In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.

Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future and renders the present inaccessible.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

The most talented do not always end up as celebrities, and those with less talent often do. Upsets are written into our history and occur around us every day.

The age of chivalry is past. Bores have succeeded to dragons.

I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men’s crapper of the local bar.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

I feel like I’m too busy writing history to read it.

The former colonies, in Latin America in particular, have a better chance than ever before to overcome centuries of subjugation, violence and foreign intervention, which they have so far survived as dependencies with islands of luxury in a sea of misery.

If I am judged for my work, many myths about me as an autocrat or otherwise would become clearer. I feel false propaganda will not last, and truth will ultimately prevail.

I had practiced with the team, and the first scheduled game was with the University of Missouri. They made it quite clear to the Army that they would not play a team with a black player on it. Instead of telling me the truth, the Army gave me leave to go home.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

I happen to be a big fan of Western civilization; I think it beats the hell out of tyranny and starvation.

I stated that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are ‚among the most unspeakable crimes in history.‘ I took no position on just where they stand on the scale of horrors relative to Auschwitz, the bombing of Chungking, Lidice, and so on.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Yup, the whole birther movement was racist.

Nixon was no more a saint than he was a great president.

My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my ‚blackness‘ than ever before. I have found that at Princeton, no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really don’t belong.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

The hippie movement politicized my generation. When it ended, we all started looking back at our own history, looking, in my case, for motives of rebellion.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

U.S. Government propaganda tries to give the impression that aerial bombardment achieves near-surgical accuracy, so that military targets can be destroyed with minimal effect on civilians. Technical documents give a different picture.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.

The object is very clear in the fight against racism; you have reasons why you’re opposed to it. But when you’re writing a novel, you don’t want the reader to come out of it voting yes or no to some question. Life is more complicated than that.

To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

‚WASP‘ is the only ethnic term that is in fact a term of class, apart from redneck, which is another word for the same group but who are in the lower social strata, so it’s inexplicably tied up with social standing and culture and history in a way that the other hyphenations just are not.

After Hiroshima was bombed, I saw a photograph of the side of a house with the shadows of the people who had lived there burned into the wall from the intensity of the bomb. The people were gone, but their shadows remained.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

Now, there are some who would like to rewrite history – revisionist historians is what I like to call them.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

For Africa to me… is more than a glamorous fact. It is a historical truth. No man can know where he is going unless he knows exactly where he has been and exactly how he arrived at his present place.

For the record, our democracy is revered around the world. And free elections are the best way on Earth to choose our leaders. This is how we elected John F. Kennedy; Ronald Reagan; two George Bushes; Bill Clinton; and Barack Obama. It has worked for decades.

The United States never lost a war or won a conference.

If you look at the history of Notre Dame, if you hire a coach who’s been successful at another college program, they’re going to be ultra successful at Notre Dame because the talent will always be there.

History, a distillation of rumour.

I detest racialism, because I regard it as a barbaric thing, whether it comes from a black man or a white man.

Hate crime is not new in the United States.

The last time I visited Qaddafi was in May of 2001, 15 years after Reagan attacked his rather modest residence where he took me to show me how it had been left.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

‚The Lorax‘ book was intended to be propaganda.

Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.

World War II broke out in 1939, and many people credit that war with saving the economy.

When I was a teenager, I thought how great it would be if only I could write novels in English. I had the feeling that I would be able to express my emotions so much more directly than if I wrote in Japanese.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

The first democratic revolution was England in the 1640s.

Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. We will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God.

The solutions to our problems are and always will be based upon universal, timeless, self-evident principles common to every enduring, prospering society throughout history.

I continue to care for President Obama and for his family. I think that in many ways they are very courageous people, and I honor that, because I know what it means to live as a black person in a racist America.

History shows that the majority of people that have done anything great have passed their youth in seclusion.

Divorce is probably of nearly the same date as marriage. I believe, however, that marriage is some weeks the more ancient.

Condemn me. It does not matter. History will absolve me.

The word ‚racism‘ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‚racist.‘

The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor led to many very good things. If you follow the trail, it led to kicking Europeans out of Asia – that saved tens of millions of lives in India alone.

In one thousand years of Russia’s existence, its first popular national election ever to be held occurred in June 1991. Six days later, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed in Moscow!

History is written by the victors.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.