The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

I refuse to allow any man-made differences to separate me from any other human beings.

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

If I had a time machine, I’d visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens.

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn’t turn out well for the Native Americans.

Returning to your family and where you came from, and your history… this is what makes you strong. It’s not looking out that’s going to do that – it’s looking in.

Nothing is pleasant that is not spiced with variety.

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

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

History, a distillation of rumour.

The greatest honor history can bestow is that of peacemaker.

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.

In my research, I’ve interviewed a lot of people who never fit in, who are what you might call ‚different‘: scientists, artists, thinkers. And if you drop down deep into their work and who they are, there is a tremendous amount of self-acceptance.

Eight years ago, you may remember Hillary and I were rivals for the Democratic nomination. We battled for a year and a half. Let me tell you, it was tough, because Hillary was tough. I was worn out. She was doing everything I was doing, but just like Ginger Rogers, it was backwards in heels.

Here’s the thing: every office I’ve run for I was the first to win. First person of color. First woman. First woman of color. Every time.

The history of free men is never really written by chance but by choice; their choice!

Reproductive choice has to be straightened out. There will never be a woman of means without choice anymore. That just seems to me so obvious. The states that changed their abortion laws before Roe are not going to change back. So we have a policy that only affects poor women, and it can never be otherwise.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

Blood alone moves the wheels of history.

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

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.

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

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.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

You know, one race will not be a survivor if the other one dies, and that’s something that we should think about.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

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

The little man is still a man.

Like so many American families, our families weren’t asking for much. They didn’t begrudge anyone else’s success or care that others had much more than they did… in fact, they admired it.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

It were not best that we should all think alike; it is difference of opinion that makes horse races.

We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.

Women have simple tastes. They get pleasure out of the conversation of children in arms and men in love.

We allow our ignorance to prevail upon us and make us think we can survive alone, alone in patches, alone in groups, alone in races, even alone in genders.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

Gays are some of the nicest, kindest, most loving people in the world.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

I stand for anti-bigotry, anti-Semitism, and anti-racism.

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

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

I go for all sharing the privileges of the government, who assist in bearing its burdens. Consequently, I go for admitting all whites to the right of suffrage, who pay taxes or bear arms (by no means excluding females).

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

In a democracy the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

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

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

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

You can tell the strength of a nation by the women behind its men.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

The right of every American to first-class citizenship is the most important issue of our time.

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!

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

No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a nice man who wishes that she were not.

Until justice is blind to color, until education is unaware of race, until opportunity is unconcerned with the color of men’s skins, emancipation will be a proclamation but not a fact.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

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.

History isn’t just the story of bad people doing bad things. It’s quite as much a story of people trying to do good things. But somehow, something goes wrong.

With patient and firm determination, I am going to press on for jobs. I’m going to press on for equality. I’m going to press on for the sake of our children. I’m going to press on for the sake of all those families who are struggling right now. I don’t have time to feel sorry for myself. I don’t have time to complain. I am going to press on.