History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

A large part of mankind is angry not with the sins, but with the sinners.

I got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

I don’t see the point of doing an interview unless you’re going to share the things you learn in life and the mistakes you make. So to admit that I’m extremely human and have done some dark things I don’t think makes me unusual or unusually dark. I think it actually is the right thing to do, and I’d like to think it’s the nice thing to do.

NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Man has lost the capacity to foresee and to forestall. He will end by destroying the earth.

Religion, born of the earth’s need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

For 2,500 years, India has never invaded anybody.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

In the ’70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

Nothing stands out so conspicuously, or remains so firmly fixed in the memory, as something which you have blundered.

When you campaign and have to participate in so many debates just to the win the nomination of your party, you’ve had a lot of practice. You get to figure out as you go from one debate to another where you made your mistakes. By the time you get to the big debate you’re pretty polished.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

The dinosaurs aren’t remembered for much more than their bones. When humanity’s gone, what do we give to this little planet that we’re on, and what could we do collectively, removing the pride?

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

All great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

The wish to acquire more is admittedly a very natural and common thing; and when men succeed in this they are always praised rather than condemned. But when they lack the ability to do so and yet want to acquire more at all costs, they deserve condemnation for their mistakes.

When you make a mistake and the devil comes and tells you ‚You’re no good,‘ you don’t have to take on the guilt and condemnation he wants to put on you. No! You can immediately confess your mistake to God, thank Him for forgiving you and cleansing you with the blood of Jesus, and move forward in the victory of His grace and forgiveness.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

London is a roost for every bird.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

I don’t have space to enter into the examples or the history of this, so I’m left with having to make the bold statement that culture is extinct.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

England is a nation of shopkeepers.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

On the court, I want to try and get to the free-throw line a little more. And as a point guard, you can always get better at your decision-making and limiting your mistakes.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‚Let us pray.‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

We’re all capable of mistakes, but I do not care to enlighten you on the mistakes we may or may not have made.

A Religion of Evolution: that, when all is said and done, is what Man needs ever more explicitly if he is to survive and ‚superlive,‘ as soon as he becomes conscious of his power to ultra-hominize himself and of his duty to do so.

The Spanish Empire eventually collapsed because of its expensive taste for warfare and conquest.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don’t fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgement, repeated every day.

I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don’t know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.