Quotes & Sayings About Civil War

Forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the south, more land is covered by forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80 percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10 million acres of forestland. — Jonah Goldberg

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

On this night of the Harvest Moon. They tossed bones into the "Bone Fire" and asked the yellow moon to shine its protection over them. (Today we call it a "Bonfire") — Nancy B. Brewer

There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon would be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe.
[Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890] — Supreme Court Of Wisconsin

With one terrible exception, the Civil War, law and the Constitution have kept America whole and free. — Anthony Lewis

From space travel to organ transplants, one of the most important influences shaping the modern world is science. Amazingly, people who lived during the Civil War had more in common with Abraham than with us. If Christians are going to speak to that world and interact with it responsibly, they must interact with science. — J.P. Moreland

In the fifties, no one wore beards. In Eisenhower's day, as in the time of the Founding Fathers, all chins were smooth, while during the Civil War, beards were as common as sepsis. — Donald Hall

The spectacle of the United States Army chasing the unarmed veterans, their wives, and their children out of the shadow of the Capitol was a scene of American urban combat without parallel since the Civil War. — Tim Weiner

You can be strong without being involved in every single civil war around the world. — Rand Paul

That was when I realized we weren't born to be
slaves. It was ignorant for any man to think he could be the master of another. We were all meant to be free, and somewhere there were good people helping to heal this broken world. — Jay Grewal

[ ... ] it is generally accepted that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery. That, at best, is a half-truth. Slavery was an issue, but the primary force for war was a clash between the economic interests of the North and the South. Even the issue of slavery itself was based on economics. — G. Edward Griffin

The damn vermin are so numerous that I am afraid to sneeze, for fear the damned lice would regard it as gong for dinner, and eat me up - Robert Cobb Kennedy — Tobin T. Buhk

Men in public life did their best to avoid accidental events or actions from being seen as unlucky. On a famous occasion during the civil war, Caesar tripped when disembarking from a ship on the shores of Africa and fell flat on his face. With his talent for improvisation, he spread out his arms and embraced the earth as a symbol of conquest. By quick thinking he turned a terrible omen of failure into one of victory. — Anthony Everitt

Air power and military are meant to fight the enemy and not your own citizens ... How do you differentiate a Maoist? ... It will create a civil war-like situation. — Kishore Chandra Deo

if at all, since the Civil War. In Greenwood, many black workers were still earning 30 cents an hour and returning huge profits for these Dixiecrat barons. For those who toiled in the fields there seemed only one hope. The ratio of black people to white — Ian Bell

When you have warfare, things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war. — Emmeline Pankhurst

Like many people who live in the South, I'm drawn to the history of the Civil War. — Nicholas Sparks

None of us ever thought to write a song about all the shit that was going on back then: war, revolution, civil war, turmoil. Our songs were trying to take you someplace else. — Levon Helm

The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ... — James Luceno

The past is the occupational realm of historians - their daily work - and scholars have debated what their stance toward these social issues should be. As citizens and professionals, historians may naturally form a desire, as Carl Becker puts it, "to do work in the world." That is, they might aspire to write history that is not only of scholarly value but also has a salutary impact in society. Becker defines the appropriate impact and the historian's proper role as "correcting and rationalizing for common use Mr. Everyman's mythological adaption of what actually happened."

That process is never simple, however, when the subject involves divisions so deep that they led to civil wars. One issue that inevitably leads to controversy is the extent to which history involves moral judgment. Another is the power of myths, exerting their influence on society and acting in opposition to the findings of historical research [190 - 91]. — Paul D. Escott

It is not the self respect and pride that you take with you, but the heritage you leave behind to your children that matters. A strongly marked personality can influence descendants for generations. Those blessed with a patriotic genetic legacy should run to the top of the mountain and roar with all fervency, "If they can over come, so will I!" When you know the ghosts that stand in support of you, you can begin to see life as they did - a life of joy, possibilities and freedom. — Shannon L. Alder

I think it was probably both the coincidence and the beer that made Miralles say at some point that we were going to end up the same, defeated and alone and
punch-drunk in a dead-end city, pissing blood before going into the ring to fight to the death against our own shadows in an empty stadium. — Javier Cercas

