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

In no instance have… the churches been guardians of the liberties of the people.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

So foul and fair a day I have not seen.

Even if it turns out that time travel is impossible, it is important that we understand why it is impossible.

Jewelry and pins have been worn throughout history as symbols of power, sending messages. Interestingly enough, it was mostly men who wore the jewelry in various times, and obviously crowns were part of signals that were being sent throughout history by people of rank.

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

The world at large is less inequitable today than at any time in history. Number of people in abject poverty, as a percentage, is at all-time low.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

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.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

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.

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

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

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.

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

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

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

When a man says he had pleasure with a woman he does not mean conversation.

It’s not simply to say, ‚My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,‘ but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don’t let yourself believe it will happen to you.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

At ev’ry word a reputation dies.

Americans are rising to the tasks of history, and they expect the same of us.

If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of a warring world, or to the arsenals of nations preparing for war, then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos and of Hiroshima.

We must always remember that the Chinese revolution was not a peasant’s revolution, but one of the extreme Right.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Mortality is very different when you’re 20 to when you’re 50.

In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

I noticed words crudely spray-painted upon the wall, perhaps by a young Berliner: ‚This wall will fall. Beliefs become reality.‘ Yes, across Europe, this wall will fall. For it cannot withstand faith; it cannot withstand truth. The wall cannot withstand freedom.

To understand the nature of the people one must be a prince, and to understand the nature of the prince, one must be of the people.

When I was a boy we didn’t wake up with Vietnam and have Cyprus for lunch and the Congo for dinner.

Real magic in relationships means an absence of judgment of others.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

When I understand myself, I understand you, and out of that understanding comes love.

The story as told in The Odyssey doesn’t hold water. There are too many inconsistencies.

Fame will go by and, so long, I’ve had you, fame. If it goes by, I’ve always known it was fickle. So at least it’s something I experience, but that’s not where I live.

If all the economists were laid end to end, they’d never reach a conclusion.

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.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

I like some animals more than some people, some people more than some animals.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

It is easier to be critical than correct.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

The beginnings and ends of shadow lie between the light and darkness and may be infinitely diminished and infinitely increased. Shadow is the means by which bodies display their form. The forms of bodies could not be understood in detail but for shadow.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

There is so much that people take for granted.