I'd rather betray the world than let the world betray me.
Cao Cao

As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.
Socrates

now this is just pure insolence

Something I just came across wiking, not famous enough but I liked it --

In early April 1786, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson visited Fort Royal Hill at the battlefield at Worcester. David McCullough wrote in his definitive biography John Adams that Adams was "deeply moved" but disappointed at the locals' lack of knowledge of the battle, giving the townspeople an "impromptu lecture":

“The people in the neighborhood appeared so ignorant and careless at Worcester that I was provoked and asked 'And do Englishmen so soon forget the ground where liberty was fought for? Tell your neighbors and your children that this is holy ground, much holier than that on which your churches stand. All England should come in pilgrimage to this hill, once a year."

Americans will always do the right thing, after they have exhausted every possible alternative. Winston Churchill

Speak for England! Leo Amery

Beat and Beat Again! Josef Stalin

Your money is safe on this site. UB Poker Author unknown

It's peace for our time. Neville Chamberlin

Forever and forever farewell my friend, if we meet again we shall smile indeed, if not this was a parting well made. William Shakespeare

On fascism:

Context: Stalin had told the communist party in Germany that it is no big deal if the fascists come to power as; in fact after the fascists are in power it will be your turn next and the fascists pose minimal danger. Hence, the communists should not unite with moderates in order to oppose the fascists. In reply to this:

"Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank. Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory " Trotsky

"Fascism has opened up the depths of society for politics. Today, not only in peasant homes but also in city skyscrapers, there lives alongside of the twentieth century the tenth or the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms....Everything that should have been eliminated from the national organism in the form of cultural excrement in the course of the normal development of society has now come gushing out from the throat; capitalist society is puking up the undigested barbarism. Such is the physiology of National Socialism." Trotsky, 1933

Because of this I have to do one more Trotsky: "The compulsory concentration of all forces and resources of the people in the interests of imperialism – the true historic mission of the fascist dictatorship – means preparation for war... Fascism cannot be reformed or retired from service. It can only be overthrown."

Trotsky, 1933 (note-Chamberlain made his comment in 1938)

In a classic example of politics making for strange potential bedfellows, Churchill said about Chamberlain "You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war."

This is pretty funny. Coincidentally, thats just how the Japanese language is structured. Hirohito was just speaking politely.

From our favourite BRit/American

THOMAS PAINE:

"If there is no peril in the fight, then there is no glory in the triumph."

does this count??

"Sooner or later in life everyone discovers that perfect happiness is unrealizable, but there are few who pause to consider the antithesis: that perfect unhappiness is equally unattainable. The obstacles preventing the realization of both these extreme states are of the same nature: they derive from our human condition which is opposed to everything infinite."
— Primo Levi (Survival in Auschwitz)

What can we see in the longest kingly line in Europe, save that it runs back to a successful soldier? - Walter Scott

The history of mankind is little else than a narrative of designs which have failed and hopes that have been disappointed. -Samuel Johnson

History is, indeed, little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind. - Edward Gibbon

Civil confusions often spring from trifles but decide great issues. - Aristotle


-Zeno

That's Pierre Corneille.

"Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

-- Herman Goering as recorded in Gilbert's Nuremberg Diary

Last part bolded for emphasis. Worked like a charm this last time around.

History (Viewing: 0)--best quote eva.

Ha!

My fav:

"There's an old saying in Tennessee--I know it's in Texas, it's probably in Tennessee--that says 'fool me once......shame on.......shame on you.........................................fool me, I can't get fooled again.'"

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.
--Ronald Reagan, 1965

Nothing more dangerous than to underestimate your opponent.
Sun Tzu

"But are they allowed to do that?"

Ferdinand I of Austria's reaction when he was told by his councillor Prince Metternich that the revolutionaries of 1848 were marching on Schönbrunn in order to "make a revolution" (Metternich).

Mayor of Hiroshima, 08:15, August 6, 1945

"What the fock was that"

If this interests you, I highly recommend you read the Detective Dupin stories by Edgar Allan Poe. Many believe Poe's stories were the first detective stories of modern literature. The "backwards reasoning" mentioned in your quotation comes from the story "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the other famous story is "The Purloined Letter".

No doubt you think that you are complimenting me in comparing me to Dupin. Now, in my opinion, Dupin was a very inferior fellow. That trick of his of breaking in on his friends' thoughts with an apropos remark after a quarter of an hour's silence is really very showy and superficial. He had some analytical genius, no doubt; but he was by no means such a phenomenon as Poe appeared to imagine.

- Sherlock Holmes.


edit: and in an attempt to get this thread back on track here's an actual historical quote:

Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten.
Nobody has the intention of building a wall.

- Walter Ulbricht (head of state of the GDR) on June 15 1961, 2 months before the GDR began building the Berlin Wall.

and another inter-german quote, almost closing the circle from the first this time:

We have come to you to tell you that today, your departure...

- Hans-Dietrich Genscher (West German Secretary of State) speaking to 4500 East German refugees in the West German embassy in Prague on September 30, 1989.

watch it on youtube for full effect: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9EwNurawE&t=0m10s

Voltaire

another quote by a German:

Konrad Adenauer, First chancellor of post-war Germany.

BBC, October 1942

" The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. "
FDR