I was the best street fighter in history when I was growing up on the Lower East Side. Hell, I never lost a street fight. Never. I thought I could lick Jack Dempsey or Joe Louis or anybody. I was fantastic. – Rocky Graziano
I probably saved more black lives as mayor of New York City than any mayor in the history of this city. And I did it by having to use police officers in black areas where there was an astounding amount of crime. If that crime was in white areas, police officers would be in white areas. – Rudy Giuliani
Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. – Ralph Adams Cram
The notion of ‘history from below’ hit the history profession in England very hard around the time I came to Oxford in the early 1960s. – Robert Darnton
Conservatives are time-biders. And they understand, as Corey Robin explains in his indispensable book ‘The Reactionary Mind,’ that the direction of human history is not on their side – that is why they are reactionaries – because, other things equal, civilization does tend towards more inclusion, more emancipation, more liberalism. – Rick Perlstein
The Jews’ greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We’re a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better. – Shimon Peres
If Paul Ryan is re-elected, if he’s sent back to Congress, he will push for the biggest amnesty in this country’s history; and immediately after his re-election, he will push Obama’s jailbreak crime agenda. – Paul Nehlen
Young women today often have very little appreciation for the real battles that took place to get women where they are today in this country. I don’t know how much history young women today know about those battles. – Sandra Day O’Connor
Consider the bloody history of Europe: there was a great aspiration for high culture, yet this very same culture was shaped by brutality and barbarism. – Ori Gersht
I wanted to be a novelist from a very early age – 11 or 12 – but I don’t think I ever thought I would write historical fiction. I never thought I might write academic history because I simply wasn’t good enough! – Pat Barker
Throughout human history, people have developed strong loyalties to traditions, rituals, and symbols. In the most effective organizations, they are not only respected but celebrated. It is no coincidence that the most highly admired corporations are also among the most profitable. – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
I wish that they had the freedoms like the Japanese and the Koreans and the Mexicans and everybody else that has that freedom to come over here and play the game, because I know Cuba has a very strong baseball history. – Rafael Palmeiro
History is written by the winners. My job as an artist is to speak up for those who might be perceived as the losers. Or those who can’t shout. – Ruth Negga
Dai Vernon, the greatest sleight of hand figure in the history of the art, rarely performed. But he invented magic and had an enormous influence on the whole range of sleight of hand. And so often, the magic he was doing was to fool other magicians. – Ricky Jay
The history of American higher education over the twentieth century is an extraordinary one, the story of the creation of a powerhouse set of institutions that are the envy of the civilized world. Once they were the province, both among the student and faculty bodies, of children of privilege, generally WASPs. – Rick Perlstein
I don’t know if I would say that I’m specifically a history buff. I do find a lot of things fascinating, especially anything that’s bizarre or mysterious and unknown and we don’t have all the answers for. – Oren Peli
The visual information of art history is going to students seamlessly, without the enormous trouble those of us who are older had when we studied art history many years ago. – Robert Nelson
To come to England in the 1970s was to return to this strange other-world of half-known history. I found the imperial architecture curiously familiar: the post office, the town hall, the botanic gardens. – Romesh Gunesekera
Hollywood has a history of raising expectations beyond Washington’s reach, of appealing to the very American desire to mythologize political leaders, particularly the president. – Ron Fournier
We are living in one of those rare moments in history when things may come apart and be put back together again in ways that will determine the future for decades or more, despite the endless innovations of technology. – Robert Darnton
Whites were the winners, blacks were the losers, we wrote the history books, and they didn’t feature. – Phillip Noyce
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. – R. D. Laing
I can see clearly now… that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate. – Richard M. Nixon
And then for the first time in history a Cook County state’s attorney was reelected for a third time. – Richard M. Daley