Quotes about History

we need to bear in mind that the Reformation debate was not one between self-designated Catholics and Protestants; it was a debate about where the Catholic Church was to be found. 'Is the Pope a Catholic?' was not a joke in the sixteenth century.

But the reconciliation of the world to God cannot be described as an episode in history among others; it is a change in what historical agents may hope for, think about and pray about.

Memory is the 'self', because it is my presence to myself, the way in which I constitute myself and understand myself as a subject with a continuous history of experience.

These negroes aren't asking for no nation. They wanna crawl back on the plantation.

Four hundred years the white man has had his foot-long knife in the black man's back--and now the white man starts to wiggle the knife out, maybe six inches! The black man's supposed to be grateful? Why, if the white man jerked the knife out, it's still going to leave a scar!

Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual

Sometimes, I have a dared dream to myself that one day, history may even say that my voice--which disturbed the white man's smugness, and his arrogance, and his complacency--that my voice helped to save America from a grave, possibly even a fatal catastrophe.

My black brothers and sisters—no one will know who we are…until we know who we are! We never will be able to go anywhere until we know where we are!

Mankind's history has proved from one era to another that the true criterion of leadership is spiritual. Men are attracted by spirit. By power, men are forced. Love is engendered by spirit. By power, anxieties are created.

Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made....

Is it clear why I have said that the American white man's malignant superiority complex has done him more harm than an invading army?

We didn't land on Plymouth Rock, my brothers and sisters—Plymouth Rock landed on us!