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.

Every President I think I’ve ever known, except Truman, has thought they didn’t quite get done what they wanted done. And toward the end of their Administrations, they were disappointed and wished they had done some things differently.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

De Sade is the one completely consistent and thoroughgoing revolutionary of history.

I think we’re going to the moon because it’s in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It’s by the nature of his deep inner soul… we’re required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

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

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Human nature is not nearly as bad as it has been thought to be.

I don’t think we handled the aftermath of the fall of Baghdad as well as we might have. But that’s now history.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

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.

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.

Of course, when I say that human nature is gentleness, it is not 100 percent so. Every human being has that nature, but there are many people acting against their nature, being false.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

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

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

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

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.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

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.

At United, there are great traditions, which you can’t buy in one or two years. They are created by victories. You need to prove again and again that you are better than the others. Manchester United have always done this, and are still doing it, so they are the best.

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

The human race is governed by its imagination.

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.

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

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

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.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

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.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

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

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Revolutions are the locomotives of history.

I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves, and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn. And because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters, and all our sons and daughters, now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

The point in history at which we stand is full of promise and danger. The world will either move forward toward unity and widely shared prosperity – or it will move apart.

Secretly we’re all a little more absurd than we make ourselves out to be.

Water is the softest of all things, yet it is the most powerful. The ocean patiently allows all things to flow into it. It is always flexible. The Tao is not about grasping, but allowing, like water.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The charm of history and its enigmatic lesson consist in the fact that, from age to age, nothing changes and yet everything is completely different.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

London is a roost for every bird.

Hope springs eternal in the human breast: Man never is, but always to be blest.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.