YAZIDIS AND CHRISTIANS WANT TO BE FREE OF NIGHT MIST AND BEHEADING DRIFT! — Widad Akreyi

The American Civil War lays out the stark contrast: the greatest generals in war are often abundant failures during peacetime, and vice versa. McClellan and Sherman are the sharpest contrasts; but there is also Grant the peacetime drunkard, and Stonewall Jackson the barely tolerable military professor. Only Lee stands out as effective in both peace and war (and even he had a mentally unstable father, and himself may have been dysthymic in his general personality). This conflict reflects, I think, the different psychological qualities of leadership needed in different phases of human activity, peace and war being the two extremes. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

During the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition that they called "soldier's heart."8 The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done: violence is done whenever we violate another's integrity. Thus we do violence in politics when we demonize the opposition or ignore urgent human needs in favor of politically expedient decisions. — Parker J. Palmer

Havana is like Beirut, without having gone through the civil war to achieve the destruction. — Theodore Dalrymple

Occasionally, a re-enactment is a fine thing. I love Civil War re-enactments. — John Lydon

I have for some days held and controlled every avenue by which the people and garrison of Savannah can be supplied, and I am therefore justified in demanding the surrender of the city ... I am prepared to grant liberal terms to the inhabitants and garrison; but should I be forced to resort to assault, or the slower and surer process of starvation, I shall then feel justified in resorting to the harshest measures, and shall make little effort to restrain my army - burning to avenge the national wrong which they attach to Savannah and other large cities which have been so prominent in dragging our country into civil war. — William T. Sherman

I'd done the method bit before from, like, age 15 to 19. I was a Civil War re-enactor. — Cary Fukunaga

The Almighty has His own purposes. — Abraham Lincoln

The canard about the Civil Rights Movement is embedded within a larger deception that progressives uniformly put forward. This deception is intended to defuse the sordid history of the Democratic Party's two-century involvement in a parade of evils from slavery to segregation to lynching to forced sterilization to support for fascism to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. All these horrors are the work of the Democratic Party. — Dinesh D'Souza

The vast majority of us don't want to face the fact that we're in the middle of a sweeping social revolution. In sex. In spiritual values. In opposition to wars no one wants. In opposition to government big-brotherhood. In civil rights. In basic human goals. They're all facets of a general upheaval. — Johnny Carson

You easy-living boys had better get set, they said. There's johnnies out there thicker than fleas on a billy goat in a barnlot — Shelby Foote

Iraq is in a civil war. There is no road in that country that is safe. — Mark Shields

Apparently, it was common for children to participate in the Civil War, and thus, lots of fathers had brought their sons along for a fun family weekend of simulated violence and bloodshed. — Stuart Gibbs

There is nothing finer in history than Thomas at Chickamauga. — Henry M. Cist

Civil strife is as much a greater evil than a concerted war effort as war itself is worse than peace. — Herodotus

Syria is already in the grips of a civil war, unfortunately enough, and Egypt is moving in that direction. We would like to see the Egyptian people avoid this fate — Vladimir Putin

As a young cavalry officer out of St-Cyr, de Mun first became acquainted with the lives and problems of the poor through the charitable work of the Society of St-Vincent de Paul in his garrison town. During the Commune, as an aide to General Galliffet, who commanded the battalion that fired on the insurgent Communards, he saw a dying man brought in on a litter. The guard said he was an "insurgent," whereupon the man, raising himself up, cried with his last strength, "No, it is you who are the insurgents!" and died. In the force of that cry directed at himself, his uniform, his family, his Church, de Mun had recognized the reason for civil war and vowed himself to heal the cleavage. He blamed the Commune on "the apathy of the bourgeois class and the ferocious hatred for society of the working class." The responsible ones, he had been told by one of the St. Vincent brothers, were "you, the rich, the great, the happy ones of life who pass by the people without seeing them." To — Barbara W. Tuchman

Don't know when my life came to visualising intense pain and tragedy to putting it down on paper, to putting across a message of love in times of abject hate. Thank you everybody and the conspiracy of the stars for showing me this day. To many, many more books, inshallah, and to many more launches. — Simran Keshwani

The terror and the consternation of the Presidential couple may be imagined by anyone who has ever lived a child, and suffered that dread intimation common to all parents, that Fate may not hold that life in as high a regard, and may dispose of it at will.
- In "Selected Civil War Letters of Edwine Willow", edited by Constance Mays — George Saunders

