I think that Sir Winston Churchill, in the period that the Germans occupied the Channel Ports, when the whole war hung in issue, fulfilled a role, which is as great as any role in our history.
I have been in the industry for five years and would love to play a historical character.
I don't think the Church has ever contributed anything to anybody, anyplace, at any time.
The careful student of history will discover that Christianity has been of very little value in advancing civilization, but has done a great deal toward retarding it.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did as much to win the Cold War as anyone…. The idea that Ronald Reagan won the Cold War is ludicrous.
We are not merely historians but also and always citizens.
The progressive historical role of capitalism may be summed up in two brief propositions: increase in the productive forces of social labour, and the socialisation of that labour. But both these facts manifest themselves in extremely diverse processes in different branches of the national economy.
Where intellectuals have played a role in history, it has not been so much by whispering words of advice into the ears of political overlords as by contributing to the vast and powerful currents of conceptions and misconceptions that sweep human action along.
Whenever you think of Lincoln as a historian, in his own mind, he becomes the Great Emancipator. This is his role in history henceforth. He was an ambitious man who wanted to make an impact on history, and this is how he did it.
Otherwise we get off the track and we do not fulfil the historical role which we want to fulfil: to help the masses, the exploited and the oppressed of the world, build a classless society, a world socialist federation.
For centuries, the Yangtze River - the longest in Asia - has played an important role in China's history, culture, and economy. The Yangtze is as quintessentially Chinese as the Nile is Egyptian or the Rhine is German. Many businesses use its name.
I do tend to look at individuals and whether they do or do not matter in history.
