Those parts of history that would undermine the vision of the Left – which prevails in our education system from elementary school to postgraduate study – are not likely to get much attention.

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.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.

The life which men praise and regard as successful is but one kind. Why should we exaggerate any one kind at the expense of the others?

You go back to the 17th century, the commercial and industrial centers of the world were China and India.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

I have been influenced in my thinking by both west and east.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

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

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

I cannot swallow whole the view of Lincoln as the Great Emancipator.

I’m more of a realist when it comes to life, and I’d much rather my mother be in a spiritual place in Heaven than in a bed, sick, fighting for her life.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

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.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

What you see, but can’t see over is as good as infinite.

It’s so much easier to pray for a bore than to go and see one.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

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.‘

Seeing is not always believing.

When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that. Reality simply consists of different points of view.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

The cynics are right nine times out of ten.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

Let’s not burn the universities yet. After all, the damage they do might be worse.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

Everything popular is wrong.

I think it’s very important to have a feedback loop, where you’re constantly thinking about what you’ve done and how you could be doing it better. I think that’s the single best piece of advice: constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.

If you judge, investigate.

So vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the form of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.

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

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

As for my own views, they’ve of course evolved over the years. This conception of ‚renouncing beliefs‘ is very odd, as if we’re in some kind of religious cult. I ‚renounce beliefs‘ practically every time I think about the topics or find out what someone else is thinking.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

Our chief justices have probably had more profound and lasting influence on their times and on the direction of the nation than most presidents.

The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.

In one thousand years of Russia’s existence, its first popular national election ever to be held occurred in June 1991. Six days later, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed in Moscow!

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us.

I grew up in a very nice house in Houston, went to private school all my life and I’ve never even been to the ‚hood. Not that there’s anything wrong with the ‚hood.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world or to make it the last.

Older people sit down and ask, ‚What is it?‘ but the boy asks, ‚What can I do with it?‘.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

In the first book of my Discworld series, published more than 26 years ago, I introduced Death as a character; there was nothing particularly new about this – death has featured in art and literature since medieval times, and for centuries we have had a fascination with the Grim Reaper.