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 want to give people a taste of the Caribbean, and show them the fun side of me.

My heroes don’t have anything special. They have something to tell other people but they don’t know how, so they talk to themselves.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

Words are loaded pistols.

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

If you want to get each individual’s honest opinion, you don’t want that opinion to be influenced by others who are present, much less allow a group to coordinate what they are going to say.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

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.

Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

I want to be a man who is truthful and who won’t let pride get in the way of my ripping myself open to my partner and saying, ‚Here I am. This is me.‘ I feel there’s something powerful when a man reaches a point in his life when he can be completely vulnerable.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

To be clear: we have fights and problems like any other couple.

I love trying new things.

Truth is a pathless land.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

We want everybody to act like adults, quit playing games, realize that it’s not just my way or the highway.

Nothing is so unbelievable that oratory cannot make it acceptable.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Talk that does not end in any kind of action is better suppressed altogether.

I don’t know about you, but most of my exchanges with cashiers are not that meaningful.

Children astound me with their inquisitive minds. The world is wide and mysterious to them, and as they piece together the puzzle of life, they ask ‚Why?‘ ceaselessly.

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.

The American people are entitled to see the president and to hear his views directly, and not to see him only through the press.

Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it.

There are four ways, and only four ways, in which we have contact with the world. We are evaluated and classified by these four contacts: what we do, how we look, what we say, and how we say it.

I do think that we’re gonna move towards this world where eventually you’ll be able to capture a whole experience that you’re in and be able to send that to someone.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

I was a little girl in World War II and I’m used to being freed by Americans.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

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.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

The best morale exist when you never hear the word mentioned. When you hear a lot of talk about it, it’s usually lousy.

We don’t get to know people when they come to us; we must go to them to find out what they are like.

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

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

I spent more time on dark ships in danger zones than any other woman in the world.

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 language of friendship is not words but meanings.

He who knows how to flatter also knows how to slander.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

When you make as many speeches and you talk as much as I do and you get away from the text, it’s always a possibility to get a few words tangled here and there.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

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

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

I don’t have faith in young people any more. I don’t waste time trying to communicate with them.

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.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

What convinces is conviction. Believe in the argument you’re advancing. If you don’t you’re as good as dead. The other person will sense that something isn’t there, and no chain of reasoning, no matter how logical or elegant or brilliant, will win your case for you.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that’s how they’ll react. But if you say, ‚We want peace, we want stability,‘ we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

I always keep my guard up with guys and I guess that can get in the way sometimes. I can make them go through hell.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.