Boston Tea Party Quotes

“Ten years after the Boston Tea Party, tea was still far more popular than coffee, which only became the more popular drink in the mid-nineteenth century. Coffee's popularity grew after the duty on imports was abolished in 1832, making it more affordable. The duty was briefly reintroduced during the Civil War but was abolished again in 1872.”
― Tom Standage

“It's hard. Wanting the tea, but also not wanting the tea, but feeling like you should want the tea, but knowing you should protest the tea, so you put the protest on the teapot and throw all the tea in the harbor, and the teapot I guess. . . stays empty?”
― Katherine Locke, Out Now: Queer We Go Again!

“March 1774 by declaring the port of Boston closed until the East India Company had been compensated for its losses. This was the first of the so-called Coercive Acts—a series of laws passed in 1774 in which the British attempted to assert their authority over the colonies but instead succeeded only in enraging the colonists further and ultimately prompted the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775. It is tempting to wonder whether a government less influenced by the interests of the company might have simply shrugged off the tea parties or come to some compromise with the colonists.”
― Tom Standage

“Both the European Union and the United States are in some sense the heirs of Rome. Like Rome, the United States is founded on a republican myth of liberation from a tyrannical oppressor. Just as the Rape of Lucretia led to the overthrow of the last Etruscan king, so the Boston Tea Party led to the overthrow of the British crown. The Founding Fathers of the United States sought quite literally to create a New Rome, with, for instance, a clear separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches of government—with the legislative branch called, as in Rome, the Senate. They even debated whether the executive branch would not be better represented, as in Rome, by two consuls rather than the president that they eventually settled for. The extended period of relative peace and prosperity since the end of the Second World War has been dubbed the Pax Americana [‘American Peace’], after the Pax Romana which perdured from the accession of Augustus in 27 BCE to the death of the last of the Five Good Emperors, Marcus Aurelius, in 180 CE. The United Kingdom’s departure from the European Union can be accounted for, in part, by the ghost of the nineteenth century Pax Britannica, when the British Empire was not merely a province of Rome but a Rome unto herself.”
― Neel Burton, The Meaning of Myth: With 12 Greek Myths Retold and Interpreted by a Psychiatrist

“The "Indians" knew the destruction of the tea had to be finished by midnight--not one minute later. Destroying the tea was against the law. The men were defying King George III of Great Britain. They could be tried for a crime against the government, thrown into jail, and hanged. Why would they risk their lives just to destroy a cargo of tea?”
― Linda Gondosch, How Did Tea and Taxes Spark a Revolution?: And Other Questions About the Boston Tea Party

“The girl stuck a feather into his knit cap and drew some dark lines on his face. Until that moment, Jason had not been sure if he would accompany the men down to the harbor. He ran his fingers over the feather. “Miss,” he asked, “I hate to whine, but do you have a longer turkey feather?” the girl pulled out his feather, grabbed a longer more colorful one from the table, and replaced it. “Oh, thank you, miss. If I am to commit treason, I believe it had best be done with aplomb.” He spoke low so that only she could hear. “You agree, of course?”
― Dory Codington, Cardinal Points

“The Patriots erred in the Boston Tea Party: they seized Oligarch tea & dumped it in the sea but left Oligarch gold untouched. It's that gold that has troubled the nation from that day to this. Next time, go for the gold. Hence these words: "... yes, not British tea but Oligarch gold must down Boston harbour go ...”
― Agona Apell, The Success Genome Unravelled: Turning men from rot to rock