Historical Figure Quotes

The moment in Paris where I saluted Napoleon's tomb was one of the proudest of my life.

[Referring to Abraham Lincoln:] The President is nothing more than a well-meaning baboon.... I went to the White house ... where I found "the original Gorilla" about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!

Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

Chairman Mao was after all a principal founder of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Republic of China. In evaluating his merits and mistakes, we hold that his mistakes were only secondary. What he did for the Chinese people can never be erased. In our hearts we Chinese will always cherish him as a founder of our Party and our state.

You know, with Hitler, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don't care for him.

Remember those great speeches MacArthur made from the Philippines? I wrote all those.

Jesus Christ is the greatest man in the history of the world. And to me, he's the greatest person in the history of mankind and the universe. We can't prove it, I can't put it in a test tube or in an astronomical formula, but by faith I believe it because the Bible teaches it.

There is nothing in history to parallel the influence of Jesus Christ.

I have never liked France or the French, and I have never stopped saying so. (15th February 1945)

Attila was a man born to shake the races of the world. The proud man’s power has to be seen in the very movements of his body.

I was allowed for many years of my life to work for the greatest son [Adolf Hitler] that my people produced in their 1,000 year history. I regret nothing.

President Abraham Lincoln never lost his ardor for the United States to remain united during the Civil War.

After being Washington's aide for four years and becoming the hero of Yorktown, Hamilton was viewed with a great deal of suspicion because of his association with Tories.

Pasteur will be celebrated almost as a God-like figure. This is when the moon completes her great cycle, but by other rumors, he shall be dishonored.

Ahmed Khomeini, son of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is the Mrs. Wilson of modern Iran.

The people who hanged Christ never, to do them justice, accused him of being a bore - on the contrary, they thought him too dynamic to be safe. It has been left for later generations to muffle up that shattering personality and surround him with an atmosphere of tedium.

I lived in Judea eighteen hundred years ago, but I never knew that there was such a one as Christ among my contemporaries.

The spirit of Columbus hovers over us to-day.

From William of Orange to William Pitt the younger there was but one man without whom English history must have taken a different turn, and that was William Pitt the elder.

As the centuries pass, the evidence is accumulating that, measured by His effect on history, Jesus is the most influential life ever lived on this planet.

Napoleon was indeed the man sent by God to help the youth of France! Who is to take his place?

Cotton Mather is one of those classic figures of American history who can't be left out. One has to explain him or explain him away, redeem him or denounce him.

Hitler, who founded the Third Reich, who ruled it ruthlessly and often with uncommon shrewdness, who led it to such dizzy heights and such a sorry end, was a person of undoubted, if evil genius. It is true that in the German people, as a mysterious Providence and centuries of experience had molded them up to that time, he found a natural instrument which he was able to shape to his own sinister ends.

The Cincinnatus of the West, Whom envy dared not hate, Bequeathed the name of Washington To make man blush there was but one!

Milton! thou should'st be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters.