The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

Since I have come to America, I am often asked whether my next novel will be set in America. I don’t think it will. I think I will be living in America for some time to come, but while living in America, I would like to write about Japanese society from the outside.

That sort of half sigh, which, accompanied by two or three slight nods of the head, is pity’s small change in general society.

Reactionaries often describe both Marx and Lenin as theorists, without taking into consideration that their utopias inspired Russia and China – the two countries called upon to lead a new world which will allow for human survival if imperialism does not first unleash a criminal, exterminating war.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

We always live in an uncertain world. What is certain is that the United States will go forward over time.

The Public is merely a multiplied ‚me.‘

We have to do more than just elect a new President if we truly want to change this country.

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.

But there’s so much kludge, so much terrible stuff, we are at the 1908 Hurley washing machine stage with the Internet. That’s where we are. We don’t get our hair caught in it, but that’s the level of primitiveness of where we are. We’re in 1908.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

I could do one show after another in China for the rest of my life and still die ignorant. There’s a lot of places left to go.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

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

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‚among the most unspeakable crimes in history.‘ I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

I don’t think even ungodly people realize what a society would be like that had no godly influence at all.

War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.

Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

There is too much government today. We’ve got to remember the government should be by the people, of the people, and for the people.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

There is no hierarchy of values any more. Real progress is due mainly to human genius, and that’s rare, and usually stems from a real elite, from a hierarchy.

Although the big word on the left is ‚compassion,‘ the big agenda on the left is dependency.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

I’m trying to make God more relevant in our society. And I think talking in everyday terms and making sure people can understand it – I think that’s important.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

All the United States, it is a society that is split like to the bottom, that had very poor people in the country that is one of the wealthiest countries.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

High-quality early-childhood programs and health coverage have expanded, and the number of mentoring relationships for at-risk youth has risen dramatically. That progress is encouraging, but it’s not evenly distributed.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

Mankind, when left to themselves, are unfit for their own government.

The finest clothing made is a person’s own skin, but, of course, society demands something more than this.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice.

Instead of noblemen, let us have noble villages of men.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I am not where I used to be.