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.

I’d done a lot of research in Hollywood and in academia. I love research and so I wanted to kind of ground the book in history, in things that I read that were universal and timeless and then kind of let my own experiences sort of filter through all of this history.

The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

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

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

If anyone thinks they’d rather be in a different part of history, they’re probably not a very good student of history. Life sucked in the old days. People knew very little, and you were likely to die at a young age of some horrible disease. You’d probably have no teeth by now. It would be particularly awful if you were a woman.

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.

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.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.

This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says I have. I can do what it says I can do.

For 500 years, since European explorers came, Latin American countries had been separated from one another. They had very limited relations. Integration is a prerequisite for independence.

No boxer in the history of boxing has had Parkinson’s. There’s no injury in my brain that suggests that the illness came from boxing.

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

But let me tell you, this gender thing is history. You’re looking at a guy who sat down with Margaret Thatcher across the table and talked about serious issues.

I keep a hotel room in my town, although I have a large house. And I go there at about 5:30 in the morning, and I start working. And I don’t allow anybody to come in that room. I work on yellow pads and with ballpoint pens. I keep a Bible, a thesaurus, a dictionary, and a bottle of sherry. I stay there until midday.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

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

My real dream is to have a whole, like, buy a whole piece of land. Imagine, like, a long driveway. Like, a cul de sac-type street, with maybe, like, seven houses. Me be right here. Have my mom be able to be right here. My brother over here. My girl’s grandmother and family right here. Friends over there. That’s my real dream.

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

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!

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

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.

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis.

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

Ethiopia didn’t just blow my mind; it opened my mind. Anyway, on our last day at this orphanage a man handed me his baby and said, ‚Would you take my son with you?‘ He knew, in Ireland, that his son would live, and that in Ethiopia, his son would die.

We need more missionaries – more worthy missionaries.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it.

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

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.

Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Historically, the stuff of the universe goes on becoming concentrated into ever more organized forms of matter.

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.

I have always been an old-line Henry Clay Whig.

Communists have always played an active role in the fight by colonial countries for their freedom, because the short-term objects of Communism would always correspond with the long-term objects of freedom movements.

We no longer think of chairs as technology; we just think of them as chairs. But there was a time when we hadn’t worked out how many legs chairs should have, how tall they should be, and they would often ‚crash‘ when we tried to use them.

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

We are asking the nations of Europe between whom rivers of blood have flowed to forget the feuds of a thousand years.

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

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

More understand China, then more people will have interest in China and more people will come to China to visit us because I am a tourist ambassador.

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.

Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

When I was 18, I went to the Soviet Union. I kept hearing that America was planning to bomb them – lots of bombs were going to come down on these people. I went there not knowing anything, except that I thought the whole thing was stupid and that I wanted to see who these people were that we were going to bomb.

History should be written as philosophy.

Ridiculous yachts and private planes and big limousines won’t make people enjoy life more, and it sends out terrible messages to the people who work for them. It would be so much better if that money was spent in Africa – and it’s about getting a balance.

Latin America has much richer resources. You’d expect it to be far more advanced than East Asia, but it had the disadvantage of being under imperialist wings.

America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

Colonies do not cease to be colonies because they are independent.

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

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

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

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

I have never changed my message. I preach the Bible, and I preach it with authority.

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.