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

The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular.

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

In the late 1960s, the masses were supposed to be passive, not entering into the public arena and having their voices heard.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

The solutions to our problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

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.

I graduated from the University of Delaware with a double major in history and political science.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

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.

It is in the admission of ignorance and the admission of uncertainty that there is a hope for the continuous motion of human beings in some direction that doesn’t get confined, permanently blocked, as it has so many times before in various periods in the history of man.

The happiest women, like the happiest nations, have no history.

The colored folks been singing it and playing it just like I’m doin‘ now, man, for more years than I know. I got it from them.

The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.

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.

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

The people of Egypt are an intelligent people with a glorious history who left their mark on civilization.

I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

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

To make America the greatest is my goal, so I beat the Russian and I beat the Pole. And for the U.S.A. won the medal of gold. The Greeks said, ‚You’re better than the Cassius of old.‘

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

Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world… Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.

When you are organizing a group of people, the first thing that we do is we talk about the history of what other people have been able to accomplish – people that look like them, workers like them, ordinary people, working people – and we give them the list: these are people like yourself; this is what they were able to do in their community.

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.

The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

It is remarkable how closely the history of the apple tree is connected with that of man.

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

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

It is rather for us here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

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.

Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

There has never yet been a man in our history who led a life of ease whose name is worth remembering.

For 2,500 years, India has never invaded anybody.

When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

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

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

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.

I was losing interest in politics, when the repeal of the Missouri Compromise aroused me again. What I have done since then is pretty well known.

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation’s history. I mean in this century’s history. But we all lived in this century. I didn’t live in this century.

Madam President, speaking here in Dublin Castle it is impossible to ignore the weight of history, as it was yesterday when you and I laid wreaths at the Garden of Remembrance.

Of all the inventions of humans, the computer is going to rank near or at the top as history unfolds and we look back. It is the most awesome tool that we have ever invented. I feel incredibly lucky to be at exactly the right place in Silicon Valley, at exactly the right time, historically, where this invention has taken form.

It is difficult to violently suppress people in the long run, as the example of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries has shown.

I’ve got nothing against records – I’ve spent my life making them – but they are a kind of historical blip.

We are proud of the history of our country; we learned it in school and have grown up hearing of freedom, justice and human rights.

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

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.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

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.

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.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.

All black Americans have slave names. They have white names; names that the slave master has given to them.