Women, who enjoyed a high social status and levels of education under Saddam, saw terrible setbacks as Iraq fell into civil war. As a result of the sectarian violence from 2005-2007, women retreated to their homes and fell from public view. — Richard Engel

As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The Goldschmidts had joined forces with other Rothschild cousins, the Bischoffsheims, to form a banking partnership which financed the North in the American Civil War. — David Icke

I do not support a civil war. I don't want to be policeman of the world. But we can't back off of this. — John Kasich

I think that Barack Obama faces a level of divisiveness, and I don't mean on a national level in terms of the North and the South and the Civil War; I really mean just politically. — James Spader

There's a real question at stake now. Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country? — Jon Voight

Winning the Revolutionary War, or the Civil War, or World War II were the turning points in our history, the sine qua non of our forward progress. — Stephen Ambrose

Have you noticed how the Holocaust deniers only ever quibble over the number of Jewish deaths? Now why is that? The answer is very simple: Because they are anti-Semitic. It really is that simple. Anti-Semitism is one of the most aggressive forces on the planet, and has been since Biblical times. Had the Holocaust been a purge of any other race or group of people, everyone would most likely accept the facts. Who, for example, disputes that at least 800,000 Rwandans died in the genocide that occurred during the Rwandan civil war? Or that around 1.7 million Cambodians died in the Cambodian killing fields? — James Morcan

Chinese authorities demonstrated during the climate-related civil war that began in Sudan in 2003 that they would support mass murderers when doing so seemed to serve their investments. In — Timothy Snyder

It's when the 'international community' expresses 'concern' about your 'situation' that your situation is well and truly fucked. — Michael D. Weiss

I think there's evil on both sides [of Syria], and I think that's one reason I don't want to be involved in civil war. I see things in personal terms. I just can't see sending one of my sons - or your son or daughter - to fight in a civil war, where on one side we have a dictator, who in all likelihood gassed his people. — Rand Paul

Martial sex is kinda like ordering a Civil War chess set through the mail. You get one piece every four to six weeks, you don't know what kind of shape that piece is gonna be in when you get it, but you still gotta pay the handling charges. — Bill Engvall

Our union rests upon public opinion, and can never be cemented by the blood of its citizens shed in civil war. — James Buchanan

Is life less thrilling if your neighbors are rational, if they don't bomb your power stations whenever they feel you need to be admonished? Is it less rousing if they don't rattle your windows and nerves with indiscriminate sonic booms just because they can? — Rabih Alameddine

You help us, they'll lock you up for the rest of your life. — Henry V. O'Neil

To the followers of the murdered Caesar:
Do you march against Decimus Brutus Albinus in Gaul, or against the son of Caesar in Rome? Ask Marcus Antonius.
Are you mobilized to destroy the enemies of your dead leader, or to protect his assassins? Ask Marcus Antonius.
Where is the will of the dead Caesar which bequeathed to every citizen of Rome three hundred pieces of silver coin? Ask Marcus Antonius.
The murderers and conspirators against Caesar are free by an act of the Senate sanctioned by Marcus Antonius.
The murderer Gaius Cassius Longinus has been given the governorship of Syria by Marcus Antonius.
The murderer Marcus Junius Brutus has been given the governorship of Crete by Marcus Antonius.
Where are the friends of the murdered Caesar among his enemies?
The son of Caesar calls to you. — John Edward Williams

You ever read Thucydides? I'll boil him down for you into one easy moral: intergenerational civil war is a very bad thing. — Adrian McKinty

With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding — Shelby Foote

The abolition of slavery, apart from preservation of the Union, was the most important result of our Civil War. But the transition was badly handled. Slaves were simply declared free and then left to their own devises. Southern Negroes, powerless, continued to be underprivileged in education, medical care, job opportunities and political status. — William Silverman

The Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States was enacted in 1865 by martial law. The Fourteenth Amendment was enacted in 1868 by martial law. The Fifteenth Amendment was enacted in 1870 by martial law. Military occupation of the Southern states did not end until 1877, twelve years after the end of the Civil War. — Eustace Mullins

Companies aren't families. They're battlefields in a civil war. — Charles Duhigg

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you ... You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect and defend it. — Abraham Lincoln

