The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

Many readers fail to realize this, but ‚The Color Purple‘ is a theological text. It is about the reclamation of one’s original God: the earth and nature.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.

Success is always dangerous, and we need to be alert and avoid becoming the victims of our own success. Will we influence the world for Christ, or will the world influence us?

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.

I was a little girl in World War II and I’m used to being freed by Americans.

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

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

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

We’ve persevered because of a belief we share with the Iraqi people – a belief that out of the ashes of war, a new beginning could be born in this cradle of civilization. Through this remarkable chapter in the history of the United States and Iraq, we have met our responsibility. Now, it’s time to turn the page.

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

When my dad founded our church, he used either a globe or a map of the world behind him. It was symbolic of what Christ said: to go forth and preach hope to the world. We believe in the cross, but we just continued with the globe.

In Germany I have been acknowledged again since the fall of Hitler, but my works, partly suppressed by the Nazis and partly destroyed by the war; have not yet been republished there.

One thing that I find very unmotivating is the kind of Plan B argument: when Earth gets destroyed, you want to be somewhere else. That doesn’t work for me. We have sent robotic probes now to every place in the solar system, and this is the best one.

The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it.

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.

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.

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.

Canada was built on dead beavers.

My childhood did not prepare me for the fact that the world is full of cruel and bitter things.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

There are some loony people in this world!

I do know that throughout history, all paper money has eventually come back to its true value, which is zero.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

I am the astronaut of boxing. Joe Louis and Dempsey were just jet pilots. I’m in a world of my own.

War had always seemed to me to be a purely human behavior. Accounts of warlike behavior date back to the very first written records of human history; it seemed to be an almost universal characteristic of human groups.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

The world has not yet reached the point which, in my view, is an essential condition for the survival of our human species: access by all the peoples to the material resources of this planet.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

Assassination has never changed the history of the world.

You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lines. You may trod me in the very dirt, but still, like dust, I’ll rise.

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

I don’t know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

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

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

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.

Adversity is the diamond dust Heaven polishes its jewels with.

The name Muhammad is the most common name in the world. In all the countries around the world – Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon – there are more Muhammads than anything else. When I joined the Nation of Islam and became a Muslim, they gave me the most famous name because I was the champ.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

I often say of George Washington that he was one of the few in the whole history of the world who was not carried away by power.

Since the time of the witch burnings, the grandmothers and the healers and the midwives have been systematically targeted. And burned at the stake for hundreds of years, decimating whole communities.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

One may say the eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility.

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.

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

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

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

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‚among the most unspeakable crimes in history.‘ I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.

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