All Quotes

"In one sense, I do believe I am "like a man," as Parthe [the writer's sister] says. But how? In having sympathy. … Women crave for being loved, not for loving. They scream out at you for sympathy all day long, they are incapable of giving any in return, for they cannot remember your affairs long enough to do so. … They cannot state a fact accurately to another, nor can that other attend to it accurately enough for it to become information. Now is not all this the result of want of sympathy?"

"People often say to me, You don't know what a wife and mother feels. No, I say, I don't and I'm very glad I don't. And they don't know what I feel. … I am sick with indignation at what wives and mothers will do of the most egregious selfishness. And people call it all maternal or conjugal affection, and think it pretty to say so. No, no, let each person tell the truth from his own experience."

"Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness toward anyone."

"I think I have never known a woman labour as she has done. It is a most remarkable experience; she indeed deserves the name of a worker."

"One of my most valued acquaintances was Miss Florence Nightingale, then a young lady at home, but chafing against the restrictions that crippled her active energies. Many an hour we spent by my fireside in Thavies Inn, or walking in the beautiful grounds of Embley, discussing the problem of the present and hopes of the future. To her, chiefly, I owed the awakening to the fact that sanitation is the supreme goal of medicine, its foundation and its crown."

"The subscription has been the result of voluntary individual offerings, and the amount of £4195 15s. 6d., already received, plainly indicates the universal feeling of gratitude which exists among the troops engaged in the Crimea for the care bestowed upon, the relief administered to, themselves and their comrades, at the period of their greatest sufferings, by the skilful arrangements, the unwearying, constant, personal attention of Miss Nightingale and the other ladies associated with her."

"Though known as the founder of the Red Cross, and the originator of the Diplomatic Convention of Geneva, it was to Miss Florence Nightingale that all the honour of that Convention was due. It was her work in the Crimea that inspired him to go to Italy during the war of 1859, to share the horrors of war, to relieve the helplessness of the unfortunate victims in those great struggles, and to soothe the physical and moral distress and anguish of so many poor men who had come from all parts to fall victims to their duty."

"Speaking of the cholera in the Middlesex Hospital, she said, "The prostitutes come in perpetually — poor creatures staggering off their beat! It took worse hold of them than any. One poor girl, loathsomely filthy, came in, and was dead in four hours. I held her in my arms and I heard her saying something. I bent down to hear. 'Pray God, that you may never be in the despair I am in at this time.' I said, 'Oh, my girl, are you not now more merciful than the God you think you are going to? Yet the real God is far more merciful than any human creature ever was, or can ever imagine.'""

"They had in Miss Nightingale a woman of genius, who had made her subject her particular study... Moreover, he had no hesitation in saying that Miss Nightingale in her present position had exhibited greater power of organisation, a greater familiarity with details, while at the same time she took a comprehensive view of the general bearing of the subject, than had marked the conduct of any one connected with the hospitals during the present war. (Cheers.) An anecdote which had lately been sent to him by a correspondent, showed her great power over all with whom she came into contact. Here was the passage:—"I have just heard such a pretty account from a soldier describing the comfort it was to see even Florence pass—‘She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to a many more; but she couldn't do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on the pillow again content.’" And his correspondent then very justly remarked,—"What poetry there is in these men!" And again:—"I think I told you of another, who said, ‘Before she came there was such cussin and swearin, but after that it was as holy as a church.’" He had been told, too, by eye-witnesses that it was most singular to remark how, when men, frenzied, perhaps, by their wounds and disease, had worked themselves into a passionate refusal to submit to necessary operations, a few calm sentences of hers seemed at once to allay the storm, and the men would submit willingly to the painful ordeal they had to undergo. They could not pretend to offer to such a woman any recompense for her services without lowering their high standard. The only suitable mark of gratitude which could be shown her would be one which would testify the confidence of the English people in her energy, ability, and zeal."

"In an undertaking so wholly new to our English customs, so at variance with the usual education given to women in this country, we shall meet with perplexities, difficulties, even failures... It will be the true, the lasting glory of Florence Nightingale and her band of devoted assistants, that they have broken through what Goethe calls a "Chinese wall of prejudices;" prejudices religious, social, professional; and established a precedent which will indeed "multiply the good to all time.""

"If the generous women thus sacrificing themselves were all alike in devotion to their sacred cause, there was one of them —the Lady-in-Chief—who not only came armed with the special experience needed, but also was clearly transcendent in that subtle quality which gives to one human being a power of command over others. Of slender, delicate form, engaging, highly-bred, and in council a rapt careful listener, so long as others were speaking, and strongly, though gently, persuasive whenever speaking herself, the Lady-in-Chief—the Lady Florence, Miss Nightingale—gave her heart to his enterprise in a spirit of absolute devotion."

"Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom. And flit from room to room."

