Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find - and there will be plenty.
Never, in these United States, has the brain of man conceived, or the hand of man fashioned, so perfect a thing as a clipper ship.
People make a grievous error thinking that a list of facts is the truth. Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.
I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower.
Rulers always hate and suspect the next in succession. [Lat., Suspectum semper invisumque dominantibus qui proximus destinaretur.]
The battle of Varus is an enigma, not in a military but in a political point of view - not in its course, but in its consequences.
For so remarkably perverse is the nature of man that he despises whoever courts him, and admires whoever will not bend before him.
It is useless to attack men who could not be controlled even if conquered, while failure would leave us in an even worse position.
Men do not rest content with parrying the attacks of a superior, but often strike the first blow to prevent the attack being made.
I'm not sure I've learned anything new about life; but I've had to think harder about death and what comes after for other people.
Harriet Tubman fought American slavery single handed and was a pioneer in that organized effort known as the Underground Railroad.
It is far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism, for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one.
Men living in democratic times have many passions, but most of their passions either end in the love of riches, or proceed from it.
So many of my thoughts and feelings are shared by the English that England has turned into a second native land of the mind for me.
The genius of democracies is seen not only in the great number of new words introduced but even more in the new ideas they express.
In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.
And thus goes segregation which is the most far-reaching development in the history of the Negro since the enslavement of the race.
Most women are pragmatists who have allowed extremists on the left and right to manipulate the family issue for their own purposes.
Vicissitudes of fortune, which spares neither man nor the proudest of his works, which buries empires and cities in a common grave.
Institutions may crumble and governments fall, but it is only that they may renew a better youth, and mount upwards like the eagle.
We have the resources (to end hunger), we know what has to be done, and it's something that can be achieved at a rather modest cost
You know, sometimes, when they say you're ahead of your time, it's just a polite way of saying you have a real bad sense of timing.
The main thing history can teach us is that human actions have consequences, and that certain choices, once made, cannot be undone.
Black people cannot and will not become integrated into American society on any terms but those of self-determination and autonomy.
America is supposed to be given over to ugliness. There are a good many ugly things there and the ugliest are the most pretentious.
Of all studies, the one he would rather have avoided was that of his own mind. He knew no tragedy so heartrending as introspection.
I think to be shot in a mountain valley somewhere or other is altogether less glorious than crashing an airliner into a skyscraper.
My first restoration was on Napoleon, trying to put the French version in with the English version, and it was most unsatisfactory.
In schoolbooks and in literature we can separate ecclesiastical and political history; in the life of mankind they are intertwined.
Better and safer is an assured peace than a victory hoped for. The one is in your own power, the other is in the hands of the gods.
Men generally decide upon a middle course, which is most hazardous, for they know neither how to be entirely good nor entirely bad.
The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience.
As with the pursuit of happiness, the pursuit of truth is itself gratifying whereas the consummation often turns out to be elusive.
Governing is one thing, campaigning is another - and the latter becomes far more pronounced in an election-year State of the Union.
Under our Constitution, military leaders have no choice but to endorse the president's decision after giving him their best advice.
The Secular City, having legislated and litigated itself out of any entanglement with the City of God, would be a hell upon earth .
If a lecturer, he wishes to be heard; if a writer, to be read. He always hopes for a public beyond that of the long-suffering wife.
He [Caesar Augustus] found a city built of brick; he left it built of marble. [Lat., Urbem lateritiam accepit, mamoream relinquit.]
Power acquired by guilt was never used for a good purpose. [Lat., Imperium flagitio acquisitum nemo unquam bonis artibus exercuit.]
If active or concerned citizens forfeit politics, they thereby abandon their society to its most mediocre and venal public servants
History is the sextant of states which, tossed by wind and current, would be lost in confusion if they could not fix their position.
The British bombing of Caen beginning on D-Day in particular was stupid, counter-productive and above all very close to a war crime.
It takes me three or four years to research and write each book and the individual stories stay with you for a long time afterwards.
The reason the Christians have murdered on such a vast scale and killed anyone and everyone in their way is purely and simply greed.
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
The mind is a vagrant thing.... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.
In the field of controversy I always pity the moderate party, who stand on the open middle ground exposed to the fire of both sides.
The history of empires is the record of human misery; the history of the sciences is that of the greatness and happiness of mankind.
Truth, naked, unblushing truth, the first virtue of all serious history, must be the sole recommendation of this personal narrative.
Humanity, morality, decency, might be forgotten, but codfish must still be had for the use of the faithful in Lent and on fast days.