#history

Suppose that a man leaps out of a burning building—as my dear friend and colleague Jeff Goldberg sat and said to my face over a table at La Tomate in Washington not two years ago—and lands on a bystander in the street below. Now, make the burning building be Europe, and the luckless man underneath be the Palestinian Arabs. Is this a historical injustice? Has the man below been made a victim, with infinite cause of complaint and indefinite justification for violent retaliation? My own reply would be a provisional 'no,' but only on these conditions. The man leaping from the burning building must still make such restitution as he can to the man who broke his fall, and must not pretend that he never even landed on him. And he must base his case on the singularity and uniqueness of the original leap. It can't, in other words, be 'leap, leap, leap' for four generations and more. The people underneath cannot be expected to tolerate leaping on this scale and of this duration, if you catch my drift. In Palestine, tread softly, for you tread on their dreams. And do not tell the Palestinians that they were never fallen upon and bruised in the first place. Do not shame yourself with the cheap lie that they were told by their leaders to run away. Also, stop saying that nobody knew how to cultivate oranges in Jaffa until the Jews showed them how. 'Making the desert bloom'—one of Yvonne's stock phrases—makes desert dwellers out of people who were the agricultural superiors of the Crusaders. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#analogies #arabs #colonialism #crusades #europe

Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. ↗

— Margaret Thatcher

#democratic #depend #find #must #nations

We are the offspring of history, and must establish our own paths in this most diverse and interesting of conceivable universes—one indifferent to our suffering, and therefore offering us maximum freedom to thrive, or to fail, in our own chosen way. ↗

— Stephen Jay Gould

#diversity #freedom #history #liberty #suffering

It's unbelievable, there's a book out attacking Gore, when he's the most unfortunate loser in political history. ↗

— Vincent Bugliosi

#book #gore #history #loser #most

We have wasted History like a bunch of drunks shooting dice back in the men's crapper of the local bar. ↗

— Charles Bukowski

#bar #bunch #dice #drunks #history

Whether or not the standard of living made possible by mass production and in turn by mass circulation, is supported by and filled with the work of us hucksters, I guess is something that only history can decide. ↗

— Leo Burnett

#decide #filled #guess #history #i

The deliberate and deadly attacks which were carried out yesterday against our country were more than acts of terror. They were acts of war. ↗

— George W. Bush

#acts #against #attacks #carried #country

In all my study of history, I have never found a time or place I would rather have lived than now. ↗

— Orson Scott Card

#history #i #lived #never #now

My clerkship with Justice Douglas was tremendously important. He told me, Christopher, get out into the stream of history and see what happens. I've tried to follow that advice. ↗

— Warren Christopher

#christopher #douglas #follow #get #happens

We believe that it is very important that we have hopefully averted what would have been the most substantial headwind of all, which is a default for the first time in our history, and that that will contribute to a more positive environment that we hope will allow for greater growth and job creation. ↗

— Jay Carney

#averted #been #believe #contribute #creation