Centuries Quotations

Jesus was not born in a manger in central Pennsylvania. He was a man of color. And the fact that we have represented him for centuries literally as a white man speaks to the entire history of white supremacy.

Most of the planet's terrestrial surfaces are visually accessible through video cameras and satellite imagery, if not physically within reach. Even the approaches to Mount Everest are now littered with human debris. One can drive to Timbuktu, which for centuries was synonymous with inaccessibility.

I have no doubt that we will be successful in harnessing the sun's energy. If sunbeams were weapons of war, we would have had solar energy centuries ago.

As the Persians wrote very little about how they ran their affairs, the Greek propaganda of the 5th century B.C. has for centuries gone virtually unchallenged - indeed, for Edward Said, it was the beginning of Europe's long habit of misunderstanding and ill-informed contempt of the Middle East.

In the early centuries of Islam, the great schools of Islamic jurisprudence were built upon the above principles. Basic to all their legal systems they developed the doctrine that liberty is the fundamental basis of law.

After four centuries of Spanish rule, Puerto Rico was ceded to the United States in 1898. Residents were granted U.S. citizenship in 1917, and the federal government has allowed Puerto Rico to exercise authority over its local affairs in a manner similar to the 50 states.

The history of Europe over the last several centuries provides clear evidence of the transformative power of commerce.

The world's entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.

I feel really blessed when people start comparing me with Sachin, but I keep myself focused on my performance and not on such comparisons. I literally worship him, so I don't see too much in this comparison. No cricketer has been able to score one hundred centuries like Sachin.

For centuries my father's family lived on Britain's biggest tidal river, the Severn, on which there was a huge trade with the interior, and through the Port of Bristol with America.

As we have sought through the centuries to define ourselves as human beings and as nations through the prisms of history and literature, no small part of that effort has drawn us to the subject of war. We might even say that the humanities began with war and from war, and have remained entwined with it ever since.

There's no really rosy scenario ahead, where climate change just doesn't happen, but I believe we don't have the ethical right to throw our hands up in the air and say, 'Game over.' Whatever pathway we choose, our descendants will be dealing with that reality for centuries to come.

The deciphering of ancient scripts changed forever the way Europeans were able to imagine the story of humanity, destroying centuries of received authority about the past with repercussions as important for our understanding of time and history as the geological studies of the same period.

The roots of our statehood go back more than two millennia and two centuries to the origins of the Hun Empire. Building upon the legacies and power of the Huns, Mongols had built the largest land empire in the history of the mankind.

For many centuries Chinese society has been free of class distinctions such as are found even in advanced democracies.

After centuries of dormancy, young women... can now look toward a future moulded by their own hands.

Think about technological float: it took centuries for the wheel to gain universal acceptance. Now any microchip device can be in use around the world in weeks.

The Greek conception of a life in harmony with nature found its most complete development in the rationalism of the Renaissance and of the centuries that followed it.

The wind from the Kingdom of Heaven has blown all over the world, and shall blow for centuries yet.

Picasso is what is going to happen and what is happening; he is posterity and archaic time, the distant ancestor and our next-door neighbor. Speed permits him to be two places at once, to belong to all the centuries without letting go of the here and now.

The American Republic was bound - is still bound - to follow in the centuries to come the same course to destruction as did Rome.

The accumulated knowledge of materials, computing, electromagnetism, product design, and all the rest that we've learned over the last several centuries converts a few ounces of raw materials worth mere pennies into a device with more computing power than the entire planet possessed fifty years ago.

The laws of literary creation are unique; they don't change, and they are the same for everyone everywhere. I mean that you can tell a story that covers three hours of human life or three centuries - it comes to the same thing. Each writer who creates something authentic in a natural way instinctively also creates the technique that suits him.

Smart people often talk trash about happiness and worse than trash about books on happiness, and they have been doing so for centuries - just as long as other people have been pursuing happiness and writing books about it.

When Nixon opened the door to China in the early 1970s, Chinese artists got their first view of the West. Suddenly five centuries of Western art lay before them as a stylistic smorgasbord. Chinese artists could reinterpret it out of admiration or try to replace it. They choose the former.

