History's Badass Quotes

In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Everyone of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

And once upon a time I wondered: Is writing epic fantasy not somehow a betrayal? Did I not somehow do a disservice to my own reality by paying so much attention to the power fantasies of disenchanted white men? But. Epic fantasy is not merely what Tolkien made it. This genre is rooted in the epic — and the truth is that there are plenty of epics out there which feature people like me. Sundiata’s badass mother. Dihya, warrior queen of the Amazighs. The Rain Queens. The Mino Warriors. Hatshepsut’s reign. Everything Harriet Tubman ever did. And more, so much more, just within the African components of my heritage. I haven’t even begun to explore the non-African stuff. So given all these myths, all these examinations of the possible… how can I not imagine more? How can I not envision an epic set somewhere other than medieval England, about someone other than an awkward white boy? How can I not use every building-block of my history and heritage and imagination when I make shit up? And how dare I disrespect that history, profane all my ancestors’ suffering and struggles, by giving up the freedom to imagine that they’ve won for me.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar.

Wonder Woman isn't only an Amazonian princess with badass boots. She's the missing link in a chain of events that begins with the woman suffrage campaigns of the 1910s and ends with the troubled place of feminism fully a century later. Feminism made Wonder Woman. And then Wonder Woman remade feminism....

Westerns are American history brought to life. Those fuckers were badasses, Callie,” he told me with a smirk. “Plus, John Wayne’s the fuckin' shit.

Only one president in this book was a supervillain. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Chester A. Arthur, the Lex Luthor of the American Presidency.

When you’re working with Army and Marine Corps units, you immediately notice a difference. The Army is pretty tough, but their performance can depend on the individual unit. Some are excellent, filled with hoorah and first-class warriors. A few are absolutely horrible; most are somewhere in between. In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

Having an affair with your good friend's wife while he's in an institution and your wife is in a hospital ranks somewhere between Benedict Arnold and the guy who invented Girls Gone Wild on the spectrum of Total Dickheads in American History.

I gave my son a brief history of the pledge of allegiance. He asked a few questions and I answered them (with a Google check or two on my phone). Then he took a deep breath and said, “Mom, I don’t think I should say the pledge of allegiance anymore. Would that be okay?” All activists want their kids to magically turn into badass activists, but I wanted to make sure that this was a decision my son had come to after some thought, and that he had the reasoning to be able to defend that decision. I asked him why he didn’t want to say the pledge. “Because I’m an atheist, so I don’t like pledging under god. I don’t believe in pledging to countries, I think it encourages war. And I don’t think this country treats people who look like me very well so the ‘liberty and justice for all’ part is a lie. And I don’t think that every day we should all be excited about saying a lie.

YOU KNOW HOW RAMADI WAS WON? We went in and killed all the bad people we could find. When we started, the decent (or potentially decent) Iraqis didn’t fear the United States; they did fear the terrorists. The U.S. told them, “We’ll make it better for you.” The terrorists said, “We’ll cut your head off.” Who would you fear? Who would you listen to? When we went into Ramadi, we told the terrorists, “We’ll cut your head off. We will do whatever we have to and eliminate you.” Not only did we get the terrorists’ attention—we got everyone’s attention. We showed we were the force to be reckoned with. That’s where the so-called Great Awakening came. It wasn’t from kissing up to the Iraqis. It was from kicking butt. The tribal leaders saw that we were bad-asses, and they’d better get their act together, work together, and stop accommodating the insurgents. Force moved that battle. We killed the bad guys and brought the leaders to the peace table. That is how the world works.

Martin Van Buren was a shitty guy. Not just because he was a bad president, and not just because he was pro-slavery. Van Buren was shitty in a very general sort of way. And with all that that implies.

Food is culture. Food is history. Food is fun.

In my experience, Marines are gung ho no matter what. They will all fight to the death. Every one of them just wants to get out there and kill. They are bad-ass, hard-charging mothers.

When Einstein calls you the most significant and creative woman in the history of mathematics, you can probably call it a day and go home. Unless you're Emmy Noether, whose pursuit of game-changing innovation in the field of numbers was, in a word, tenacious.

At the age of eight, John Quincy Adams was made the man of his house while his father, John Adams, was off doing important John Adams things for America. This would be a lot of terrifying responsibility at any time in American history, but it just so happens that, when Adams was eight years old, the *Revolutionary freaking War* was happening right outside his house. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his front porch, according to his diary, worried that he might be 'butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried ... as hostages by any foraging or marauding detachment of British soldiers.' I don't have the diary I kept at age eight, but I think the only things I worried about was whether or not they'd have for dogs in the school the next day and if I had the wherewithal and clarity of purpose to collect all of the Pokemon. John Q, on the other hand, guarded his house, mother, and siblings during wartime. This isn't to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could have beaten eight-year-old you in a fight, but to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could beat you *as an adult*.

