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.

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

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

Politeness is to human nature what warmth is to wax.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Time is something that interests me a whole lot – past and present, and how the past appears as people change.

The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

If you’re in favour of any policy – reform, revolution, stability, regression, whatever – if you’re at least minimally moral, it’s because you think it’s somehow good for people. And good for people means conforming to their fundamental nature.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

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.

It is an unfortunate human failing that a full pocketbook often groans more loudly than an empty stomach.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.

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.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Really I don’t like human nature unless all candied over with art.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

Although modesty is natural to man, it is not natural to children. Modesty only begins with the knowledge of evil.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

Historically, privacy was almost implicit, because it was hard to find and gather information. But in the digital world, whether it’s digital cameras or satellites or just what you click on, we need to have more explicit rules – not just for governments but for private companies.

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.

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

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.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

The fastest manned vehicle in history was Apollo 10. It reached 25,000 mph.

It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.

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.

Nothing has really happened until it has been recorded.

Significant anniversaries are solemnly commemorated – Japan’s attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, for example.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

All modern revolutions have ended in a reinforcement of the power of the State.

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

I think that most of us would prefer to be popular than unpopular.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

The Middle East is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

One of the good things about the way the Gulf War ended in 1991 is, you’d see the Vietnam veterans marching with the Gulf War veterans.

Nature is not human hearted.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

If you go back a few hundred years, what we take for granted today would seem like magic – being able to talk to people over long distances, to transmit images, flying, accessing vast amounts of data like an oracle. These are all things that would have been considered magic a few hundred years ago.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

We grow older, but we do not change. We become more sophisticated, but at bottom we continue to resemble our young selves, eager to listen to the next story and the next, and the next.

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

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

There are times when one would like to hang the whole human race, and finish the farce.

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 upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

Up until the 1920s, everyone thought the universe was essentially static and unchanging in time.