Theodore White Quotes

Since the discovery of Columbus, there has been no event of equal importance to the human race.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

What a pity, when Christopher Columbus discovered America, that he ever mentioned it.

Columbus only discovered that he was in some new place. He didn't discover America.

Columbus did not discover a new world; he established contact between two worlds, both already old.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic don't just share an island, Hispaniola, but a history, one that includes all the signal events that went into creating the modern world: Columbus, conquest, genocide, slavery, imperial war, revolution, and U.S. counterinsurgencies and military occupations.

Columbus was above all an explorer, and his historic achievements opened the Americas to trade and the eventual English settlements, settlements which grew into the most successful bastion of freedom and prosperity in human history, the United States of America.

As the grandson of Italian immigrants, maybe I am biased, but I think Christopher Columbus, the man who is rightfully credited with bringing European civilization to the Western Hemisphere, deserves the national holiday enacted by Congress in 1934.

It was for Columbus, when the right hour struck, forced and propelled by this fresh life, to reveal the land where these new principles were to be brought, and where the awaited trial of the new civilization was to be made.

If America had been discovered as many times as I have, no one would remember Columbus.

America, when it became known to Europeans, was, as it had long been, a scene of wide-spread revolution.

In all parts of the Old World, as well as of the New, it was evident that Columbus had kindled a fire in every mariner's heart. That fire was the harbinger of a new era, for it was not to be extinguished.

And so by the fifteenth century, on October 8, the Europeans were looking for a new place to try to get to, and they came up with a new concept: the West.

Hardly a name in profane history is more august than his. Hardly another character in the world's record has made so little of its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a new world; the New World is his monument.

America is now a space-faring nation ... a frontier good for millions of years. The only time remotely comparable was when Columbus discovered the New World.

It is but just and reasonable, that since you expose yourself to such danger to serve us, you should be rewarded for it. And we being willing to honor and favor you for the reasons aforesaid; Our will is, That you, Christopher Columbus, after discovering and conquering the said Islands and Continent in the said ocean, or any of them, shall be our Admiral of the said Islands and Continent you shall so discover and conquer; and that you be our Admiral, Vice-Roy, and Governor in them.

If Columbus had an advisory committee, he would probably still be at the dock.

America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it.

Spanish Explorers celebrated Christmas in 1539 in the area we now know as the State of Florida.

Your Highnesses have an Other World here, by which our holy faith can be so greatly advanced and from which such great wealth can be drawn.

Columbus felt the westward tendency more strongly than any before. He obeyed it, and found a New World for Castile and Leon.

I'll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.

Columbus saved the Indians from themselves.

We are apt to think it the finest era of the world when America was beginning to be discovered, when a bold sailor, even if he were wrecked, might alight on a new kingdom.

The spirit of Columbus hovers over us to-day.