When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.

President Obama seems completely unaware of how many of the policies he is trying to impose have been tried before, in many times and places around the world, and have failed time and again.

The whole of science is nothing more than a refinement of everyday thinking.

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.

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

On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted… but to weigh and consider.

As a Western, ‚The Magnificent Seven‘ was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as ‚Seven Samurai.‘

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

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.

Anything popular is populist, and populist is rarely a good adjective.

The concept of Kimye has more cultural significance than what Page Six could write.

History, a distillation of rumour.

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.

The making of an American begins at the point where he himself rejects all other ties, any other history, and himself adopts the vesture of his adopted land.

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Men do not learn much from the lessons of history and that is the most important of all the lessons of history.

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

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

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

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.

Society therefore is as ancient as the world.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt’s time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it’s different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment.

Poetry is nearer to vital truth than history.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.

For my part, I consider that it will be found much better by all parties to leave the past to history, especially as I propose to write that history myself.

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.

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

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

History shows us that in times of people feeling like they are in need of some sort of rebellion or protests, the artists rise because the poetry we create about pain and its relationship to culture in the world begins to soothe and heal people who are feeling confused or afraid.

Biography lends to death a new terror.

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

Rush Limbaugh is a lame professional swine, and he makes a good living at it. He is like a hired geek in some traveling backwoods carnival – the freaks who bite the heads off chickens – but Limbaugh is a modernized geek who thinks he can bite the heads off of people.

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

The secret to the movie business, or any business, is to get a good education in a subject besides film – whether it’s history, psychology, economics, or architecture – so you have something to make a movie about. All the skill in the world isn’t going to help you unless you have something to say.

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!

Hold those things that tell your history and protect them. During slavery, who was able to read or write or keep anything? The ability to have somebody to tell your story to is so important. It says: ‚I was here. I may be sold tomorrow. But you know I was here.‘

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

Dissents speak to a future age.

Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

I’m not an expert on the arms race.

We should not look at terrorism from the nameplates – which group they belong to, what is their geographical location, who are the victims. These individual groups or names will keep changing.

How many emperors and how many princes have lived and died and no record of them remains, and they only sought to gain dominions and riches in order that their fame might be ever-lasting.

The deceit and distortion surrounding the American invasion of Vietnam is by now so familiar that it has lost its power to shock.

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.

I don’t think anyone has been slandered more than the Jews.

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

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.

The Center for Disease Control started out as the malaria war control board based in Atlanta. Partly because the head of Coke had some people out to his plantation, and they got infected with malaria, and partly ‚cause all the military recruits were coming down and having a higher fatality rate from malaria while training than in the field.

Truly fertile Music, the only kind that will move us, that we shall truly appreciate, will be a Music conducive to Dream, which banishes all reason and analysis. One must not wish first to understand and then to feel. Art does not tolerate Reason.

John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.

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