Boston History Quotes & Sayings

LINEN, n. "A kind of cloth the making of which, when made of hemp, entails a great waste of hemp." — Ambrose Bierce

It's Curt Schilling and his bloody sock staring down the Yankees in the Bronx. It's Derek Lowe taking the mound the very next night to complete the most improbable comeback in baseball history - and then seven days later clinching the World Series. It's Pedro Martinez and his six hitless innings of postseason relief against the Indians. Yes, it is also Cy Young and Roger Clemens, and the 192 wins in a Red Sox uniform that they share - the perfect game for Young, the 20 strikeout games for Clemens - but it is also Bill Dinneen clinching the 1903 World Series with a busted, bloody hand, and Jose Santiago shutting down Minnesota with two games left in the season to keep the 1967 Impossible Dream alive, and Jim Lonborg clinching the Impossible Dream the very next day, and Jim Lonborg again, tossing a one-hitter and a three-hitter in the 1967 World Series, and Luis Tiant in the 1975 postseason, shutting out Oakland and Cincinnati in back-to-back starts. They are all winners. — Tucker Elliot

The history of [Mariano] Rivera is pretty unbelievable. And even if you're not a Yankee or a baseball fan, you have to appreciate the tradition. He gets respect from Boston fans and Phillies fans, and I love tradition. — Andrea Tantaros

You know who we been living with for the past week? We been living with the only man in history who ever took a piece in the ladies' can of a Boston & Maine train. When the conductor caught him in there with his Winter Carnival date she screamed, 'He trapped me!' and that's how he got his name. This is the famous Trapper John. God, Trapper, I speak for the Duke as well as myself when I say it's an honor to have you with us. Have a martini, Trapper. — Richard Hooker

I love the Swedish people for their detective novels, their archipelago, their sense of humor, their carbonated vodka, and most especially, for their wonderful hospitality. — Michael Levitt

When I began doing theatre in high school I saw that I could get laughs from people but I didn't really connect that to going on and becoming a comedian. I was interested in acting and while I was at Boston College I was part of an improv group, Mother's Fleabag, which had a long history and has been known as one of the best college improvisation groups in the U.S. — Amy Poehler

There's a lot of history in Boston and a lot of history, obviously, in New York with all the championships. — Rafael Palmeiro

In August 1945, a former Army pilot with an artificial leg pitched five and a third innings for Washington against Boston. This would turn out to be Bert Shepard's only major league game, and it remains one of the heartwarming moments in baseball history. — George Vecsey

I believe feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn't make certain choices for ourselves. — Roxane Gay

There are some cities that I did take time out to study, 'cause I love history and one of them was Boston, and of course Rome and all of those places like that. But, in Syracuse or Rochester, or any of those places, no. — Connie Francis

When she had packed all the artifacts that made up their personal history into liquor store boxes, the house became strictly a feminine place. She stood with her hands on her hips, stoically accepting the absence of old Boston Celtics coasters and the tangle of fishing poles, the old dartboard from a Scots pub, the toolbox and downhill skis, the silky patterned ties which sat in the base of one box like a writing mass of snakes. Without these things, one tended to notice the bright eyelet curtains, the vase filled with yawning crocuses, a needlepoint pillow ... Overall, the house looked much like her apartment had eight years ago, before she had met him. — Jodi Picoult

Just soaking up the history of the Boston Celtics has been the best thing that's happened to me as a player. — Paul Pierce

HYSTERICAL HISTORY Bumping into Vincent O'Neil makes me think about what Uncle Frankie said. I need new material for Boston, not Vincent's stale and stinky fart jokes from The Big Book of Butt Bugles and Blampfs. So I keep my eyes open for new concepts to work out as I go to history class that afternoon. We're supposed to give a presentation on our favorite president. I chose Millard Fillmore. Why? Because nobody else will. Plus, his name is funny. Who knows? Maybe I'll get a whole bit out of him for Boston. I roll to the front of the class and prop a portrait of President Fillmore on the flip-chart easel. "Millard Fillmore was the thirteenth president of the United States. Born in January 1800, he was named after a duck. No, I'm sorry. That was his brother Mallard Fillmore. Millard Fillmore was the last member of the Whig Party to ever hold the office of president. Probably because they all wore wigs. — James Patterson

Many people today think that the Tea Act - which led to the Boston Tea Party - was simply an increase in the taxes on tea paid by the American colonists. That's where the whole "Taxation Without Representation" meme came from.

Instead, the purpose of the Tea Act was to give the East India Company full and unlimited access to the American tea trade and to exempt the company from having to pay taxes to Britain on tea exported to the American colonies. It even gave the company a tax refund on millions of pounds of tea that it was unable to sell and holding in inventory.

