Quotes About History

When it comes to two of the big social earthquakes in the last fifty years - which are the gay movement and the women's movement - I think there is a direct line from Kinsey to those.

Today's global justice movement may be the biggest, most diverse and energetic in history.

When I started graduate school I was interested in the culture of the Civil Rights Movement.

My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anti-colonial movement.

I remember, growing up, you didn't wear an England shirt. The English flag was very much - and still is, to some extent - associated with the far-right movements of the 1980s that I grew up around.

Political movements and mega sporting events have always gone hand in hand. In 1980, there were Cold War boycotts in Moscow and again in 1984 during Los Angeles Games.

I didn't know of any homophile movements pre-Stonewall.

The Civil War always moves me.

I wish I had been born 20 years earlier, so I could have been in the movie business in the 1970s.

The Millennial Generation - the biggest American generation in history - is reversing the migration into rural areas and moving back to city centers.

The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is.

I always think of Gilbert Norrell as being Salieri to Jonathan Strange being Mozart.

Historically, Congress hasn't paid much attention to the confines the Constitution establishes.

When '12 Years a Slave' got that much attention, everyone started to copy that. That story has to be told, but there are a lot more stories to be told than slavery.

At the end of the day, who at my age can say that they fought somebody that fought Muhammad Ali?

Think about all the great boxers who have fought here, starting with Muhammad Ali. And as well as all that, I believe I will be the first boxer from Liverpool to appear at the Garden.

And we never got the mule, let alone the forty acres.

Multiculturalism may well be our saviour, wresting us out from the straitjacket of our history, thrusting the old continent into an environment where other ethnicities, less cynical and more positive, will play a big role in its future.

Every country is going to have to face up to globalisation, but Scotland has got a unique capacity because of its history as part of a multinational state to help us deal with that problem.

There is a multitude of experiences that make up the black experience.

If I could uninvent anything, I would uninvent Hitler's mum, guns and broccoli.

I've been to India a lot, ever since when my mum was in 'Jewel In The Crown.'

My roots are Scottish. My dad's parents are from Scotland, and my mum's dad is Scots.

My father came to England from India in 1957, and my mum came in 1960.