Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
No power or virtue of man could ever have deserved that what has been fated should not have taken place.
The fact of being reported increases the apparent extent of a deplorable development by a factor of ten.
Reason is incompetent to answer any fundamental question about God, or morality, or the meaning of life.
A society is a group whose members have more relationships with one another then they do with outsiders.
We (women) take it for granted that we can do what we want. Not so very long ago, that was not the case.
Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.
Rittner's Computer Law: Never argue with people who write with digital ink and pay by the kilowatt-hour.
Whatever it is that you do, if you have that passion and desire for it, that's the most important thing.
Once a president gets to the White House, the only audience that is left that really matters is history.
We Virginians do not go to the storied shrines of the past to do worship but rather to gain inspiration.
America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution.
A congressman is a pig. The only way to get his snout from the trough is to rap it sharply with a stick.
The most hateful grief of all human griefs is to have knowledge of a truth, but no power over the event.
I always emphasize the historic role of people of color in organizing and protesting to achieve justice.
I didn't want to spent a lot of close time with someone who believed that fun is a bourgeois indulgence.
The spoken word vanished with the wind. Likewise, the unrecorded life disappears as if it never existed.
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers
To the stern student of affairs, Beirut is a phenomenon, beguiling perhaps, but quite, quite impossible.
Whatever our creed or belief, we all know that there is no way back, that we must fight our way through.
The writing of history reflects the interests, predilections, and even prejudices of a given generation.
The great men of power who seek to change the nations they belong to usually are pretty terrible people.
A third force, developing itself more slowly, becomes even more potent than the rest: the power of gold.
Too close and unthinking an allegiance to Washington has sometimes got British governments into trouble.
Toil and pleasure, in their natures opposite, are yet linked together in a kind of necessary connection.
[A.J. Muste] was very influenced - in - influential in the peace movement, in the civil rights movement.
It's the historian's job not to ridicule the myths, but to show the difference between myth and reality.
All the pathos and irony of leaving one’s youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel
A country can truly call itself sporting when the majority of its people feel a personal need for sport.
A just government maintains a healthy tension between the claims of authority and the claims of liberty.
Battles are won through the ability of men to express concrete ideas in clear and unmistakable language.
My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier.
A good shepherd shears his flock, not flays them. [Lat., Boni pastoris est tondere pecus non deglubere.]
None mourn more ostentatiously over the death of Germanicus than those who most rejoice at it [a death].
If we must fall, we should boldly meet the danger. [Lat., Si cadere necesse est, occurendum discrimini.]
The East European small countries have a sense of betrayal, of having been forgotten by Western leaders.
Our enlightened posterity will look back upon us who eat oxen and sheep, just as we look upon cannibals.
In each colony in 1750 were to be found two sets of governing organizations, - the local and the general.
A man's admiration of absolute government is proportionate to the contempt he feels for those around him.
History, it is easily perceived, is a picture-gallery containing a host of copies and very few originals.
Of all nations, those submit to civilization with the most difficulty which habitually live by the chase.
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
The power of historical fiction for bad and for good can be immense in shaping consciousness of the past.
The only real struggle in the history of the world ... is between the vested interest and social justice.
The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
Better to have your enemies inside your tent pissing out, then to have them outside your tent pissing in.
The highest, the only reality, is ever at hand, but for the most part invisible. Genius makes it visible.
Education... has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.
By common consent gray hairs are a crown of glory; the only object of respect that can never excite envy.