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

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

Empire and liberty.

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.

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.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

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.

History is more or less bunk.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

In history people dressed much better than we do today.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

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.

The U.S.S.R. had absolutely nothing to do with the triumph of the Cuban Revolution.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.

Cows are my passion. What I have ever sighed for has been to retreat to a Swiss farm, and live entirely surrounded by cows – and china.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

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

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

Countries which receive aid do graduate. Within a generation, Korea went from being a big recipient to being a big aid donor. China used to get quite a bit of aid; now it’s aid-neutral.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

In November 2004, U.S. occupation forces launched their second major attack on the city of Falluja. The press reported major war crimes instantly, with approval.

By curious accident of history and geography, the world’s major energy resources are located pretty much in Shiite regions. They’re a minority in the Middle East, but they happen to be where the oil is, right around the northern part of the Gulf.

I can not believe that war is the best solution. No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

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.

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

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

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.

The revolutionary breakthrough will come with rockets that are fully and rapidly reusable. We will never conquer Mars unless we do that. It’ll be too expensive. The American colonies would never have been pioneered if the ships that crossed the ocean hadn’t been reusable.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

My clothes are very popular in Japan.

In the history of medicine, it is not always the great scientist or the learned doctor who goes forward to discover new fields, new avenues, new ideas.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

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.

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

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

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.‘

Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven’t had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

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.

Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.