What did you expect? I don’t know why we’re so surprised. When you put your foot on a man’s neck and hold him down for three hundred years, and then you let him up, what’s he going to do? He’s going to knock your block off.
Lyndon B. Johnson (1908-1973) American politician, educator, US President (1963-69)
Comment (1968-04-08) to George Christian
(Source)
Regarding the continuing rioting after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., four days earlier.
Quoted in Nick Kotz, Judgment Days: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Laws that Changed America, ch. 14 (2005), from the author's interview with Christian.
Quotations about:
pay back
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Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure.
Tacitus (c.56-c.120) Roman historian, orator, politician [Publius or Gaius Cornelius Tacitus]
(Attributed)
In Machiavelli, The Discourses, 1.29 (1517) [tr. Detmold (1940)]