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.

In remembering the appalling suffering of war on both sides, we recognise how precious is the peace we have built in Europe since 1945.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

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

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

People think I’m a celebrity. I’m not a celebrity.

Where liberty is, there is my country.

In its history, Europe has committed so many massacres and horrors that it should bow its own head in shame.

I believe with all my heart that America remains ‚the great idea‘ that inspires the world. It is a privilege to be born here. It is an honor to become a citizen here. It is a gift to raise your family here, to vote here, and to live here.

When the PC was launched, people knew it was important.

I am not The Rock. I am Dwayne Johnson.

If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

How wonderful it is to be an American. We have known the best of times and the worst of times.

All History is current; all injustice continues on some level, somewhere in the world.

Without Cambodia, I may never have become a mother. Part of my heart is and will always be in this country. And part of this country is always with me: Maddox.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.

I have done for my country, and for all mankind, all that I could do, and I now resign my soul, without fear, to my God – my daughter to my country.

The three great elements of modern civilization, Gun powder, Printing, and the Protestant religion.

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

If you’d have said Evangelical in 1957, most people wouldn’t know what you were talking about. And then, they’d be against it.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

I’m not afraid to look like a big, hairy, smelly, foreign devil in Tokyo, though I do my best not to, I really do.

The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.

As you know, I’m an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today, is the open arms of Americans. I have been received. I have been adopted by America.

To all those who have suffered as a consequence of our troubled past I extend my sincere thoughts and deep sympathy. With the benefit of historical hindsight we can all see things which we would wish had been done differently or not at all.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

The voice I use is a very old hardware speech synthesizer made in 1986. I keep it because I have not heard a voice I like better and because I have identified with it.

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

I love the natural world – it comes from my culture, which grew out of a people enslaved.

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.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

How fortunate I was to be alive and a lawyer when, for the first time in United States history, it became possible to urge, successfully, before legislatures and courts, the equal-citizenship stature of women and men as a fundamental constitutional principle.

Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

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

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

I once wanted to prove myself by being a great actress. Now I want to prove that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll be a great actress.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

London is a roost for every bird.

Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in the desert.

I’m afraid the SS’s relationship with the Catholic Church is something the Church still has to deal with and does not deny.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

The more people smoke herb, the more Babylon fall.

Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.

I became a Republican in 1951, the first year I could vote.

I am not part of the problem. I am a Republican.

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

About the idea of a clash between cultures, between civilisations, I don’t believe in it. It’s something some political leaders tried to use, and that the media tried and are still trying to sell us, in order to simplify the world and their work.

If you change and adapt your persona, you are seen as inauthentic; if you stay the angry young man, you fade from attention or seem tiresome.

The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

No greater nor more affectionate honor can be conferred on an American than to have a public school named after him.

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.