When you have a natural genetic tan developed over centuries and many generations, the idea of soaking up rays by the pool has never made sense.

Historical costumes from the 18th and 19th centuries look so complicated, but when you see the patterns, it's very systematic. I've always been impressed by how the patterns economize the fabric.

When the United States was founded, the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships, monarchies, and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world.

Ever since Adam's day, the divine law of the Sabbath has been emphasized repeatedly over the centuries more than any other commandment. This long emphasis alone is an indication of its importance.

The most irresistible charm of youth is its bubbling enthusiasm. Youth sees no darkness ahead - no defile that has no outlet - it forgets that there is such a thing as failure in the world and believes that mankind has been waiting all these centuries for him to come and be the liberator of truth and energy and beauty.

I submit that in the few minutes that Joseph Smith was with the Father and the Son, he learned more of the nature of God the Eternal Father and the risen Lord than all the learned minds in all their discussions through all centuries of time.

We are not a land of Islam, and if French citizens can be Muslims, it's on the condition to submit to habits and ways of life that the Greek, Roman influence and 16 centuries of Christianity have shaped.

We live in an age in which the biblical-moral traditions that have guided us for centuries are increasingly being forgotten.

Old Filey lies around the Ravine, a glacial gash running down to Coble Landing. This is the fishing Filey of centuries past, with neat little terraced cottages and a cluster of attractive 18th century houses.

One aspect of this is the way we have come during recent centuries to appreciate that the world and indeed the very universe in which we live have evolved over immense periods of time.

One of my problems, so to speak, is that, in America, we tend to thing in relatively short-term. In the Middle East and Asia and other parts of the world, they think in terms of centuries or 500 years or 1,000 years.

Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what's going on, a real difficult issue that's facing our communities, people listen.

Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. .... Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story? .... You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?

Celebrating historic triumphs is a favorite pastime for many Turks. Tales of how Turkic peoples emerged from Central Asia, crossed the steppes to Anatolia, established the Ottoman Empire and ruled for centuries over large swaths of Europe and Asia are the subject of countless legends, poems and books.

FREEMASONS, n. An order with secret rites, grotesque ceremonies and fantastic costumes, which, originating in the reign of Charles II, among working artisans of London, has been joined successively by the dead of past centuries in unbroken retrogression until now it embraces all the generations of man on the hither side of Adam and is drumming up distinguished recruits among the pre-Creational inhabitants of Chaos and Formless Void. The order was founded at different times by Charlemagne, Julius Caesar, Cyrus, Solomon, Zoroaster, Confucious, Thothmes, and Buddha. Its emblems and symbols have been found in the Catacombs of Paris and Rome, on the stones of the Parthenon and the Chinese Great Wall, among the temples of Karnak and Palmyra and in the Egyptian Pyramids --always by a Freemason.

I explained this goes back centuries as an old-time Islamic symbol, ... I told them we'd be a laughing stock if we did this.

If we look at the past two centuries of economic history in Europe and the United States, we see an astounding pattern. Capital will accumulate in a tiny portion of the population, no matter what we do.

He was the first to want to make poverty history, and his... reforms came to pass centuries after he made the suggestions, ... And to see the event through his eyes provides, I think, an important corrective to those three strands of history that have, for one reason or another, ignored or deplored the trial of the king.

History is not a long series of centuries in which men did all the interesting/important things and women stayed home and twiddled their thumbs in between pushing out babies, making soup and dying in childbirth.

We must discover new frontiers... People have been standing for centuries before a worm-eaten door, making pinholes in it with increasing ease. The time has come to kick it down, for it is only on the other side that everything begins.

Keeping the bits is not enough - you need to be able to recreate from them something that readers in decades and centuries to come will be able to use.

Joan of Arc was born 600 years ago. Six centuries is a long time to continue to mark the birth of a girl who, according to her family and friends, knew little more than spinning and watching over her father's flocks.

