Prove

Famous quotes containing the word prove:

    “Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “In an early spring
    We see th’appearing buds, which to prove fruit
    Hope gives not so much warrant, as despair
    That frosts will bite them.”
    —William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

    “Single acts of tyranny may be ascribed to the accidental opinion of a day; but a series of oppressions ... too plainly prove a deliberate, systematical plan of reducing us to slavery.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)