Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I decided one day to put on my tutu and jump on the coffee table and sing Aretha Franklin songs for the painters that were painting the house.
It is to such men as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson and Jackson and Franklin, all most lowly born, that we owe most of our greatness as a nation.
Being around people like Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight, Dionne Warwick and Roberta Flack, all these greats, I was taught to listen and observe.
Historically, when Americans don't know what to do next, they go to Paris. Benjamin Franklin is like: 'What am I going to do now? I'll go to Paris!'
I've always loved music. I grew up with older brothers and sisters who were into music, played The Beatles and the Rolling Stones and Aretha Franklin.
George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.
Growing up in Cleveland, I learned about singing from my mother, who had once sung professionally and who admired Mahalia Jackson and Aretha Franklin.
George W. Bush has much to evaluate: he has presided over the most sweeping redesign of U.S. grand strategy since the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
But I'm really into old music - bluesy, soulful singers, like Etta James, Ray Charles, and Aretha Franklin. I wouldn't have minded being born in the 1960s!
It is essential for politicians to make a connection with us, as Franklin Roosevelt did, as Teddy Roosevelt did, as John F. Kennedy did, as Ronald Reagan did.
Myrnin turned away to pick up his Ben Franklin spectacles, balanced them on his nose, and looked over them to say, "Don't do drugs. I feel I ought to say that.
When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'
There was the Missile Crisis, but one can't attribute to the [J.F.] Kennedy years anything like the problems that [Franklin] Roosevelt stood over and surmounted.
How I longed to see these things; how I longed to see the Liberty Bell and walk on the streets where Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine and Benjamin Franklin had walked.
One thing that always frustrated me was that, while Benjamin Franklin's was the best-known face of the eighteenth century, no one ever took his sister's likeness.
I think that Benjamin Franklin felt very strongly in foreign policy in this world, that you needed to at least show some humility, especially when you were strong.
Has President Bush exceeded his constitutional authority or acted illegally in authorizing wiretaps without a warrant? Benjamin Franklin would not have thought so.
It was really wonderful playing with Aretha [ Franklin]. I knew that she knew what she was doing, so all I had to do was sit in the background and vamp a little bit.
And imagine where we'd be today if President Franklin Roosevelt had owned apartment buildings in Frankfurt and Berlin. You know, some of us might be speaking German.
Aretha Franklin was a teenage mom, a musician who came from an incredibly Christian background, but there was a lot of love, which is really inspiring in a feminist way.
Every time I see my brother, I just praise God for God's grace in his life. Because if God can change Franklin from a prodigal into a man of God, he can do it for anybody.
There are bursts of things like Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan or Franklin Delano Roosevelt or same-sex marriage that change very much what we thought we were all about.
Benjamin Franklin once said, 'A people who would trade liberty for security deserve neither.' I think we can have both. We can keep our liberties. We can have our security.
Even though the clock didn't work, we kept the clock because of how we felt about Franklin D. Roosevelt . A lot since then I knew about FDR I wouldn't have been so enthusiastic.
I am so saddened by the loss of our dear friend, Bonnie Franklin. She was just full of light and love. Bonnie will be very much missed by all the people she touched with her love.
Here is a pretty good rule of thumb for Democratic Presidents: if it didn't work for Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won four terms and a World War, it probably won't work for you either.
You knew the difference between Barbra Streisand and Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, straight away. Now everyone sounds like each other, and I don't think that's right.
People have always said - those words, 'too conservative,' is fairly relative. I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.
Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity.
I think Democrats made a mistake running away from liberalism. Liberalism, uh, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John and Robert Kennedy - that's what the Democratic party ought to reach for.
There are plenty of Minutemen. People willing to be Minutemen. Where are the people that want to be George Washington? Where are the Benjamin Franklins? Where is Sam Adams? Where is John Adams?
My mom actually had a band called Six Pack - even though there were seven of them - who went around Chicago performing popular songs. Her voice was like Gladys Knight mixed with Aretha Franklin.
Since Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt established the New Deal in the 1930s, radical conservatives have railed against the idea that the government should intervene in the economy.
Aretha Franklin was as important to the civil-rights movement as Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. Artists can choose to take on the tremendous amount of responsibility we have, or choose to ignore it.
Republican isolationists had certainly tied the hands of every U.S. president, year after year - berating Franklin Roosevelt in particular and his attempts to ready the nation for inevitable attack.
You know, I thought seeing Aretha Franklin last year was amazing, and I didn't think anyone can top that. But if someone can, John Legend would be the man. In my mind, he's a legend, no pun intended.
Americans understand that one of our great national strengths is innovation. Great innovators - Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others - are household names.
I grew up loving Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Al Green and Otis Redding, and I just love old-school R&B. It's just music that moves you and grooves you, and it was very important, I think, for music.
If Obama's vision of the public sector is socialism, then so too were the visions of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon.
Franklin Roosevelt had to govern at a time of crisis. If you're going to make changes in the way a nation thinks, you have to have the ability to take the crisis of the moment and use it to shape an agenda.
Aretha Franklin, she's just the most amazing singer ever. But I think there are so many singers that I just loved and sang along to on the radio. I guess I just enjoy trying out different styles along the way.
In his State of the Union speech in January 1941, President Franklin Roosevelt declared America's commitment to Four Freedoms in the struggle against Nazi totalitarianism. Among them was the freedom from fear.
One of my lifelong hobbies has been to collect 'aptronyms' - the newspaper columnist Franklin P. Adams's term for people whose names were curiously appropriate to, or provided ironic comment on, their occupations.
It's easy to kick somebody when they're down. George W. Bush has dealt with more difficult issues than any president since Franklin Roosevelt. And I've told my colleagues it's time that we go stand up for the president.
Benjamin Franklin performed a beautiful experiment using surfactants: on a pond at Clapham Common, he poured a small amount of oleic acid, a natural surfactant which tends to form a dense film at the water-air interface.
I grew up in a household in which we had a clock that we won at Revere Beach during the Depression - one of those brass clocks that didn't work - but it showed Franklin D. Roosevelt standing at the wheel of the New Deal.
Growing up on Franklin Road in Nashville, I had everyone from Johnny Cash to Fats Domino swinging by my house to talk with my mom about my dad. So I had some pretty diverse influences, and I think that shows in my music.
The United States has tried for years to live down President Franklin D. Roosevelt's order during World War II to move Japanese-Americans on the West Coast to inland detention camps on grounds that they might be disloyal.
Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.
What Franklin Roosevelt did, which really offended them, was he strengthened the labor unions - made it possible for them to strike. The oligarchs were furious because the working class was not supposed to have any power at all.