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.

From the beginning, Mandela and Tambo was besieged with clients. We were not the only African lawyers in South Africa, but we were the only firm of African lawyers. For Africans, we were the firm of first choice and last resort.

I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

In the 1940s, traveling for an African was a complicated process. All Africans over the age of sixteen were compelled to carry ‚Native passes‘ issued by the Native Affairs Department and were required to show that pass to any white policeman, civil servant, or employer. Failure to do so could mean arrest, trial, a jail sentence or fine.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ‚solve the climate crisis.‘ But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is to wake up and change.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

I think really, China, Chinese, I think they really have a long history of civilization, rich culture.

I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness; I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too. I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Change is inevitable. Change is constant.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Men who have reached and passed forty-five, have a look as if waiting for the secret of the other world, and as if they were perfectly sure of having found out the secret of this.

No matter how long he lives, no man ever becomes as wise as the average woman of forty-eight.

When I look back at what I had to go through in black baseball, I can only marvel at the many black players who stuck it out for years in the Jim Crow leagues because they had nowhere else to go.

The existing world economic order constitutes a system of plundering and exploitation like no other in history. Thus, the peoples believe less and less in statements and promises.

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile, hoping he will eat you last – but eat you he will.

It is not history which uses men as a means of achieving – as if it were an individual person – its own ends. History is nothing but the activity of men in pursuit of their ends.

Dissents speak to a future age.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

I truly believe that when the history books are written, our age will be remembered for three things: the war on terror, the digital revolution, and what we did – or did not do – to put the fire out in Africa. History, like God, is watching what we do.

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.

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.

It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be.

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

I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21 because he promised to get us out of the Korean War.

Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

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.

Arafat’s departure has created an awesome opportunity.

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

How young can you die of old age?

Excess generally causes reaction, and produces a change in the opposite direction, whether it be in the seasons, or in individuals, or in governments.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

The name Zahra was to have been lman’s own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.

Now we’re in the midst of not just advocating for change, not just calling for change – we’re doing the grinding, sometimes frustrating work of delivering change – inch by inch, day by day.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

I don’t know which will go first – rock ‚n‘ roll or Christianity.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Last year we said, ‚Things can’t go on like this‘, and they didn’t, they got worse.

Baseball changes through the years. It gets milder.

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.

Age merely shows what children we remain.

The Christian’s Bible is a drug store. Its contents remain the same, but the medical practice changes.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

There is nothing so stable as change.

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

Once you get into this great stream of history, you can’t get out.

Soon, I’ll be like all the others. The time will come for all of us, but the ideas of the Cuban Communists will remain.

Death means change our clothes. Clothes become old, then time to come change. So this body become old, and then time come, take young body.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Social struggles have been taking place throughout millennia, since human beings, by resorting to wars, were able to take hold of a surplus production to satisfy the essential needs of life.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

The men who followed Him were unique in their generation. They turned the world upside down because their hearts had been turned right side up. The world has never been the same.