Texas

Friendship

Texas is the second-largest U.S. state in both area and population, and the largest state in the contiguous United States.

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A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.

When a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible.
- Pledge of allegiance to the state flag as amended in 2007. Chapter 3100, Sections 3100.101–3100.104 of the Texas Government Code, as reported by Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Thermopylae had her messenger of defeat—the Alamo had none.
- Thomas Jefferson Green, reported in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989). Green is said to have included the sentence in a speech he helped Edward Burleson prepare. While Burleson has often been credited with originating the sentence as well as using it, he lacked the classical education necessary to have made the allusion. The sentence became popular after it was engraved on the first monument to the Alamo, which is located in Austin, Texas. The 10-foot-high statue, made of stones from the Alamo, was destroyed by fire when the Capitol at Austin burned. Another monument subsequently erected on the Capitol grounds also included the sentence. J. Frank Dobie, "The Alamo’s Immortalization of Words", Southwest Review (Summer 1942), p. 406–10.

One objection I have heard voiced to works of this kind—dealing with Texas—is the amount of gore spilled across the pages. It can not be otherwise. In order to write a realistic and true history of any part of the Southwest, one must narrate such things, even at the risk of monotony.
- Robert E. Howard in a letter to August Derleth (March 1933)

When MacNab blanched, no more stunned than I, Rusk rose and put his arm about his shoulders: "Never forget, son, when you represent Texas, always go first class."
- James Michener Texas (1985), Closing line.

Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word. And there’s an opening convey of generalities. A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.
- John Steinbeck, pt. 4, Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
- John Steinbeck, pt. 4, Travels With Charley: In Search of America (1962)

You don't get everything you want. A dictatorship would be a lot easier.
- George W. Bush, responding to the difficulties of governing Texas, "The Taming of Texas," Governing Magazine (July 1998); also cited in Is our Children Learning?: The Case Against George W. Bush (2000) by Paul Begala.)

Whether they are sitting in the plush Driskill Hotel in Austin or some god-awful motel in Waco, Texans firmly maintain that they have the biggest-and-best-of-everything. This bragging does not always make other people love Texas, even in the West. (When, back in the early 1980s, one of us broke down in a car with Texas plates in southern Colorado, nobody stopped to help for what seemed like an eternity; the man who eventually did explained: "You should have had a sign saying you weren't from Texas.")
- John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, "For Texas, Business and God", The Right Nation, ISBN 1-59420-020-3 (2004)

Saskatchewan is much like Texas — except it's more friendly to the United States.
- Attributed to Adlai Stevenson. This was attributed to Stevenson without reference in 1001 Greatest Things Ever Said About Texas (2006) by Donna Ingham, p. 92. It was also attributed without reference in "Reporters' Notebook", The Buffalo News, September 24, 1992. No closer connection to Stevenson has been found.

Some folks look at me and see swagger, which in Texas is called "walking."
- George W. Bush, accepting the Republican nomination for President in New York City (September 2004). Reported in the New York Times.

Texas will again lift its head and stand among the nations. it ought to do so, for no country upon the globe can compare with it in natural advantages.
- Sam Houston, first President of Texas. (Sam Houston Memorial Museum)

Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may.
- Sam Houston, first President of Texas. (Sam Houston Memorial Museum)

All new states are invested, more or less, by a class of noisy, second-rate men who are always in favor of rash and extreme measures, but Texas was absolutely overrun by such men.
- Sam Houston, first President of Texas. (Sam Houston Memorial Museum)

If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent Texas and live in Hell.
- U.S. General Philip Henry Sheridan (1866)

Texas has four seasons: Drought, Flood, Blizzard and Twister
- Unknown (source: The Big Apple)