history Quotes

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.

The terrorist action of 9/11 gave birth to President Obama's entry to the White House. Not directly, but indirectly.

I think music is one of the hero/sheroes of the African-American existence.

Living in a state of terror was new to many white people in America, but black people have been living in a state of terror in this country for more than 400 years.

Autobiography is awfully seductive; it's wonderful. Once I got into it, I realized I was following a tradition established by Frederick Douglass - the slave narrative - speaking in the first-person singular, talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I,' meaning 'we.'

Black people comprehend the South. We understand its weight. It has rested on our backs... I knew that my heart would break if ever I put my foot down on that soil, moist, still, with old hurts. I had to face the fear/loathing at its source or it would consume me whole.

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace the savage races throughout the world.

When someone tells me about Malala, the girl who was shot by the Taliban - that's my definition for her - I don't think she's me. Now I don't even feel as if I was shot. Even my life in Swat feels like a part of history or a movie I watched. Things change. God has given us a brain and a heart which tell us how to live.

My father Ted fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany during World War II. My grandfather survived the horrors of the trenches in World War I. I truly believe that one of the E.U.'s greatest achievements is that it has kept its members out of conflict in Europe.

You can't understand European history at all other than through religion, or English literature either if you can't recognise biblical allusions.