Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

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.

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.

The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly ‚cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.

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

History should be written as philosophy.

In criticism I will be bold, and as sternly, absolutely just with friend and foe. From this purpose nothing shall turn me.

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it’s this world or nothing. That’s a very powerful perception.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

I do like Burial; he’s so curiously clumsy, you can’t help but be moved. It’s so un-Hollywood, and the rhythms are so un-danceable.

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.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

When my ancestors came from Africa, they were shackled by our neck, our wrists, and our ankles in steel chains. I’ve turned those steel chains into gold to symbolize the fact that I’m still a slave, only my price tag is higher.

Woz is living his own life now. He hasn’t been around Apple for about five years. But what he did will go down in history.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

The unforgivable crime is soft hitting. Do not hit at all if it can be avoided; but never hit softly.

We may find in the long run that tinned food is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

It has so happened in all ages of the world that some have labored, and others have, without labor, enjoyed a large proportion of the fruits.

All empires come to an end, and the American one is no exception.

The more you know of your history, the more liberated you are.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

Machines were, it may be said, the weapon employed by the capitalists to quell the revolt of specialized labor.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot – past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.

Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

In war there is no substitute for victory.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is.

We must, I believe, start teaching our children the sanity of nonviolence much earlier.

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

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

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

As a global society, we do not have to agree, endorse or condone the lifestyle choices of others. However, history has taught us that we equally cannot and should not excuse those who would hide behind religion or misuse God’s word to justify bigotry and persecution.

I’ve been interested in Japan since the 1930s, when I read about Japan’s vicious crimes in Manchuria and China.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.

To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.