Very few conflicts in the history of the world have been satisfactorily concluded according to a published timetable, because you lose all flexibility in dealing with your opponents.
That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime - to set an example - and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.
History teaches us to beware of the excitation of the liberated and the injustices that often accompany their righteous thirst for justice.
The teacher of history's work should be, ideally, not simply a description of past cultures, but a performance of the culture in which we live and are increasingly taking our being.
When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.
I'm so intrigued by women throughout history where the significance of what they were representing at that time is obscured by the fact a man saved them or they were prostitutes.
We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
If you think Abraham Lincoln became famous for inventing the town car, it is time to spend a few hours on history.
I think cars encapsulate the history of innovation and style - it's the other side of the coin of the car being public enemy No.1.
My dad read history, about a book a day, but only after he retired as a successful bank and insurance man.
Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history.
The BP spill was the greatest environmental catastrophe in U.S. history. Yet somehow, gas companies like BP and Halliburton ran interference on reporting that story.
You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that.
I think there has been a great deal of valuable revisionism in women's history.
As I review the great history of our nation, community organizers have been at the center of so many of our great social movements.
I had a great drama teacher in high school, and that's when I started to learn about the history of theater.
It is doubtless one of Aristotle's great services that he conceived so clearly the truth that literature is a thing that grows and has a history.
I come from a town of great musicians: Washington, D.C. It's no joke, that history.
The risk of any great luxury brand that has its history in the past is that it can get dusty.
Without the connotation good or bad, bin Laden's a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history.
What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?
