If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times.

If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

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.

The Washington leadership has put aside non-proliferation programmes and devoted its energies and resources to driving the country to war by extraordinary deceit, then trying to manage the catastrophe it created in Iraq.

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

I was born on January 8, 1942, exactly three hundred years after the death of Galileo. I estimate, however, that about two hundred thousand other babies were also born that day. I don’t know whether any of them was later interested in astronomy.

War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

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

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

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.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

History does nothing; it does not possess immense riches, it does not fight battles. It is men, real, living, who do all this.

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!

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

I had nearly finished school because I was making effort not that bad on that. But there was a law in Germany after the war. You could not make your final examination before 18, so lots of people who were late because of the way had to do it first.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.

To secure peace is to prepare for war.

We did not raise armies for glory or for conquest.

To build may have to be the slow and laborious task of years. To destroy can be the thoughtless act of a single day.

Brave men rejoice in adversity, just as brave soldiers triumph in war.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

You can’t say civilization don’t advance… in every war they kill you in a new way.

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.

We should not look down on our first ancestors.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S.

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

I’d read up on the history of our country and I’d become fascinated with the story of the Alamo. To me it represented the fight for freedom, not just in America, but in all countries.

The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.

Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.

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.

History should be written as philosophy.

It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

I grew up in the South under segregation. So, I know what terrorism feels like – when your father could be taken out in the middle of the night and lynched just because he didn’t look like he was in an obeying frame of mind when a white person said something he must do. I mean, that’s terrorism, too.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

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.

Born to a tribal Bedouin family of nomadic desert shepherds in the region of Tripoli, Gaddafi was profoundly anti-colonialist. It is affirmed that his paternal grandfather died fighting against the Italian invaders when Libya was invaded by them in 1911.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‚Let us pray.‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

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

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

Wars based on principle are far more destructive… the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

You can’t make war in the Middle East without Egypt and you can’t make peace without Syria.

There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

War settles nothing.

The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.