Quotes from James A. Michener

The curious thing about this little forerunner of greatness is that although we are sure that he existed and are intellectually convinced that he had to have certain characteristics, no man has ever seen a shred of physical evidence that he really did exist.

When I was in the United States I had the mournful feeling that eighty percent of your people would welcome a Spartan dictatorship if it promised to improve the schools, discipline the minorities, put women back in their place, install a religious supremacy and terminate the silliness of the Bill of Rights. Many modern Americans would leap at such an offer, it seemed to me, which is why I wanted you to see Sparta. Because what you see here is what such a choice always leads

No fossil bone of this little creature has so far been found; we have tons of bones of diplodocus and her fellow reptiles, all of whom vanished, but of this small prototype of one of the great animal families, we have no memorials whatever. Indeed, he has not yet even been named, although we are quite familiar with his attributes; perhaps when his bones are ultimately found—and they will be—a proper name would be "paleohippus," the hippus of the Paleocene epoch.

What the Voortrekkers failed to realize in their moment of victory was that they had offered the covenant to God, not He to them.

You love the Hawaiians as potential Christians, but you despise them as people. I am proud to say that I have come to exactly the opposite conclusion, and it is therefore appropriate that I should be expelled from a mission where love is not.

Nevertheless, in obedience to the covenant as they understood it, they had won a signal victory, which confirmed their belief that He had accepted their offer and had personally intervened on their behalf. No

The Boer nation had become a theocracy, and would so remain. General

government is very lax. None of their people want the hassle, so the old folks keep driving until you read about it in the paper:

A major part of the explanation is that the missionary father has a wife who is also a missionary, just as well educated as he is. The children cannot escape being intelligent, and because the family is so poor, the children have to be clever about money. What a combination

It was language, which tyrannizes us all

how small he was and how wormy in manner

university of rural Poland with its two colleges: the farm soil and the kitchen argument.

In 1823 Thomas Jefferson, who as we shall see had long and painful experience with this incredible system, described it as, "The most dangerous blot on our Constitution, and one which some unlucky chance will some day hit." Today the danger is more grave than when Jefferson put his finger on it.

They headed northwest for a destination unknown, one man, one woman traversing barren lands that held no water, moving into canyons where desperadoes might be lurking, and crossing lands often ravaged by wandering bands of Hottentot and Bushmen outlaws.

Panic of 1873 had already cast its shadow across the money markets of New York and Chicago; prudent men were beginning to draw in their investments, but the men and women involved in this outlandish affair were so wealthy and so protected that the panic could not touch them.

If a journey is long enough, everyone must die along the way," the old woman replied.

Some three hundred leading Japanese citizens were removed from jail by these voluntary efforts of the missionary descendants. It wasn't that they liked Japanese, or that they feared Imperial Japan less than their neighbors. It was just that as Christians they could not sit idly by and watch innocent people maltreated.

Cohens are priests. Levis are temple attendants. Israels are the common

It's the good minds that find difficulty in committing themselves

So they parted, each man engaged in a gamble of staggering dimension: to fail meant ruin and death at the hangman's trap; to win meant the establishment of a nation founded on new principles whose possibilities were only dimly understood. In the hostile port of Nantes, where no man believed America could survive, Simon Steed had convinced himself of those new principles, and to them he was willing to dedicate his fortune and his life.

there were many ways to judge the acts of an institution, and the pragmatic way was not the worst, by any means.

the only thing in nature that moved was the sun, terrible and metallic as it inched its way across that indifferent sky.

Because a boy who could read would sooner or later come upon some book that would give him an idea, and a boy with an idea could accomplish almost anything.

You will have to live among Americans, and they despise most freedoms, so conform.