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

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

A true critic ought to dwell upon excellencies rather than imperfections, to discover the concealed beauties of a writer, and communicate to the world such things as are worth their observation.

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

Our Heavenly Father loves you. He has created you to be successful and to have joy.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

A subject for a great poet would be God’s boredom after the seventh day of creation.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

I got no quarrel with them Vietcong.

Creation is a sustained period of bliss, even though the subject can still be very sad. Because there’s the triumph of coming through and understanding that you have, and that you did it the way only you could do it. You didn’t do it the way somebody told you to do it.

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.

I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

Those who create are rare; those who cannot are numerous. Therefore, the latter are stronger.

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

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

I knew from the age of 16 that I wanted to be a writer because I just didn’t think I could do anything else. So I read and read and wrote short stories and dreamed of escape.

The kings of Spain brought us the conquistadores and masters, whose footprints remained in the circular land grants assigned to those searching for gold in the sands of rivers, an abusive and shameful form of exploitation, traces of which can be noted from the air in many places around the country.

As soon as I arrived in the Indies, in the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force, in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts. And so it was that they soon understood us, and we them, either by speech or by signs, and they have been very serviceable.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

When a man becomes a writer, I think he takes on a sacred obligation to produce beauty and enlightenment and comfort at top speed.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

The root of this possibility of doing good – that we all have – is in creation.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.

A masterpiece is something said once and for all, stated, finished, so that it’s there complete in the mind, if only at the back.

If I had a time machine, I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens.

Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

Humanity at the centre of the primates, Homo sapiens, in humanity, is the end-product of a gradual work of creation, the successive sketches for which still surround us on every side.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

You may not always have a comfortable life and you will not always be able to solve all of the world’s problems at once but don’t ever underestimate the importance you can have because history has shown us that courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

History should be written as philosophy.

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.