Cotton Quotes - Page 7

• See, I have a different type of music from other peoples. They playing the other kind of blues, and I'm playing cotton-patch blues.... Ain't nobody now can play the blues that I play.

  Junior Kimbrough

  Play, Different, Kind

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• When I sang my American folk melodies in Budapest, Prague, Tiflis, Moscow, Oslo, or the Hebrides or on the Spanish front, the people understood and wept or rejoiced with the spirit of the songs. I found that where forces have been the same, whether people weave, build, pick cotton, or dig in the mine, they understand each other in the common language of work, suffering, and protest.

  Paul Robeson

  Song, People, Singing

  Paul Robeson, Philip Sheldon Foner (1978). “Paul Robeson speaks: writings, speeches, interviews, 1918-1974”, Brunner-Routledge

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• Don't you know sugar is brown first? White folks couldn't stand the fact that something so sweet shared the same color as the people who cut the cane, slopped the hogs and picked the cotton. So they bleached it to resemble them, and now they done gone and fooled everybody. You included.

  Bernice L. McFadden

  Sweet, Cutting, Color

  Bernice L. McFadden (2001). “Sugar: A Novel”, p.39, Penguin

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• I'll hire blacks as long as they can do the cotton-pickin' job.

  Evan Mecham

  Jobs, Long, Black

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• If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can't they be well paid for changing young minds?

  B. J. Novak

  Basketball, Reality, People

  B.J. Novak (2014). “One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories”, p.145, Vintage

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• It will be hard James but you come from sturdy peasant stock men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads and in the teeth of the most terrifying odds achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity You come from a long line of great poets some of the greatest poets since Homer. One of them said "The very time I thought I was lost My dungeon shook and my chains fell off." You know and I know that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. God bless you James and Godspeed.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Men, Odds

  "A Letter to My Nephew" by James Baldwin, progressive.org. January 1, 1962.

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• Cotton balls is an example of something I would buy, but not want to have as a nickname. Cinnamon buns, on the other hand, is something I would buy and want to have as a nickname. 'Are you Cinnamon Buns?' 'You bet your sweet ass I am.'

  Demetri Martin

  Sweet, Hands, Balls

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• I like myself better when I'm writing regularly. ... I was influenced a lot by those around me-there was a lot of singing that went on in the cotton fields. ... I'm a country songwriter and we write cry-in-your-beer songs. That's what we do. Something that you can slow dance to...I never gave up on country music because I knew what I was doing was not that bad. ... Most of the stuff I've read about me has been true.

  Willie Nelson

  Country, Song, Writing

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• Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers sabred into crows' meat for a piece of glazed cotton, which they call their flag; which had you sold it at any market-cross, would not have brought above three groschen?

  Thomas Carlyle

  War, Soldier, Crow

  Thomas Carlyle (1908). “Sartor Resartus and Essays on Burns and Scott”

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• Each time we look upon the poor, on the farmworkers who harvest the coffee, the sugarcane, or the cotton... remember, there is the face of Christ.

  Oscar Romero

  Faith, Inspiration, Coffee

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• And we wonder what can be that 'philosophy of education' which believes that young people can be trained to the duties of citizenship by wrapping their minds in cotton wool.

  Henry Steele Commager

  Philosophy, Believe, People

  "Who is Loyal to America?". "Harper's Magazine", Vol. 195, No. 1168, September 1947.

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• I never, with my eyes, saw the mistreatment of any black person. Not once. Where we lived was all farmers. The blacks worked for the farmers. I hoed cotton with them. I'm with the blacks, because we're white trash. We're going across the field.... They're singing and happy. I never heard one of them, one black person, say, I tell you what: These doggone white people - not a word!... Pre-entitlement, pre-welfare, you say: Were they happy? They were godly; they were happy; no one was singing the blues.

  Phil Robertson

  Eye, Godly, White

  "What the Duck?". Interview with Drew Magary, www.gq.com. December 17, 2013.

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• Summertime And the living is easy Fish are jumpin' And the cotton is high Oh, your daddy's rich And your mama's good lookin' So hush little baby now don't you cry One of these mornin's You're gonna rise up singin' Then you'll spread your wings And take to the sky But til that mornin' Ain't nothin' can harm you With your daddy And your mammy standin' by.

  George Gershwin

  Summer, Baby, Sky

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• I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I’d turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red.

  Margaret Atwood

  Air, Cotton Candy, Sugar

  Margaret Atwood (1986). “The Handmaid's Tale”, p.138, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Disagreeing with the fervent patriotism of the Confederates: "I think it's hard winning a war with words, gentlemen. . . . I'm saying very plainly that the Yankees are better equipped than we. . . . All we've got is cotton and slaves, and arrogance." "I seem to be spoiling everybody's brandy and cigars and dreams of victory."

  Clark Gable

  Dream, War, Winning

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• For more than two centuries our foreparents labored here without wages; they made cotton king; and they built the homes of their masters in the midst of brutal injustice and shameful humiliation - and yet out of a bottomless vitality our people continue to thrive and develop.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Inspirational, Kings, Home

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “The Essential Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I Have a Dream" and Other Great Writings”, p.104, Beacon Press

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• Painting is a lot harder than pickin' cotton. Cotton's right there for you to pull off the stalk, but to paint, you got to sweat your mind.

  Clementine Hunter

  Sweat, Mind, Painting

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• It is often said that Americans have no sense of history. Ask a college student who Jimmy Carter was and they will likely reply that he was a general in the Civil War, which occurred in 1492, when Americans dumped tea into the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking the First World War, which ended with the invasion of Grenada and the development of the cotton press.

  J. Maarten Troost

  War, College, Tea

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• Miss Caroline seemed unaware that the ragged, denim-shirted and floursack-skirted first grade, most of whom had chopped cotton and fed hogs from the time they were able to walk, were immune to imaginative literature.

  Harper Lee

  Missing, Denim, Literature

  Harper Lee (2014). “To Kill a Mockingbird (Enhanced Edition)”, p.15, Harper Collins

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• There is a preppy wabi-sabi to soft, faded khakis and cotton shirts, but it's not nice to be surrounded by things that are worn out or stained or used up.

  Gretchen Rubin

  Nice, Preppy, Abundance

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• The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness

  Osamu Dazai

  Wool, Sometimes, Weak

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.81, New Directions Publishing

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• But tomorrow, dawn will come the way I picture her, barefoot and disheveled, standing outside my window in one of the fragile cotton dresses of the poor. She will look in at me with her thin arms extended, offering a handful of birdsong and a small cup of light.

  Billy Collins

  Light, Offering, Bird

  Billy Collins (2012). “Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes”, p.70, Pan Macmillan

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• I eat only white foods: eggs, sugar, grated bones, the fat of dead animals; veal, salt, coconut, chicken cooked in white water; fruit mold, rice, turnips; camphorated sausage, dough, cheese (white), cotton salad, and certain fish (skinless).

  Erik Satie

  Animal, Eggs, White

  "Erik Satie". Book by Rollo H. Myers, New York: Dover, p.135, 1968.

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• I did precisely the wrong thing. The cotton showed me a loss and I kept it. The wheat showed me a profit and I sold it out. Of all the speculative blunders there are few greater than trying to average a losing game. Always sell what shows you a loss and keep what shows you a profit.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Loss, Average, Games

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• "I can't sleep" answered the nervous one.
  "Why not?" asked the friend.
  "I am carrying so much cotton that I can't sleep thinking about. It is wearing me out. What can I do?"
  "Sell down to the sleeping point", answered the friend.

  Jesse Lauriston Livermore

  Sleep, Thinking, Why Not

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