Top 951 Underground Railroad Quotes & Sayings

RAILROAD, n. The chief of many mechanical devices enabling us to get away from where we are to where we are no better off. For this purpose the railroad is held in highest favor by the optimist, for it permits him to make the transit with great expedition.

Before the Civil War, Canada was at the top of the underground railroad. If you made it into Canada, you were safe unless someone came and hauled you back. That was also true during the Vietnam War for draft resisters.

The Oberlin/Cleveland area is where the underground railroad came out, so it's an interesting historical place. I love Ohio and really loved Oberlin.

The sum total of what I learned about African American culture in school was Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, and the Underground Railroad. This was more than my mom knew; she didn't even see a black person in real life until she was 18 years old.

During the Civil War, the Underground Railroad became a spy network, so we could still have fresh stories for these characters years into the future, with desperate people still doing desperate things.

Thank God for Canada! In the context of this narrative [in Underground] and beyond, Canada was certainly an additional option for the many traveling the treacherous terrain of the Underground Railroad in pursuit of what was perceived as "freedom."

For me, I've always been fascinated by tales of the Chinese railroad and the workers and the conditions of the workers who built the railroad.

In America, when you hear about the Underground Railroad, it's so evocative. You think it's a literal subway for a few minutes before your teacher goes on and describes where it actually was.

Do I understand, sir, that you mean the Cause for which our heroes have died is not sacred?' If you were run over by a railroad train your death wouldn’t sanctify the railroad company, would it?' asked Rhett and his voice sounded as if he were humbly seeking information.

The underground is not a place but a way of life. You can be underground most anywhere, from the Upper West Side of Manhattan to Hermosa Beach, California.

The underground went really underground. Grand Funk, and all these people man are the moderate's choice of music. Underground is Yoko Ono, The Black Poets. These people scare the hell out of most freaks. They laugh at Yoko Ono, but it's the whole cliché.

[Jeb Bush] could, as I describe it, run the railroad.[John] Kasich could run the railroad. Hillary Clinton can run the railroad. Running the railroad is the most important thing. You have got 4 million employees; you've got to make the system work, and it doesn't work very well.

I like the word 'underground'... 'independent' carries a stigma of whininess. 'Underground' means a good time.

I mean, the power of water to lift cars is amazing. A creek backed up near a railroad track. And an entire train was lifted off of the railroad track and dumped over. People just need to make sure they do not drive into water. It floats the cars, and then we have deaths because of it.

I know in the spy movies it always looks really cool when the operative goes from a maid's uniform to a slinky, sexy, ballgown in the amount of time it takes an elevator to climb three floors. Well, I don't know how it is for TV spies, but I can tell you that even with Velcro, the art of the quick change is one that must take a lot of practice (not to mention better lighting than one is likely to find in a tunnel that was once part of the underground railroad).

I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can't say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.

A player's ability to rebound is inversely proportional to the distance between where he was born and the nearest railroad tracks. The greater distance you live from the poor side of the railroad tracks, the less likely that you will be a good rebounder.

Another of the strange and evil tendencies of the present day is the decoration of the railroad station... There was never more flagrant nor impertinent folly than the smallest portion of ornament in anything connected with the railroads... Railroad architecture has or would have a dignity of its own if it were only left to its work.

I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.

If you look at what happened with Underground Railroad, there is so much action. There is so much intrigue; there is so much of historical importance.

The story of the Underground Railroad is the story of American heroes, and who doesn't want to hear a story about American heroes?

It takes an enormous amount of energy, creative energy withdrawn from the total economy of the person, to hold a trait underground, and, unfortunately, needs and drives do not go underground alone; they carry with them useful parts of the personality, depriving it of richness and the possibility of a variety of response.

Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.

The Underground Railroad was a spy network for the North and that story has never been told.

The only free road, the Underground Railroad, is owned and managed by the Vigilant Committee. They have tunneled under the whole breadth of the land.

I was like, 'Oh, let's do a show about the Underground Railroad.' I never come up with great titles, and I thought, 'Underground' is a fantastic title. I got really excited.

So, I play in a band. It's a really underground band. Super underground. Very underground. Like, we don't even actually play.

'Zone One' has one kind of an apocalypse, and 'The Underground Railroad' another. In both cases, the narrators are animated by a hope in a better place of refuge - in the last surviving human outpost, Up North. Does it exist? They can only believe.

I was an English major in college who concentrated in African-American literature and culture. So I read quite a few slave narratives and stories of escape, and I grew up in Ohio, which was a common stop on the Underground Railroad.

Fortunately, I come from an activist mother, so I didn't have to rely on the history books. The history books teach us nothing about the Underground Railroad aside from Harriet Tubman. So I knew more about it but, obviously, I had to dig deeper and expand my knowledge and do a lot of research once I took this project on. I had, like, a good two months to research before we started shooting, which isn't a lot, and I continued it throughout the five months of us shooting.

