Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies.

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

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

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

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

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.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

Nixon is one of the few in the history of this country to run for high office talking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides.

History has proven that each generation of Howard graduates will forge the way forward for our country and our world.

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.

I’m a very private person. I don’t go out much. I’m home with kids. I go to work. I don’t really like being the focus of attention, which is why I like being behind the camera more.

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.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

Ronald Reagan used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they’d both unite against an invasion from Mars.

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.

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

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

You have to be careful about how much you reveal to people that look up to you so much.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

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.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

Liverpool is a club with a big, big, big history, and all the clubs in the world have a big history if the present is not too successful. If you have never had success, then nobody knows how it is, but in Liverpool, everybody knows how it was.

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

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

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

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.

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

I’ve… been accused of being involved with every man I’m ever seen with or worked with. Maybe I have, maybe I ain’t. I never tell if I have.

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.

I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

The details surrounding both my marriage and subsequent filing for divorce are private, and I had hoped to keep them that way for the sake of my family.

We will explore the mysteries of science and harness the power of technology and innovation. We will realise the opportunities of the digital world. Our youth will learn more from – and with – each other.

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

My personal feelings are my personal feelings. I don’t want to express them with anyone except for a very few people. It doesn’t do any good. It really doesn’t.

I don’t have anything to hide.

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

Let’s teach kids, at the kindergarten level, what the contributions of people of color were to building the United States of America.

When General Allenby conquered Jerusalem during World War I, he was hailed in the American press as Richard the Lion-Hearted, who had at last won the Crusades and driven the pagans out of the Holy Land.

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.

You go back to the 17th century, the commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

At home I am a nice guy: but I don’t want the world to know. Humble people, I’ve found, don’t get very far.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

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.

When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.

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

You don’t know when you’re being watched. That’s one of the weird things about celebrity. It’s my least favorite part of acting, celebrity.

‚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 perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

Whoever wishes to keep a secret must hide the fact that he possesses one.

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

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