Top 465 History Quotes

Story and plot, not historical facts, are the engine of a novel, but I was committed to working through the grain of actual history and coming to something, an overall effect, which approximated truth.

The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn't produce money. Ideas produce money.

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years.

When Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the age of 88, she was the oldest person ever to receive the prize and one of only 11 female winners in its history. Her award was the end of a very long journey from a remote farm in Rhodesia to a banquet at Stockholm's Stadshus, the grand city hall in Stockholm.

So if you look back over the long history of China, they've never tried to take over the world, but they've been quite aggressive in their own neighborhood... in carrying out their own purposes and interests in their sphere of the world.

If you look back at the history of creativity in clothes - the French Revolution, the First World War and the Second World War - they have all been creative reinventions, the moment new forms of luxury come into play.

I just feel like they're a network I have a good vibe with, and I'm very grateful. My first job with a network was 'General Hospital,' and that was ABC. I feel like I have so much history with them, that they treat their shows well, and they have good, discerning taste.