As a white, female, half-Jewish writer, when I read 'The Underground Railroad,' it reminded me that America isn't just the sort of Sesame Street that I grew up with that tolerated and embraced diversity in the Northeast, but in fact was built on the foundation of slavery.

I come from a line of railroad men. My great-grandfather was a surveyor for the Burlington Railroad.

My whole goal in this industry nowadays is to keep doing the underground stuff, but to be able to add vocals that are sexy and underground.

Underground. Which I hate. Like mines and tunnels and 13. Underground, where I dread dying, which is stupid because even if I die aboveground, the next thing they'll do is bury me underground anyway.

My father was a railroad man his entire life; 43 years for Southern Railroad.

You gotta look beyond the mainstream... the mainstream'll drown you, you know? There's always a pulse in the underground that I love. And the pulse in the underground is what keeps heavy metal alive.

All this piling up of one technology on top of another-railroad on steamboat, interstate highway on railroad, hydroelectric dam on watermill-had reduced the Mississippi from a wonder of nature to this sluggish canal on the wrong side of the tracks.

a TEN-YEAR-OLD lad in Indianapolis who was arrested for picking up coal along the side of railroad tracks is now in jail. If the boy had known enough to steal the whole railroad he would be heralded as a Napoleon of finance.

The underground always has the best ideas. Sometimes those underground artists transcend and make it to the mainstream, but most of the time, the big guys just steal from us.

Unable to maintain their government-granted monopoly, the powerful railroad interests turned to government to do the regulating and price-fixing which they were unable to do themselves. In fact, the pressure that induced Congress to enact the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 did not come from reformers bemoaning abuses by the powerful railroad interests; it came from the railroad interests themselves, asking Congress to shield them against the harsh winds of competition.

When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years.

It's so Canada. On some level, you laugh, but on another level, it's just depressing. We pride ourselves: We're not like the bad old U.S. where they had segregation, whites-only washrooms and hotels. We think we were the capital of the Underground Railroad, we were the place to where the slaves escaped, we were a much better country. But in fact, some of the black people in Canada at the time said, 'It's actually much easier in the United States because you know which hotels, restaurants, theatres won't let you in because the signs are there. In Canada, you never know.'

The emergence of the independent hip-hop scene has replaced what we called the "underground scene". It's what the underground scene has evolved into: actual businesses.

I was the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad.

A lot of people, when they first hear about the Underground Railroad, think it really is a subway or a locomotive. When they find out it's not, they feel a little disappointed. So I thought, What if it was a literal underground train network traveling from state to state, with each state it goes through representing a different opportunity or danger?

I just finished Colson Whitehead's "The Underground Railroad," which I think is a work of genius.

The Underground Railroad was the first integrated civil rights movement. And it's a great example of when we work together, what we can go against. Which is 600 miles of crazy terrain being chased by slave catchers to get people to be what they should be in the first case - which is free.

For me, seeing our history told in this light, the ones who did rebel, the ones who did revolt, the revolutionaries, excited me. Seeing this story of the Underground Railroad ... and that is such a proud part of our history that not a lot of us know about, where these brave men and women, they were heroes, really helped tear down the system of slavery just by running.

In many ways, my entire graphic novel career was a long diversion. Originally, all I wanted to do was to be an underground cartoonist and maybe bring out a groovy underground mag.

When I was reading 'The Underground Railroad,' I had to actually hold my hand over the right-hand page so I wouldn't see, by mistake, what was coming up next - it was so suspenseful. it's really masterful.

The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn.

The underground of the city is like what's underground in people. Beneath the surface, it's boiling with monsters.

Hoosiers deserve a straightforward approach about information regarding blocked railroad crossings and I commend the Federal Railroad Administration's willingness to work with all parties involved on this important issue.

Oftentimes, a history book in school will talk about the Underground Railroad as if it's one sentence. But thousands of people decided to run, and they single-handedly changed the trajectory of our nation. By running to the North, they put a face to slavery, which recruited a lot of abolitionists.

I've worked as a singer in metal bands for over ten years now, so I've definitely kind of put in my time building that underground family, that underground, loyal fan base.

Born a slave, Harriet Tubman was determined not to remain one. She escaped from her owners in Maryland on the Underground Railroad in 1849 and then fearlessly returned thirteen times to help guide family members and others to freedom as the most famous conductor of the Underground Railroad.

The story of the Underground Railroad is a thriller. These are people who are basically in a heist movie, and it's the most precious cargo ever, your life. You're fighting for your freedom.

How big can you be if just the underground niggas know you? You can't buy your mom a house when you just an underground celebrity.

The Underground Railroad, which was the first integrated civil rights movement, is a part of our history that not a lot of us know about. And it's actually a very empowering side of our history.

The last time I put out 'Raw,' that boosted me up in the underground to one of the top underground artists who was making moves and touring around the world.