It is my hope that on Flag Day, all Americans take a moment to reflect on our blessings and pay gratitude to those who have made America the strong, free, fortunate nation it is. Today, we pause to pay respect to the American flag - a symbol of centuries of perseverance, pioneering and patriotism.

I re-read all the plays. I'm not sad. He was out of this worldso common, regular, ordinary, but capable of writing awesome poetry. If someone wants to understand what frustrations we felt in the 1950s read 'Fences.' To know about how Blacks were exploited in the music business read 'Ma Rainey.' All those things that teach us from centuries ago to the present are in the forefront of his words.

Our ascendancy of the past two centuries - first Europe and then the U.S. - has bred a western-centric mentality: the West is the fount of all wisdom. We think of ourselves as open-minded, but our sense of superiority has closed our minds. We never entertained the idea that China could surpass the U.S.

recognition, but not only recognition of my work, but actually the efforts that were made by my people in the course of many, many centuries in their attempts to get their freedom. Independence cost a lot for Ukraine, and probably freedom cost even more than that.

Like the ocean, land plants hold about three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. While oceans take many centuries to exchange this mass with the air, flora take only a few years.

I studied English Literature. I wasn't a very good student, but one thing I did get from it, while I was making films at the same time with the college film society, was that I started thinking about the narrative freedoms that authors had enjoyed for centuries and it seemed to me that filmmakers should enjoy those freedoms as well.

Who is the stranger... that can form an adequate conception of the extent of its primeval woods-of the glory of those columnar trunks, that for centuries have waved in the breeze?

We are the quiet force built up by five centuries of exploitation, tired of living under the dictatorship of the rich and ready to build a new motherland.

When they come here, what we are looking for them to do is step up to the plate, take responsibility and get the big innings, the centuries - or take a lead with the ball.

There are no words for an inhumane act that ... cancels centuries of civilization to bring us back to the Dark Ages,

Witches were burned and killed in Scotland and England for centuries before what happened in Salem.

There can be little doubt that over the centuries that there have been great priests, bishops - and maybe even popes - who by today's criterion would be deemed homosexual in orientation, ... It's not the nature of one's temptations - be they sexual or something else - it's how to deal with these temptations.

Women have served all these centuries as looking glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man, at twice its natural size

There is something of the freshness of mind, of the lightness of spirit in Linne which for centuries has been linked in people's minds with the mountains of Sweden and Swedish joy in nature.

(This) was followed and expanded over the centuries by many explorers, including Abel Tasman, James Cook and Matthew Flinders, all of whom played an important role in revealing the secrets of Australia's coast.

We (in affluent countries) used to talk for centuries about what we could do for Africa. But the real question is about empowerment, and what Africa can do for itself.

During the two centuries since the publication of 'The Wealth of Nations,' the main activity of economists, it seems to me, has been to fill the gaps in Adam Smith's system, to correct his errors and to make his analysis vastly more exact.

Five centuries ago, Copernicus upset humanity's applecart with the news that the Earth is not the center of the cosmos. It could be that, before you've paid off your house, we'll learn that the universe is not the center of the universe, either!

The writings and the recommendations of the earliest medical scientists and the new breed of clinicians between the mid-fifteenth and early seventeenth centuries were based on the supposition that sufficient study and experimentation would elucidate not only the origins of disease, but its treatment as well.

People seem to lose all respect for the past; events succeed each other with such velocity that the most remarkable one of a few years gone by, is no more remembered than if centuries had closed over it.

Or it needs only to look back over past centuries and the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and popes to perceive an almost incomprehensible futility of the beliefs everywhere held and perpetually insisted upon

No state, as a matter of public policy, should turn back the clock on progress by, in effect, legalizing and relitigating the same types of discriminatory laws and debates that took America centuries to overcome.

Adding the P&G infrastructure is like putting a growth hormone into Gillette, and that in turn helps P&G businesses. P&G is continuing its growth into developing markets at a very fast rate and already has surpassed the market leaders of previous centuries in developing markets.

During my lifetime greater and more spectacular progress has been made in the physical sciences than in many centuries that preceded it.