It was a strange thing to be in a distant land, among things you'd never seen before, all because our people in Congress had squabbled among themselves and failed to get along and there were hotheads in the South who thought more of their Negroes and their pride than they did of their country — Shelby Foote

In Montana, where Sen. William Andrews Clark made his fortune and lost his reputation, people had assumed that all his children were long dead. After all, he was born in 1839 and was of age to serve in the Civil War. — Bill Dedman

Moammar Gadhafi and the revolt against Gadhafi was not started by the United States. It was started by the Libyan people. And the reason why I argued we needed to get involved is because he was going to go one way or the other. And my argument then was proven true, and that is, the longer that civil war took, the more militias would be formed and the more unstable the country would be after the fact. — Marco Rubio

We all have a stake - equally. Because if we do not save the environment and save the Earth, then whatever we do in civil rights or in a war against poverty will be of no meaning, because then we will have the equality of extinction and the brotherhood of the grave. — James Farmer

I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet. — Ernest Hemingway,

In 'The Hunger Games,' in most people's idea, in terms of rebellion or a civil-war situation, that would meet the criteria for a necessary war. These people are oppressed, their children are being taken off and put in gladiator games. They're impoverished, they're starving, they're brutalized. — Suzanne Collins

The division of the United States into federations of equal force was decided long before the Civil War by the high financial powers of Europe. These bankers were afraid that the United States, if they remained in one block and as one nation, would attain economic and financial independence, which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the Rothschilds prevailed ... Therefore they sent their emissaries into the field to exploit the question of slavery and to open an abyss between the two sections of the Union. — Otto Von Bismarck

Headquarters in the Saddle. — John Pope

There is no time in American history in which there was more economic conflict between segments of the population than there was prior to the Civil War. — G. Edward Griffin

Someday, if we won, if humanity survived, we'd be in the history books. Me and Jake and Rachel and Cassie and Tobias and Ax. They'd be household names, like generals from World War II or the Civil War. Patton and Eisenhower, Ulysses Grant and Robert E. Lee. Kids would study us in school. Bored, probably.
And then the teacher would tell the story of Marco. I'd be a part of history. What I was about to do. Some kid would laugh. Some kid would say, "Cold, man. That was really cold."
I had to do it, kid. It was a war. It's the whole point, you stupid, smug, smirking little jerk! Don't you get it?
It was the whole point. We hurt the innocent in order to stop the evil. Innocent Hork-Bajir. Innocent Taxxons. Innocent human-Controllers. How else to stop the Yeerks? How else to win?
No choice, you punk. We did what we had to do.
"Cold, man. The Marco dude? He was just cold. — Katherine Applegate

Darks drifts covered the horizon. A strange shadow approaching nearer and nearer, was spreading little by little over men, over things, over ideas; a shadow which came from indignations and from systems. All that had been hurriedly stifled was stirring and fermenting. Sometimes the conscious of the honest man caught its breath, there was so much confusion in that air in which sophisms were mingled with truths. Minds trembled in the social anxiety like leaves at the approach of the storm. The electric tension was so great that at certain moments any chance-comer, thought unknown, flashed out. Then the twilight darkness fell again. At intervals, deep and sullen mutterings enabled men to judge of the amount of lightning in the cloud. — Victor Hugo

The very same British and American families who had combined to wreck the Indian textile industry in the promotion of the opium trade [ ... ] combined to make the trade, a valuable source of revenue. In 1864 they joined forces to create causes for war and to promote the terrible War Between the States, also known as the American Civil War. — John Coleman

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

Over the course of six decades, some six million black southerners left the land of their forefathers and fanned out across the country for an uncertain existence in nearly every other corner of America. The Great Migration would become a turning point in history. It would transform urban America and recast the social and political order of every city it touched. It would force the South to search its soul and finally to lay aside a feudal caste system. It grew out of the unmet promises made after the Civil War and, through the sheer weight of it, helped push the country toward the civil rights revolutions of the 1960s. — Isabel Wilkerson

In glades they meet skull after skull/Where pine-cones lay
the rusted gun,/Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coat/And cuddled-up skeleton;/And scores of such. Some start as in dreams,/And comrades lost bemoan:/By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged
/But the Year and the Man were gone. ("The Armies of the Wilderness") — Herman Melville

