Quotes About History

I was actually asked to do the Christmas design for the White House. I thought it would be interesting, given that it has such a rich history, to decorate around some real beautiful oversized images of the history of the White House and the history of the country.

I got to meet one Chief of Staff: Sam Skinner. He was Chief of Staff at the end of George Sr.'s White House.

Almost the first thing Obama did in the White House was to return the bust of Winston Churchill to the British embassy. That suggests a major re-ordering of things. It'll be fascinating to see what happens from now on. It was a genuine break with the recent past - perhaps to re-connect with the past past.

I love having a front-row seat on history, whether that's a White House briefing room or the campaign trail.

I'm a big historian. Big JFK fan. I got to take a picture under the official JFK White House portrait.

The first time I ever came to Washington was to visit Calvin Coolidge in the White House with my father.

I think more than any point in history... part of the job of the White House press secretary is to rebuild trust with the American people.

My husband and I got married in D.C. at the Decatur House. We met here, we got married here - our wedding pictures have the White House in the background.

We must begin to tell black women's stories because, without them, we cannot tell the story of black men, white men, white women, or anyone else in this country. The story of black women is critical because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it.

The fact is this: NASA was desegregated by a white male. NASA was not desegregated by a black male. NASA was not desegregated by white women.

Even without the euphoria of 'yes we can,' Hillary Clinton is to white women what Barack Obama was to African-Americans. She represents the opportunity to see a like image in the Oval Office for the first time.

The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction.

Exploring my racial identity, my blackness and my whiteness as living, breathing, moving parts; confronting race as an issue head-on, learning about it, talking about it, celebrating the beauty of my cultures, being honest about the ugly parts of our history, and consolidating my sense of self has been liberating in so many ways.

Jazz is a racist musical form invented by whites to enslave blacks.

The great white advantage has been living inside history, adapting to its constant demands, nurturing the values and the habits of life that allow one to keep pace. This is the cultural capital that whites too often take for granted and rarely think of insisting on in the former victims of exclusion.

We all stand on the shoulders of our ancestors. We're in a relay race, relying on the financial and human capital of our parents and grandparents. Blacks were shackled for the early part of that relay race, and although many of the fetters have come off, whites have developed a huge lead.

For complicated historical and political reasons, we associate 'poor' in our public consciousness with 'black.' Terms such as 'welfare queen' and 'culture of poverty' became associated uniquely with the social maladies of African Americans in urban ghettos, despite the fact that poor whites outnumbered poor blacks.

For most of our nation's history, whatever the inequality in wealth between the richest and poorest citizens, we maintained a cultural equality known nowhere else in the world - for whites, anyway.

The only time you had blacks, whites, and Latinos jamming together was in hip-hop. It's an unsung history.

I think the idea is now for blacks to write about the history of our music. It's time for that, because whites have been doing it all the time. It's time for us to do it ourselves and tell it like it is.

Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.

You whites make all the ammunition.

We were once friends with the whites but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other.

The American Negro never can be blamed for his racial animosities - he is only reacting to 400 years of the conscious racism of the American whites.