History quotes

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

If you look back at the history of the twentieth century, Germany alone had practically destroyed Russia several times.

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs… I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

The titanic effort that has brought liberation to South Africa, and ensured the total liberation of Africa, constitutes an act of redemption for the black people of the world.

We have listened too long to the courtly Muses of Europe.

My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.

By 1960, the South Africans knew that they were becoming a pariah state.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

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.

There were plenty of other hominids, but they disappeared, probably because humans exterminated them, but nobody knows for sure.

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

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

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said ‚Let us pray.‘ We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

By curious accident of history and geography, the world’s major energy resources are located pretty much in Shiite regions. They’re a minority in the Middle East, but they happen to be where the oil is, right around the northern part of the Gulf.

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

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.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

And they that rule in England, in stately conclaves met, alas, alas for England they have no graves as yet.

Some mischievous people always there. Last several thousand years, always there. In future, also.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

Every time there has been an effort by the Haitian people to overcome the misery and poverty that comes from 200 years of bitter attacks, really bitter, the U.S. steps in and blocks it.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

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

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

My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.

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.

There has been a huge attack against private sector unions. Actually, that’s been going on since the Second World War.

In the 1960s, there was a point, 1968, ’69, when there was a very strong antiwar movement against the war in Vietnam. But it’s worth remembering that the war in Vietnam started – an outright war started in 1962.

I think history is collective memories. In writing, I’m using my own memory, and I’m using my collective memory.

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

Europe became rich because it exploited Africa; and the Africans know that.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party.

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

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.

The idea that women were oppressed throughout history is an appalling theory.

Unlike Europe, China can’t be intimidated. Europe backs down if the United States looks at it the wrong way. But China, they’ve been there for 3,000 years and are paying no attention to the barbarians and don’t see any need to.

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

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.

NATO has been a thread throughout my life.

History will point out some of the things I did wrong and some of the things I did right.

History has demonstrated that the most notable winners usually encountered heartbreaking obstacles before they triumphed. They won because they refused to become discouraged by their defeats.

America has fought five wars since 1945 and has gained its objectives in only one of them, the Gulf War.

I believe we can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam.

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

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.

I’ve been interested in Japan since the 1930s, when I read about Japan’s vicious crimes in Manchuria and China.

Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon. Indeed, it is a weapon unique in history, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it.

If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

If you look at the history of our country over the last 100 years, there have been periods where science and research have been celebrated. They were really kind of held up as heroes in society, which encouraged a generation of people to go into these fields.

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

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

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

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.

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.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.