Quotes About History

I've been to North Africa many times.

North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

The first English settlers of North America knew they were making history. New Englanders in particular were so sure of it that they started writing their own accounts of themselves as soon as they got here.

England was the first true colonial power to use its dominion over a large part of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, North America, and many Caribbean islands, in the first half of the 20th century.

We live in the United States. British settlers founded the first colony in North America. And English is our language.

People have asked me about the 19th century and how I knew so much about it. And the fact is I really grew up in the 19th century, because North Carolina in the 1950s, the early years of my childhood, was exactly synchronous with North Carolina in the 1850s. And I used every scrap of knowledge that I had.

My mom had an encounter with the KKK when she was, I think, 7 years old in North Carolina. She snuck into a cross burning. I'm so lucky she didn't get caught, because I wouldn't be here.

Dot Helms and North Carolina are one and the same.

I'm really interested in history and when I looked into the settlers who came to my home state, North Carolina, I found that the largest settlement of Hebridean islanders outside of Scotland was right there in North Carolina.

During Black History Month, we not only should celebrate those who have made North Carolina a better place to live for everyone, but we should also acknowledge the deep sacrifices people made to get us to where we are now.

Every February, we celebrate the heritage and contributions of African Americans in North Carolina and around the country. North Carolina holds an important place in African American history going back generations.

When you're just a breath away from North Korea, it boggles your mind that that exists, or that something like the Khmer Rouge ever existed. You wonder how we allow that to happen as human beings; how we allow the human condition to get so depraved and desperate.

When many Chinese escaped to North Korea during the Cultural Revolution, we embraced them. People in China have forgotten about this.

When I was growing up, we were taught in school that North Koreans, and especially the North Korean leadership, were all devils.

In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.

A person from Northern Ireland is naturally cautious.

Northern Ireland, England, Scotland - when we play each other, you don't want to lose to a neighbouring country.

It's a complicated relationship with the place one grows up in, particularly if it's Northern Ireland.

I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly.

In school, we learned about the Birkebeinerne as some of the bravest men. And these two guys saving the Norwegian king... There's a kind of mythology around it.

I don't think nostalgia is a healthy modality. But nostalgia and a sense of history are not the same thing. Nostalgia is a dysfunction of the historical impulse, or a corruption of the historical impulse.

I think whatever generation you're in has a nostalgia for the generations past and the generations you weren't in.

Soon, nostalgia will be another name for Europe.

I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.