"A Lady with a Lamp shall stand In the great history of the land, A noble type of good. Heroic womanhood."

"History can be helpful in making sense of the world we live in. It can also be fascinating, even fun. How can even the best novelist or playwright invent someone like Augustus Caesar or Catherine the Great, Galileo or Florence Nightingale? How can screenwriters create better action stories or human dramas than exist, thousand upon thousand, throughout the many centuries of recorded history? There is a thirst out there both for knowledge and to be entertained, and the market has responded with enthusiasm."

"In literature, books which disclosed life and its miseries, and character with its sufferings, burnt themselves in upon her mind, and created much of her future effort. She was never resorted to for sentiment. Sentimentalists never had a chance with her. Besides that her character was too strong, and its quality too real for any sympathy with shallowness and egotism, she had two characteristics which might well daunt the sentimentalists—her reserve, and her capacity for ridicule. Ill would they have fared who had come to her for responsive sympathies about sentiment, or even real woes in which no practical help was proposed; and there is perhaps nothing uttered by her, from her evidence before the Sanitary Commission for the Army to her recently published Notes on Nursing, which does not disclose powers of irony which self-regardant persons may well dread."

"While history abides, the image of Florence Nightingale, lamp in hand, going through miles of beds, night by night, noting every patient as she went, and ministering wherever most wanted, will always glow in men's hearts; and the sayings of the men about her will be traditions for future generations to enjoy."

"The intense and exquisite humanity to the sick, underlying the glorious common sense about affairs, and the stern insight into the weaknesses and the perversions of the healthy, troubled as they are by the sight of suffering, and sympathising with themselves instead of the patient, lay open a good deal of the secret of this wonderful woman's life and power."

":Why do I say that, Roger? Because I was in the middle of a couple of firefights in South and Central America."

":But you were a media guy."

":Yeah. A media guy with a pen, not a gun. And people were shooting at me, Roger."

"I just wish Katrina had only hit the United Nations building, nothing else, just had flooded them out, and I wouldn't have rescued them."

"If I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead. And if Al-Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.""

":That's not offensive?"

"Most people showed up, and I think there were, like, 1,300 of them, to hear what the woman had to say. These far-left Nazis— and that's what they are, OK?— came in, not only insulted Ms. Coulter but violated the rights of the people who came to hear what she had to say. This is unacceptable on every level. And it's unacceptable to do what they do on their websites: to defame, to lie, to do whatever, you know, sleazy thing they can think of to people with whom they disagree."

";David Letterman"

":How can you possibly take exception with the motivation and the position of someone like Cindy Sheehan?"

":Because I think she's run by far-left elements in this country. I feel bad for the woman."

":Have you lost family members in armed conflict?"

":Well, then you can hardly speak for her, can you?"

"When I die, I don't want my demise to be used as a political rally, and that's what happened yesterday."

"Do the atheists in Wisconsin realize they're going to Hell? Did you ask them that?"

"I'm not buying this. If, if you're eleven years old, or twelve years old, thirteen, and you have a strong bond with your family, OK. Even if the guy [kidnapper] threatens you - this and that. … If you can get away, you get away."

":I'm effete. I'm not a tough guy. This is all an act."

";Stephen Colbert"

":You're breaking my heart, Bill."

"The Soros-Lewis mob despises Fox News because we have their number and report on them accurately. They use the MoveOn website to smear this network and others with whom they disagree. These people use propaganda techniques perfected by Dr. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister of information. They lie, distort, defame all the time."

"America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished."

":I think it takes more faith to be like you, an atheist, than like me, a believer, and it's because of nature. You know, I just don't think we could've lucked out to have the tides come in, the tides go out, sun go up, sun go down. Don't think it could've happened."

";Richard Dawkins"

":We have a very full understanding of why the tides go in, the tides go out, of why the continents drift about, of why life is there. Science is ever more piling on the evidence, piling on the understanding."

":But it had to get there, I understand that you, you know, the uh, physiology of it if you will, but it had to come from somewhere."

"The hate websites on both the left and the right— I object to. You know I object to. Now, you're a little bit more a libertarian about this in our previous conversations. But I say this. There's no difference between the KKK and the Nazis, who have websites, than the Daily Kos. Because the Daily Kos is basically saying, "We're allowing this kind of thing to come on." It's good that Tony Snow has a recurrence of cancer; we hope he dies. We're sorry the assassination attempt against Dick Cheney failed; let them try again. And on and on and on and on."

"This is the worst stuff on the Internet. There isn't anything worse than this."

";Chris Dodd"

":Talking about Al-Qaeda attacking San Francisco and blowing up San Francisco."

":When? Where? What forum? When?"

":Right here, I believe, on your own show."

":No, you're wrong. I didn't say it here. You don't know what the hell I said, with all due respect."

":You didn't hear it and you don't know what I did."

":Focus on your legitimate criticism."