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.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

The principle that human nature, in its psychological aspects, is nothing more than a product of history and given social relations removes all barriers to coercion and manipulation by the powerful.

The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.

The ancient Romans built their greatest masterpieces of architecture, their amphitheaters, for wild beasts to fight in.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

There has to be a global mission of human progress.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

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

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.

We don’t have to let extremists define us.

The good of the people is the greatest law.

Our society strives to avoid any possibility of offending anyone – except God.

If we go on your iPhone and go to the dictionary and look up ‚humble,‘ 80 per cent of the definition is negative. It’s a controlling word. It’s a way to control the masses and to control the sheep.

If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

History should be written as philosophy.

The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together.

In 1949, China declared independence – an event known in Western discourse as ‚the loss of China‘ in the U.S. – with bitter recriminations and conflict over who was responsible for that loss.

If we keep doing what we’re doing, we’re going to keep getting what we’re getting.

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

Innovation is moving at a scarily fast pace.

In the ’70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

Personally, I would be delighted if there were a life after death, especially if it permitted me to continue to learn about this world and others, if it gave me a chance to discover how history turns out.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

In our seeking for economic and political progress, we all go up – or else we all go down.

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians, poets, and artists, and zoologists, and historians. They also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world. But if it hadn’t been computer science, these people would have been doing amazing things in other fields.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

The government is us; we are the government, you and I.

If there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

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.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

And so our goal on health care is, if we can get, instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year, it’s going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we’ve made huge progress. And by the way, that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That’s why we did it.

This City is what it is because our citizens are what they are.

China and the U.S. need each other very badly. Yes, we should argue about some things, but it’s not an ‚us versus them,‘ it’s an ‚us and them‘ type scenario.

No people is wholly civilized where a distinction is drawn between stealing an office and stealing a purse.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.

There are no constraints on the human mind, no walls around the human spirit, no barriers to our progress except those we ourselves erect.

In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

Africa will thrive.

We live in ugly times.

The truth of Moore’s law has made remarkable things possible. On the software side, I think natural user interfaces in all their forms are equally significant.

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

People seem to know about May Day everywhere except where it began, here in the United States of America. That’s because those in power have done everything they can to erase its real meaning.

Everybody is entertained to death.

Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

We welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfect.

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

No matter how hard we might wish, we will not be able to transform China’s behavior overnight.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.