the parking meters. He could just tell from the soft way her belly looked. With women, you keep bumping against them, because they want different things, they're a different race. Either they give, like a plant, or scrape, like a stone. In all the green world nothing feels as good as a woman's good nature. — John Updike

Nearly one-quarter of all orcas captured for display during the late sixties and early seventies showed signs of bullet wounds. Royal Canadian fighter pilots used to bomb orcas during practice runs, and in 1960, private fishing lodges on Vancouver Island persuaded the Canadian government to install a machine gun at Campbell River to cull the orca population. — David Kirby

We pride ourselves on our democratic traditions, but in Canada, women couldn't vote until 1918, Asians until 1948, and First Nations people living on reserves until 1960. — David Suzuki

Ever since our Surfin' Safari' began in the early 1960's, the relations'hip with The Beach Boys and water has been synonymous. 'Surfin', 'Catch a Wave', and 'Surfin' USA' are songs which capture the feelings of being out in the water without a care in the world, living a dream so many long to live no matter where they are from. — Mike Love

My mother was an activist; so was my father. They came from a generation of young Somalis who were actively involved in getting independence for Somalia in 1960. — Iman

A Conference Board survey released in January of 2010 found that only 45 percent of workers surveyed were happy at their jobs, the lowest in 22 years of polling.2 Depression rates today are ten times higher than they were in 1960.3 Every year the age threshold of unhappiness sinks lower, not just at universities but across the nation. Fifty years ago, the mean onset age of depression was 29.5 years old. Today, it is almost exactly half that: 14.5 years old. — Shawn Achor

Pete Dye introduced me to golf course design back in the 1960's. He came to my hometown Columbus, Ohio to work on The Golf Club. — Jack Nicklaus

But though it had prevailed against such fierce adversaries as fire and flood, it had fallen victim softly and swiftly to television in the 1960's. — Kate Morton

My father came to England from India in 1957, and my mum came in 1960. — Sanjeev Bhaskar

There are times when every act, no matter how private or unconscious, becomes political. Whom you live with, how you wear your hair, whether you marry, whether you insist that your child take piano lessons, what are the brand names on your shelf; all these become political decisions. At other times, no act
no campaign or tract, statement or rampage
has any political charge at all. People with the least sense of which times are, and which are not, political are usually most avid about politics. At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and a frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. "There's one," it said. That was in the 1960's. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what? — Renata Adler

It shouldn't be a Higgs field. If it's anybody's, it should be Goldstone field, I think. When Nambu wrote his short paper in 1960, Jeffrey Goldstone of Cambridge University, who was visiting Cern, heard about it. He then wrote a paper which was conceptually similar to what Nambu had done, but a simpler model. — Peter Higgs

The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and ... there is no rational explanation for it. - Eugene Wigner, 1960 — Max Tegmark

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition. — Jane Goodall

I mean, if you go back to 1960 on major pieces of legislation, the filibuster was used about eight percent of the time. — Tom Udall

It must be that there are years unlike other years, as different in climate and direction and mood as one day can be from another day. This year of 1960 was a year of change, a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger. It wasn't only in me or in New Baytown. Presidential nominations would be coming up soon and in the air the discontent was changing to anger and with the excitement anger brings. — John Steinbeck

1960, I was 20 years old, and I was leading the U.S. Open. Now, I wasn't leading by several strokes, but I was leading the U.S. Open and playing with Ben Hogan, had a very good chance to win, nine holes to go, I was leading. I was still leading with six holes to play. — Jack Nicklaus

Right, well I am, I was a career diplomat for 37 years from 1960 until 1997 during the early 1980s from 1981 to 1985 I was the United States Ambassador to Honduras. — John Negroponte

Trade carried by sea has grown fourfold since 1970 and is still growing. In 2011, the 360 commercial ports of the United States took in international goods worth $1.73 trillion, or eighty times the value of all U.S. trade in 1960. — Rose George

If you look back at the 1960's in the United States, and if you think that more good was done than harm, you are probably a Democrat. If you think that more harm was done than good, then you're probably a Republican. — William J. Clinton

The income ratio of the one-fifth of the world's population in the wealthiest countries to the one-fifth in the poorest went from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1995.3 The United States spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water, adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the planet.4 — John Perkins

Around 1960, I moved back to Europe, attracted by the newly founded European Organization for Nuclear Research where, for the first time, the idea of a joint European effort in a field of pure science was to be tried in practice. — Carlo Rubbia

I hated the 1960's feminists," she says. "They were dogmatists, you see. In comes ideology, and out goes common sense. This is my experience of life. — Doris Lessing

The candidates we have in this campaign are ... the most accomplished, in terms of public service, that we've had since 1960. One of them will be successful. — Hillary Clinton

You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground. — Rick Danko

It was more than just material prosperity. America in 1960 was a country where restraint and boundaries were the natural conditions in all arenas. People married younger and stayed married; even with those added twenty-eight million, there were fewer divorces in 1960 than there had been a decade earlier. People did not have children unless they were married - only 2.5 percent of children were born out of wedlock, though the number in black households was disturbingly high - some 20 percent. — Jeff Greenfield

For a black student to work in southwest Mississippi for example - or in the Delta in 1960, 1961, 1962 - was high-risk work. — John Doar

Man is a glorious and unique species of animal. The species originated by evolution.... Future evolution could raise man to superb heights as yet hardly glimpsed, but it will not automatically do so. As far as can now be foreseen, evolutionary degeneration is at least as likely in our future as is further progress.The only way to ensure a progressive evolutionary future for mankind is for man himself to take a hand in the process. Although much further knowledge is needed, it is unquestionably possible for man to guide his own evolution (within limits) along desirable lines. But the great weight of the most widespread...beliefs and institutions is against even attempting such guidance. ["Man's evolutionary future," 1960, p. 134.] — George Gaylord Simpson