People try to put me in a category as a bad-ass, a good ol’ boy, asshole, sniper, SEAL, and probably other categories not appropriate for print. All might be true on any given day. In the end, my story, in Iraq and afterward, is about more than just killing people or even fighting for my country.

Between his dueling and military career, Jackson had been shot so many times that scholars says he "rattled like a bag of marbles" when he walked as a result of all of the never-removed bullets taking up residence in his body. The pieces of shrapnel he carries around like internal medals of honor are about ten times larger than your balls and infinity times as armored.

Since the dawn of time, nearly every man (and I'd wager to guess most women) has, at his most visceral level, secretly desired for one thing - to be standing triumphantly atop a heaping pile of his slain enemies, holding a gigantic axe aloft while some unbelievably attractive member of whatever gender he's attracted to desperately clutches his leg like it's the last life raft on the HMS Titanic.

Learning is what you get from school. When it comes to classes like history, geography. and algebra, schools teach you facts and ideas—most of which you’re going to forget. This is LEARNING. But true growth comes from something else. Something much more powerful than learning. It’s called TRANSFORMATION. When you learn a fact you can forget it the next day. But a transformation is when your entire worldview shifts. When a transformation occurs there is an opening for a new way of seeing the world. It’s a complete shift in perspective. A transformation causes an exponential jump in who you are as a person. It may jolt you and rejig some of your long-held beliefs and values.

Look back at history,” he said, after a minute or two. “Most great and remarkable men weren't tame or politically correct. They were raving loonies. They acted out. Heroes are badasses, not alter-boys.” “You don't think Jesus was a hero?” I asked. “Jesus was the bad-ass,” he said, chuckling a little. “...talk about somebody knowing how to make some noise.” Nick confused me. Half the time what he said sounded completely hypocritical. The other half of the time, what he said sounded completely insane. He always had an opinion though, no matter how nonsensical it was to me. I admired that about him. “You think Jesus would throw a book at someone?” I asked, before I could stop myself. His eyes popped open. I dropped my pen again. He sat up straight and focused his eyes on me. “I'm not Jesus,” he said simply. No kidding.

The main entrance reminded me of the Alamo, a place Chris had always loved. His fascination with history seemed to fit perfectly with the place. School kids came regularly to learn about our history, something I knew would appeal to him. It just felt like Chris. Still, I had to be sure. I excused myself and took a walk away from the others, moving down the hill to a spot where I could see the immense flag. “Okay, babe,” I said. “If you can talk to me, tell me what you think. I don’t know.” Bad-ass. The words flew into my head, bypassing my ears. Bad-ass. Bad-ass. Bad-ass. Over and over, I heard those words in my head. It was as if Chris was there, telling me yes, this is where I want to be buried. There were plenty of logical reasons to choose Austin-it’s much closer to the family, and I can be buried next to him when my time comes. But I truly felt that Chris had spoken at that moment to me. Walking back to the family, I felt his arm around me and his gentle lips on my temple. “Okay, babe. Austin.

command master chief, whom I’ll call Primo, was another top-notch commander. He didn’t give a flying fuck about promotions, about looking good, or covering his butt: he was all about successful missions and getting the job done. And he was a Texan—as you can tell, I’m a little partial—which meant he was a bad-ass.

we’re also being taught to think of ourselves as invincible bad-asses. That’s a pretty potent combination.

At the age of eight, John Quincy Adams was made the man of his house while his father, John Adams, was off doing important John Adams things for America. This would be a lot of terrifying responsibility at any time in American history, but it just so happens that, when Adams was eight years old, the *Revolutionary freaking War* was happening right outside his house. He watched the Battle of Bunker Hill from his front porch, according to his diary, worried that he might be 'butchered in cold blood, or taken and carried ... as hostages by any foraging or marauding detachment of British soldiers.' I don't have the diary I kept at age eight, but I think the only things I worried about was whether or not they'd have corndogs in school the next day and if I had the wherewithal and clarity of purpose to collect all of the Pokemon. John Q, on the other hand, guarded his house, mother, and siblings during wartime. This isn't to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could have beaten eight-year-old you in a fight, but to imply that eight-year-old John Quincy Adams could beat you *as an adult*.

The tribal leaders saw that we were bad-asses, and they’d better get their act together, work together, and stop accommodating the insurgents. Force moved that battle. We killed the bad guys and brought the leaders to the peace table. That is how the world works.

If a Shelia is gonna break the rules, she has to have studied the rule book first.

Why do SEALs fight so much? I haven’t made a scientific study of it, but I think a lot is owed to pent-up aggression. We’re trained to go out and kill people. And then, at the same time, we’re also being taught to think of ourselves as invincible bad-asses.

Whether you are a badass woman who oozes solar energy or a gorgeous man who drips lunar, or a nonbinary person with an energy all your own, you are a powerful, strong witch.