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

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

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.

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.

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

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

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Antiquities are history defaced, or some remnants of history which have casually escaped the shipwreck of time.

Music has the power to inspire the world.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes of each honest worker.

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.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

This is the first age that’s ever paid much attention to the future, which is a little ironic since we may not have one.

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

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.

I think the FBI is the premier law enforcement agency in all of human history.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.

Actors are one family over the entire world.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

O love, if I regret the age when one savors you, it is not for the hour of pleasure, but for the one that follows it.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

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.

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

Here comes 40. I’m feeling my age and I’ve ordered the Ferrari. I’m going to get the whole mid-life crisis package.

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.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.

‚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.

If you get to my age in life and nobody thinks well of you, I don’t care how big your bank account is, your life is a disaster.

History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.

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.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

Little children, you are from God, and have conquered them; for the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in this world.

The world remains ever the same.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

Hate and force cannot be in just a part of the world without having an effect on the rest of it.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

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

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

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

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

We’re going to have the best-educated American people in the world.

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.