Return to the home page

Real Quotations

Quotations with pictures of the sources

You can copy the text and attribution here, but you also can view the original to verify the author, title, publication, date, page number, and text.

“One of the biggest problems here is the absence of the father. The black woman tries to fill in the gap but it isn’t the same. Where is the man who helped create these babies? He’s out there having a good time. The woman is tied to the house. It is time that husbands return as fathers, leaders and providers.”

Irma Davis, Founder of the Needle’s Eye, Youngstown, Ohio
Quoted in the Introduction to Come Walk with Me Thru the Needle’s Eye
By Irma Davis with Celia Lehman
New Wilmington, Pennsylvania: SonRise Publications, 1991

“You can learn more from failure than success. In failure you’re forced to find out what part did not work. But in success you can believe everything you did was great, when in fact some parts may not have worked at all. Failure forces you to face reality.”

University of North Carolina computer scientist Fred Brooks
“Master Planner: Fred Brooks Shows How to Design Anything”
Wired magazine interview by Kevin Kelly, July 28, 2010

“We tend to get ourselves in a miasma and think that the bleakness of today is going to last forever. It really doesn’t. It gets worse tomorrow.”

Amtrak President Alan Boyd
“PTJ [Passenger Train Journal] Interviews Alan Boyd”
Passenger Train Journal, May 1981

“… someone told me, ‘Kids just don’t connect with Jesus,’ after he described a Christmas parade with every ‘Christmas’ character but Christ.”

Sister Theresa Marie Moore
Parish Visitors of Mary Immaculate
Coordinator of Religious Education
Saint Andrew the Apostle Parish
Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania
“Say the Word”: Reflections from CCD/PREP [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine/Parish Religious Education Program]
Parish bulletin
December 18, 2022

“We have built a machine to create sprawl, and it is wickedly successful.”

Howard Mansfield
“Small Towns, Large Questions”
Yankee, March 1998, p. 41

The text includes the word have; the pull quote (the version in large type) does not. I guess you can take your pick.)

“We should be useful to others over our whole lives.”

Everett Watts
Quoted in “The Two Congregations of St. George” by Richard Schultz
Yankee, June 1995

Howard Mansfield
“‘I Will Not Leave’: Romaine Tenney Loved His Farm to Death”
Yankee, March-April 2013

This was a sad story about a man who had lived on his farm for all of his 64 years; he shot himself and burned his buildings rather than leave when his land was taken for a highway. The article says that a song was written about him. (You other editors might be wondering about the hyphen between March and April; in rendering a quotation, it’s not necessary to reproduce typographical elements, such as the vertical line that Yankee used to separate March and April, unless they are essential to the meaning. If you’re writing about Wal-Mart, for example, it’s OK to use a hyphen between Wal and Mart rather than the star that Wal-Mart uses.)

“Being in the boat with Jesus, even if the waters are terrifyingly tempestuous, is better than jumping ship. God is in the boat and I am not a good swimmer.”

Father David Stavarz
My First Year of Priesthood: Scandals, Viruses, and the Holy Spirit
Word on Fire blog, April 8, 2020

“No matter where you are, be there; give it your all and steward the portion you’ve been given. No matter what you do, do it well. There’s a degree of human character you can develop that will spill over into human excellence. In that process of giving back, you become transformed.”

“Compassionate Communicator,” Joyce Serdinsky, BA ’12
Invention, Summer 2018, page 13

Invention is the magazine of Thomas Edison State University; I got my bachelor of arts degree there 30 years ago when it was Thomas Edison State College.

—Steve Dunham.

“Americans are a people who greatly value the autonomy of individuals, but have not yet learned how to value one another.”

“Most citizens (and new, untested enterprises) have little or no collateral. They are, therefore, ineligible for capital-acquisition loans (though the U.S. credit system does allow them to borrow recklessly for consumption).”

—William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism (New York: Touchstone, 1997).

“The growth in partisan media over the past two decades has enabled Americans to retreat into tribes of like-minded people who get news filtered through particular world views.”

—David Bauder, Associated Press, “Divided America: Constructing Our Own Intellectual Ghettos,” Fredericksburg, VA, Free Lance–Star, June 18, 2016.

Elements of the story were combined into this one image:

“Some people think that Albert Einstein’s name is magical. If they want to convince you of something or sell you something they invoke his revered name to prove that a genius agrees with whatever proposition they are peddling.”

—In a question submitted to the Quote Investigator, Oct. 31, 2011.

Parts of the Quote Investigator site were combined into this one image:

The Quote Investigator is a wonderful resource for getting the facts on who said and who didn’t say what.

“Even though my influence may be limited, it is not irrelevant.”

—Father Neil Pezzulo, “The Culture of Care,” Glenmary Challenge, summer 2016, p. 15.