Quotes About History

I do believe in the power of freedom. The power of freedom is the mightiest force of history. Once that power unleashes, it ultimately leads to peace and prosperity.

I feel most strongly about Jerusalem, because architects ultimately have to address that city.

So the result was that as one approached a political convention for most of the 19th century and for most of the 20th century until the 1960's, part of the drama was the fact that you didn't know ultimately who was going to be the nominee at the end of that convention week.

What ultimately happened is that my country had a war. I think it would be extraordinary, as a writer, not to want to write about that.

Period drama is such a huge umbrella term: it seems to cover everything from Claudius to something from the 1920s.

There are many examples in our history of overheated rhetoric leading to fear and prejudice and government overreach. My own grandfather, a sociologist, was dragged in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee. He said he wasn't a Communist and explained that American Negroes were patriots like everyone else.

In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to 1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were exterminated.

True conservatives fear anything that is at odds with the status quo, even to the extent of being unable to recognise when the status quo represents injustice. And reactionary conservatives actually want to tear down the gains of the past.

In 1939, Germany established gun control. From 1939 to 1945, six million Jews and seven million others unable to defend themselves were exterminated.

At times, we were forced to go through a history of dependence, unable to determine our own destiny. But today, we are at the threshold of a new turning point.

France's Charles VI was subject to fits of insanity and unable to rule.

The First Australians are the true cooks and 'food inventors' of these lands and their exclusion from our history, and specifically our food culture, is unacceptable.

Today, nostalgia is almost as unacceptable as racism.

If we had done the work that we should have done in the 20th century to combat our history of racial inequality, no one could win national office after demonizing people because they're Mexican or Muslim. We would be in a place where we would find that unacceptable.

To me, the remarkable thing is it's pretty much unanimous the way blind people have been perceived in all cultures and for millennia. The first is, if they can't see, they must be stupid. The second one is, and this is a very old one, that blindness is such a terrible thing that it must be a curse from God for some evil that you committed.

Historically, aggression unanswered has led to more aggression.

I'd love to meet Shakespeare. I've done so much research on him and there are so many unanswered questions.

It seems unavoidable that history will always link the reestablishment of the State of Israel with the tragedy of the Holocaust.

It's quite unbelievable that Charlie Crist is getting away with this reinvention of himself - this rewriting of history for blatantly political purposes. Other than his gender, the guy has flip-flopped on everything, and I don't put that past him either.

Jesus and Lincoln, Moses and Jefferson can seem so long gone, so unbelievable, so dead.

The Native American side was tragic. It's just unbelievable what has happened to them.

When I was young and the empire was beginning to disintegrate, the idea was absolutely unbelievable, particularly to children who'd been taught that the sun never set... that's what all my books are about, the end of empire.

For me, 'Parmanu' was an awakening of sorts. The film is about a covert mission. It's sometimes unbelievable that we get to recreate a part of history and live an incident that made history and changed the way our country was perceived.

It's an unbelievable feeling. I'm world champ. I'm world champ! I made history.