I was a child during the Lebanese civil war, and I remember Israeli bombardments. So growing up, my view of Israel was completely negative. I'm not coming from a neutral place, but with time, I've had to re-examine my thinking. — Ziad Doueiri

The greatest curse that can befall a free people, is civil war. — Alexander H. Stephens

In the decade before the Civil War various north and south lines of railway were projected and some of these were assisted by grants of land from the Federal Government. — John Moody

Lee's army will be your objective point. Wherever Lee goes, there you will go also. — Ulysses S. Grant

I found out that many subjects were taboo from the white man's point of view. Among the topics they did not like to discuss with Negros were the following: American white women; the Ku Klux Klan; France, and how Negro soldiers fared while there; French women; Jack Johnson; the entire northern part of the United States; the Civil War; Abraham Lincoln; U.S. Grant; General Sherman; Catholics; the Pope; Jews; the Republican Party; slavery; social equality; Communism; Socialism; the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution; or any topic calling for positive knowledge or manly self-assertion on the Part of the Negro. The most accepted topics were sex and religion. — Richard Wright

The post-war loss of Churchill may have damaged the Western world with the same impact as the post-civil war world was damaged by the loss of Lincoln. — Warren Adler

I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war. — Abraham Lincoln

Constant complaints were being made of incompetent attendants, and some dozen women did double duty, and then were blamed for breaking down. If any hospital director fancies this a good and economical arrangement, allow one used up nurse to tell him it isn't, and beg him to spare the sisterhood, who sometimes, in their sympathy, forget that they are mortal, and run the risk of being made immortal, sooner than is agreeable to their partial friends. — Louisa May Alcott

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

The accession of not one but three illegal drug users in a row to the US presidency constitutes an existential challenge to the prohibitionist regime. The fact that some of the most successful people of our time, be it in business, finances, politics, entertainment or the arts, are current or former substance users is a fundamental refutation of its premises and a stinging rebuttal of its rationale. A criminal law that is broken at least once by 50% of the adult population and that is broken on a regular basis by 20% of the same adult population is a broken law, a fatally flawed law. How can a democratic government justify a law that is consistently broken by a substantial minority of the population? What we are witnessing here is a massive case of civil disobedience not seen since alcohol prohibition in the 1930 in the US. On what basis can a democratic system justify the stigmatization and discrimination of a strong minority of as much as 20% of its population? — Jeffrey Dhywood

We may be annihilated, but we cannot be conquered. — Albert Sidney Johnston

I was a very ancient twelve; my views at that age would have done credit to a Civil War veteran. I am much younger now than I was at twelve or anyway, less burdened. The weight of the centuries lies on children, I'm sure of it. — Flannery O'Connor

The Lebanese civil war was not between the Lebanese; it was a holy war declared on the Christians. — Brigitte Gabriel

Battles lost not alone because of superior numbers and failing ammunition and stores, but because of generals who should not have been generals, who were generals not through training in contemporary methods or aptitude for learning them, but by the divine right to say 'Go there' conferred upon them by an absolute caste system — William Faulkner

The lucidity of the battle narratives, the vigor of the prose, the strong feeling for the men from generals to privates who did the fighting, are all controlled by a constant sense of how it happened and what it was all about. Foote has the novelist's feeling for character and situation, without losing the historian's scrupulous regard for recorded fact. The Civil War is likely to stand unequalled. — Walter Millis

Some people tried to hurt us to protect themselves, their family and communities ... This was one of the consequences of civil war. People stopped trusting each other, and every stranger became an enemy. Even people who knew you became extremely careful about how they related or spoke to you. — Ishmael Beah

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites. — Michelle Alexander

Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing. — Homer

John Brown first swam into my vision in the 1960s when I was a political activist in the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement at Chapel Hill, where I went to university. — Russell Banks

My family has served the country in almost every major war since the Civil War. — Jack Scalia

If I became lost in the multiverse, exploring infinite parallel dimensions, my only criterion for settling down somewhere would be whether or not I could find you: and once I did, I'd stay there even if it was a world ruled by giant spider-priests, or one where killer robots won the Civil War, or even a world where sandwiches were never invented, because you'd make it the best of all possible worlds anyway, and plus we could get rich off inventing sandwiches. — Tim Pratt

The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? — Rick Riordan