history Quotes

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

A number of analysts have observed that although bin Laden was finally killed, he won some major successes in his war against the U.S.

A native speaker of English who has never read a word of the King James Bible is verging on the barbarian.

American literature has always been immigrant.

The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

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.

When I was writing 'The Satanic Verses,' if you had asked me about the phenomenon that we all now know as radical Islam, I wouldn't have had much to say. As recently as the mid-1980s, it didn't seem to be a big deal.