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.

There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history.

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

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

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

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

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

The progress of evolution from President Washington to President Grant was alone evidence to upset Darwin.

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

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

I hope I’m wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

My constant prayer, my number one foreign goal, is to bring peace to Israel. And in the process to Israel’s neighbours.

I propose to construct a new chart for navigating, on which I shall delineate all the sea and lands of the Ocean in their proper positions under their bearings; and further, I propose to prepare a book, and to put down all as it were in a picture, by latitude from the equator, and western longitude.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962.

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

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.

I’ve just finished my 20th book this past year and I’m working on my 21st book about the Middle East right now that I’ll finish this year. And I get up early in the morning and when I get tired of the computer and tired of doing research, I walk 20 steps out to my woodshop and I either build furniture or paint paintings. I’m an artist too.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‚Look, here’s what happened.‘

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.

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.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

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

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

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Even in high school I was very interested in history – why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

From the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

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.

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

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Israel is a pretty crazy state.

A kingdom founded on injustice never lasts.

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.

To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

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.

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

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

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

I sent American troops to Iraq to make its people free, not to make them American. Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way.

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.

Where you live in the world should not determine whether you live in the world.

History is a set of lies agreed upon.

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

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

NATO’s brutal military alliance has become the most perfidious instrument of repression known in the history of humankind.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Whatever final judgment awaits ‚Bush v. Gore‘ in the annals of history, I am certain that the good work and good faith of the U.S. federal judiciary as a whole will continue to sustain public confidence at a level never beyond repair.

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

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.