A society like Canada's, with its four centuries of give-and-take, compromise and acceptance, wrong-doing and redress, is basically a forgiving society.

You really have to have records that are several decades long, or centuries or millennia even. It's only when you look at long records you start to see trends.

This (decision) sends entirely the wrong message. English football have lost the message that a footballer is an employee, it is more like the master and servant of centuries ago,

They say things like they don't want men opening doors for them anymore, and they don't want men lighting their cigarettes for them anymore. Big deal. Black women have been opening doors for themselves and lighting their own cigarettes for a couple centuries in this country. Black women don't quibble about things that are not important.

Although the pineapple had been widely disseminated for centuries among the native peoples of South and Central America, it didn't figure in European history until 1493.

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done - then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago

a summary of two centuries of federal employee benefit history.

It's feasible that we'll meet other sentient life forms and conduct commerce with them. We don't now have the technology to physically travel outside our solar system for such an exchange to take place, but we are like Columbus centuries ago, learning fast how to get somewhere few think possible.

It's a vexing type of question. It seems silly, because music has been expressing these issues for centuries - it's hard to think that it doesn't have the cultural standing to do it any more.

It is still very much alive, standing proudly, ... Because it is three centuries old, it is our last living link to President Lincoln.

For many centuries into the Middle Ages, the church regarded the killing of Christ as the most horrible crime of all time. Even though theologically it's recognized as the foundation for Christianity, it was a horrible, horrible event.

For centuries people have attempted to find the location of the Garden of Eden, placing it in such divergent places as Florida and Babylonia.

Economic systems rise and fall just like empires. That's the kind of perspective we need to take if we hope to prosper for centuries rather than for the next quarter.

The Air Force is to be applauded for investigating technologies that may have value for national security. But wormholes, negative energies, warped space-time, etc., require futuristic technologies centuries to millions of years ahead of ours. The only thing going down the wormhole is taxpayers' money.

It's been federal law for over two centuries that the child of an American born abroad is a citizen - a natural born citizen.

It's what Jonathan Swift suggested two and a half centuries ago: making two blades of grass grow where one grew before - and doing it in such a way that doesn't deplete the earth's resources.

The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man nothing else that he builds ever lasts monuments fall; nations perish; civilization grow old and die out; new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again and yet live on. Still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men's hearts, of the hearts of men centuries dead.

It was advantageous for the French and English to promote the idea that everything out of Spain was ugly, cruel and crude because of the Inquisition and blah, blah, blah. The legend persisted for years and years -- centuries -- with this belief that all the Spanish were barbarians.

So areas that were high and dry even a few centuries ago ... a lot of these settlements are now under 10 feet of water,

I just can't imagine a guy who's made more than 70 international centuries turning up at Lord's and getting booed.

I'm never certain how to respond when an advocate on the other side of a case calls up images of patriots over the centuries who have sacrificed themselves to preserve our democracy,

Iranians hate Arabs. They're a fairly well-educated population and they have centuries of experience with self-government.

In 1853, American warships bullied Japan out of centuries of virtual isolation and into the modern world. The threat of force compelled Japan, like India and China before it, to accept trade agreements that were economically ruinous and eroded national sovereignty.

Cameras in the courtroom will change what we have had for centuries and what the people of this country seem to think is a valuable service in the criminal justice system.

But your mind is very complex, very tricky. It makes simple things complicated. -- that's its work. And for centuries it has been trained for only one thing, to make things so complicated that your life becomes impossible.

I do think there is a loophole in the law here which needs to be addressed. Gold coins more than a few centuries old are such rare finds that they are always going to be of great interest.

I fear that machines are several centuries ahead of the mortals.

How sad it will be if in three or four centuries all that is spoken in the world is English, Hindi, Mandarin, Russian, Japanese and a handful of European languages, ... We will also lose much healing knowledge and much conservation knowledge embedded in indigenous cultures.

THE harp is a musical instrument invented many centuries ago. When properly strung and played upon it yields sweet music, making glad the heart.