History, a distillation of rumour.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

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

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.

History is present in all my novels. And whether I am directly talking about the sociological moment or just immersing my character in the environment, I am very aware of it.

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

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

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

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.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing. Today you are looking at the Taliban or ISIS; tomorrow you might be looking at another name.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

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

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Sure, women sportswriters look when they’re in the clubhouse. Read their stories. How else do you explain a capital letter in the middle of a word?

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

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

To our critical eyes, the threads of which the past is woven are, by nature, endless and indivisible. Scientifically speaking, we cannot grasp the absolute beginning of anything: everything extends backwards to be prolonged by something else.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

There is nothing that compares to the Holocaust.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

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

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

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

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.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

There is no gambling like politics.

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

Women. They are a complete mystery.

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.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

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

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 greatest tragedy in mankind’s entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.

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.

The Bible is full of warnings about false prophets and false messiahs. These satanically inspired people have appeared in almost every generation of history.

At least the Pilgrim Fathers used to shoot Indians: the Pilgrim Children merely punch time clocks.

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.

What is past is prologue.

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

It is absolutely impossible to transcend the laws of nature. What can change in historically different circumstances is only the form in which these laws expose themselves.

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

Domestic policy can only defeat us; foreign policy can kill us.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

Atoms are very special: they like certain particular partners, certain particular directions, and so on. It is the job of physics to analyze why each one wants what it wants.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001, it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks was exploited in America.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

The Egyptians could run to Egypt, the Syrians into Syria. The only place we could run was into the sea, and before we did that we might as well fight.