Ibn Khaldun Quotes

Americans think that they have a history, but it's nothing compared to Europe.

The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic sisters.

I found that Scottishness and Englishness are actually strong, instinctive things, whatever the historical reasons. Even the accent changes - just two inches across the border.

Ever since childhood, I've been interested in history and myth. Not just the facts and figures of the past, but everything that contributes to shape our perception of an age: architecture, art, literature and so forth.

A poem I write is not just about me; it is about national identity, not just regional but national, the history of people in relation to other people. I reach for these outward stories to make sense of my own life, and how my story intersects with a larger public history.

The biggest difference between England and America is that England has history, while America has geography.

For a country is not merely a piece of earth; it is, above all, a compendium of social, cultural, and historical factors which begin to acquire sense and order through the process of writing.

People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them.

I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.

The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

The Kurds were in the Middle East long before the Arabs.

The greatest guarantee for the preservation of a person’s identity is language and faith, and all Armenians must carry these two values.

The fallacies of the Melting Pot theory have also become obvious. Years before the war [WWI] it had become increasingly apparent that the Melting Pot was no longer successfully performing its function; that the American population was losing its homogeneous character; that various nationalities of recent immigrants were forming more and more compact racial "blocs," each bloc tenaciously maintaining its own racial character, customs, and traditions.

I am neither a Serb nor a Bulgarian, I am a South Slav.

The greatest guarantee for the preservation of a person’s identity is language and faith, and all Armenians must carry these two values.

The classics should be set in students’ minds so that they become the genes of Chinese national culture.

I think it's important to be reminded that that's what this country is comprised of - people from other countries.

It is my strong belief that the Chinese people are just as proud as we Americans are proud.

I've never really seen archaeology as being any different from history. What I love are the stories of human beings that were around 1,000 years ago and how they lived - archaeology is another aspect to that.

Aboriginal people have much to celebrate in this country's British heritage

The things that the flag stands for were created by the experiences of a great people. Everything that it stands for was written by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

The Italians are the most civilized people. And they're very warm. Basically, they're Jews with great architecture.

Donald Trump understands sense of belonging. And a lot of people think globalization, any time you make any particularity, you're sort of offending some other group. And a lot of people in this country think they belong to America anymore, and he at least appeals to some sense of belonging. I like the idea that we belong to Western traditions, so I'm glad he appeals to that sort of thing.

The Gaelic League is founded not upon hatred of England, but upon love of Ireland. Hatred is a negative passion; it is powerful - a very powerful destroyer; but it is useless for building up. Love, on the other hand, is like faith; it can move mountains, and faith, we have mountains to move.

The basis of national identity is to say, "This is authentic to me or my forebears," and is there even such a thing? How authentic is it to your life? Just because your grandfather did it, what does that have to do with you? If I say I'm working in the style of Rembrandt, so what? You can say it, but are you really? No, because when you try to literally copy a cultural artifact, you change it. It dissolves, and then who's looking at it? People who appreciate that kind of drawing, or people it means nothing to?