Quotes About History

Antonin Scalia was witty, warm, funny, and full of life. He was not only one of the most important justices in the nation's history; he was also among the greatest.

With popular rulers, the wife can become the guardian of their greatness: Peter the Great was succeeded by his wife, Catherine I. Sometimes the wives are an improvement.

I'm on very good terms with all my former wives.

Marriage finally became acceptable to the churches when laws were established that could make it a means of depriving women of incomes and property, and making wives the equivalent of slaves.

My father and his brothers never mentioned to their English wives and children that they were Jewish. Being Hungarian was exotic and foreign enough to begin with, and so long as they were not asked, they found it easier, from 1919 on, to let the matter drop.

Contrary to popular belief, Henry VIII did not divorce any of his wives. He had sought an annulment from Catherine of Aragon - which he finally awarded to himself after the pope's continued refusal. When it came to Anne's turn, Henry took the easy route by having her found guilty of treason.

The wives of Henry VIII are too big to be left to chick lit. Their importance is the impact they have on the broad history of the period. On the lives of every man and every woman who lived in England then, and subsequently has lived in England.

If you want to see what stage comedians did to get laffs a century ago, watch the 1910 'Wizard of Oz.' I hope you have a high tolerance for pratfalls.

'Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age' was quite a favourite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant's thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed out of the Stone Age.

My books fall in the wobbly middle between historical fiction and historical romance.

I used to live in an old historic shipyard town called Trenton, Michigan, and a month after I moved in, I started hearing this woman screaming my full name at three in the morning, every night. Finally, on the seventh or eighth night, she screamed it again, and I woke up.

I find that I sent wolves not shepherds to govern Ireland, for they have left me nothing but ashes and carcasses to reign over!

Wolfhounds helped kill off the wolves in Ireland.

Back during the most dramatic and challenging time in our history, when we first came together with wolves, we had no idea that it was changing everything, but we literally evolved together. Without us there would be no dogs, and vice versa.

We have enforced a Darwinian process on wolves, turning them into the shy and elusive animals they've become. They didn't have that fear of us 30,000 years ago. We didn't have gunpowder; we had rocks. Wolves would have seen us as lunch, and we were weak and slow and tasty.

For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.

I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.

She was not a white woman. She was not a Greek... Until the emergence of the doctrine of white superiority, Cleopatra was generally pictured as a distinctly African woman, dark in color.

Through the ages, from the beginning of time, I'm certain man has covered woman's face with masks. They are, however, his masks, not hers.

High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.

One of the key things for me about Madame Walker's life is that she really does represent this first generation out of slavery when black people were reinventing themselves, and as a woman who was the first child in her family born free, she was trying to figure out a way, and she moved from Delta, Louisiana.

Woman was always the custodian of human sentiment, morality and honour, and in these respects, man always has yielded woman the palm.

The real Annie Malone was not a light-skinned woman.

As the father of five children, with three daughters, I'm pretty fired up to have the first woman president of the United States.