#History

"It is my hope that as we commemorate Black History Month in the future, we will continue to celebrate the many achievements and rich culture of African-Americans."

"I have had this longstanding interest in going back to school to get a Ph.D. in art history. I was especially interested in exploring this idea of the ecstatic impulse in an artist."

"thus with a kiss I die"

"I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty."

"Herodotus says, "Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest do not happen at all: the conscientious historian will correct these defects."

"In the beginning was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes."

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries.[Letter objecting to the use of government land for churches, 1803]"

"We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children."

"I don't care what is written,"Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag."

"My choice of Muhammad to lead the list of the world's most influential persons may surprise some readers and may be questioned by others, but he was the only man in history who was supremely successful on both the religious and secular level."

"The best of humanity's recorded history is a creative balance between horrors endured and victories achieved, and so it was during the Harlem Renaissance."

"He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouth."

"No matter what your history has been, your destiny is what you create today. What are you going to create?"

"The only way we'll get freedom for ourselves is to identify ourselves with every oppressed people in the world. We are blood brothers to the people of Brazil, Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba -- yes Cuba too."

"Calling sex by its name thereafter [the 17th c.] became more difficult and more costly. As if in order to gain mastery of it in reality, it had first been necessary to subjugate it at the level of language, control its free circulation in speech, expunge it from the things that were said, and extinguish the words that rendered it too visibly present."

"And we want to develop our strategy to partnership and friendship with the United States, which is connected with a very rich history but what is very important for our future."

"The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know."

"The mind is a powerful thing. It can take you through walls."

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something – a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things – which you had thought special and particular to you. Now here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out and taken yours."

"...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church."