We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what’s going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

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.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Until we’re educating every kid in a fantastic way, until every inner city is cleaned up, there is no shortage of things to do.

Developing nations want to become developed nations.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

What affects men sharply about a foreign nation is not so much finding or not finding familiar things; it is rather not finding them in the familiar place.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Life is about growing and improving and getting better.

Africa is on the rise.

It is a most mortifying reflection for a man to consider what he has done, compared to what he might have done.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

We’ve come a long way from the days where there was state-enforced segregation. But we still have a way to go.

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.

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.

If you’ve spent a long time developing a skill and techniques, and now some 14 year-old upstart can get exactly the same result, you might feel a bit miffed I suppose, but that has happened forever.

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.

Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend – or a meaningful day.

For every moment of triumph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.

One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.

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

In every parting there is an image of death.

All progress is precarious, and the solution of one problem brings us face to face with another problem.

Each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late.

The difference is too nice – Where ends the virtue or begins the vice.

Characters do not change. Opinions alter, but characters are only developed.

Self-government does not and should not imply the use of political agencies alone. Progress is born of cooperation in the community – not from governmental restraints.

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

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

John F. Kennedy was the victim of the hate that was a part of our country. It is a disease that occupies the minds of the few but brings danger to the many.

The ultimate tendency of civilization is towards barbarism.

Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle.

I think my message to the politicians who have within their power the ability to make change is, ‚Do you really, really not care about the future of your great-grandchildren? Because if we let the world continue to be destroyed the way we are now, what’s the world going to be like for your great-grandchildren?‘

You can’t stop everything from happening. But we’ve gotten to a point where we’re certainly trying. If a car doesn’t have four hundred air bags in it, then it’s no good.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.

Every one goes astray, but the least imprudent are they who repent the soonest.

What is history but a fable agreed upon?

Our problem right now is that we’re so specialized that if the lights go out, there are a huge number of people who are not going to know what to do. But within every dystopia there’s a little utopia.

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.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

Whatever America hopes to bring to pass in the world must first come to pass in the heart of America.

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

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

I was so rude when I was a little girl.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

Love to everybody who is out there progressing and taking things to the next level.

Mind you, the Elizabethans had so many words for the female genitals that it is quite hard to speak a sentence of modern English without inadvertently mentioning at least three of them.