In other words, the Tea Act was the largest corporate tax break in the history of the world. — Thom Hartmann

I do not speak with any fondness but the language of coolest history, when I say that Boston commands attention as the town whichwas appointed in the destiny of nations to lead the civilization of North America. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I love Boston. I love Fenway Park. I love Red Sox history. But in no way am I a Red Sox fan. — George Vecsey

Springtime in Massachusetts is depressing for those who embrace a progressive view of history and experience. It does not gradually develop as spring is supposed to. Instead, the crocuses bloom and the grass grows, but the foliage is independent from the weather, which gets colder and colder and sadder and sadder until June when one day it becomes brutishly hot without warning ... It was fitting, then, that the first people who chose to settle there were mentally suspect. — Rebecca Harrington

The reason we race isn't so much to beat each other, ... but to be with each other. — Christopher McDougall

To you, to the scarred and scattered remnants of the Fifty-fourth, who, with empty sleeve and wanting leg, have honoured this occasion with your presence, to you, your commander is not dead. Though Boston erected no monument and history recorded no story, in you and in the loyal race which you represent, Robert Gould Shaw would have a monument which time could not wear away, — Booker T. Washington

They ended up at the Old Corner Bookstore, which Brian had read about in a tour guide to Boston. "Longfellow and Hawthorne and Oliver Wendell Holmes used to read here. Let's go in." Brian nudged the girls until they obeyed.
It was a regular bookstore, less history-minded than Brian had expected. In fact, the local history shelves were quite mangeable. I'll buy one book, he thought. This will get me launched in actual reading. Out of the zillions of choices, I'll find one here.
Brian picked out Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. It was thick and somehow exciting, with its chapter headings and scholarly notes and bibliography. — Caroline B. Cooney

The "Indians" knew the destruction of the tea had to be finished by midnight--not one minute later. Destroying the tea was against the law. The men were defying King George III of Great Britain. They could be tried for a crime against the government, thrown into jail, and hanged. Why would they risk their lives just to destroy a cargo of tea? — Linda Gondosch

Boston is a very proud franchise. The NBA misses them when they are not in the mix. They, along with teams like the Knicks and 76ers are a big part of the heart, soul and history of the league. — Doug Collins

Generations of devoted American history buffs have spent countless hours reading and writing long books about the American Revolution without ever having come across the name of Dr. Thomas Young. Yet it was Young who came up with the idea for the original tea party - the one in Boston Harbor. — Matthew Stewart

Boston is the cream of the crop of the marathon world. It has such history that you feel such honor just being a part of it. All the other races have pacers to get you to a Boston qualifying time. — Summer Sanders

Baseball is known for superstitious players and cursed teams - and at the root of every curse there's a story. Boston's curse was to trade Babe Ruth to the Yankees. Cubs fans claim a billy goat is responsible for their futility. And Cleveland's curse? The club struggled after its Pennant-winning 1954 season, but it was rich with optimism just two years later as an onslaught of new talent promised to lift the club once more to the ranks of baseball's elite - and by 1959 the club was contending for the Pennant again. And then GM Frank Lane traded Rocky Colavito to the Detroit Tigers and cursed everything. — Tucker Elliot

When I was 16, I was in Boston and some friends said, 'You want to go to New York?,' I went with my roommate ... These guys said, 'We're going to this club. Just don't go in the washroom.' It was CBGB. I had no idea what it was or the history of all the music. All I knew was this was my first 21-and-over club and I managed to get in! — Stana Katic

Ted Williams hit 17 career grand slams. He is the toughest batter to get out in major league history. It was never fun for opposing pitchers to have to face him, but that was never more true than it was when there was nowhere to put him - and his grand slam total is only one of the many franchise records that he owns. — Tucker Elliot

The Boston Globe: The Woodstock Music and Art Festival will surely go down in history as a mass event of great and positive significance in the life of the country ... That this many young people could assemble so peaceably and with such good humor in a mile-square area ... speaks volumes about their dedication to the ideal of respect for the dignity of the individual ... In a nation beset with a crescendo of violence, this is a vibrantly hopeful sign. If violence is infectious, so, happily, is nonviolence. — Michael Lang

I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever. — Daniel Webster

Dullness is the first requisite of a good husband. — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't consider myself much of an actor. I have a face and a voice that allows me to do certain things, but there are people who are way better at it than I am. — Adrian Pasdar

If you haven't met Kenny (Young) you have not seen how the spirit of Boston can be embodied by one single man. — David McCullough

Joe DiMaggio batted safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941, the same season Ted Williams batted .406 - but did you know that also in 1941, Jeff Heath, an outfielder who spent a decade playing for the Indians, became the first player in AL history to hit 20 doubles, 20 triples, and 20 home runs in the same season? It's true. — Tucker Elliot

I used to walk out, at night, to the breakwater which divides the end of the harbor form the broad moor of the salt marsh. There was nothing to block the wind that had picked up speed and vigor from its Atlantic crossing. I'd study the stars in their brilliant blazing, the diaphanous swath of the milk Way, the distant glow of Boston backlighting the clouds on the horizon as if they'd been drawn there in smudgy charcoal. I felt, perhaps for the first time, particularly American, embedded in American history, here at the nation's slender tip. Here our westering impulse, having flooded the continent and turned back, finds itself face to face with the originating Atlantic, November's chill, salt expanses, what Hart Crane called the "unfettered leewardings," here at the end of the world. — Mark Doty

A black face, run-down shoes and elbow-out make-up give me a place to hide. The real Bert Williams is crouched deep down inside the coon who sings the songs and tells the stories. — Bert Williams

Let's be very honest about what this is about. It's not about bashing Democrats, it's not about taxes, they have no idea what the Boston tea party was about, they don't know their history at all. This is about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up. — Janeane Garofalo