It was one of those great miracles of history that they managed to smuggle an Enigma machines out to Britain just before they were invaded by the Nazis.
Optimists are usually wrong. But all the great change in history positive change was done by optimists.
The great drama of Russian history has been between its state and society. Put simply Russia has always had too much state and not enough society.
When great changes occur in history when great principles are involved as a rule the majority are wrong.
If you read about Mussolini or Stalin or some of these other great monsters of history they were at it all the time that they were getting up in the morning very early. They were physically very active. They didn't eat lunch.
The Jews' greatest contribution to history is dissatisfaction! We're a nation born to be discontented. Whatever exists we believe can be changed for the better.
I realise that I do not change the course of history. I am an actor I do a movie that's the end of it. You have to realise we are just clowns for hire. After I had success it was great at first not to worry about money. It was on my mind when I was growing up.
I've never been nostalgic personally or politically - if the past was so great how come it's history?
When I read Thirteen Days I was moved by it. It was just a great time for the world in terms of looking back in history and seeing how we got ourselves into trouble and how we got ourselves out of trouble.
The great and abiding lesson of American history particularly the cold war is that the engine of capitalism the individual is mightier than any collective.
History keeps her secrets longer than most of us. But she has one secret that I will reveal to you tonight in the greatest confidence. Sometimes there are no winners at all. And sometimes nobody needs to lose.
Great writing can be done in biography history art.
I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.
It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.
Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637 the Banque Royale of 1719-20 the railway speculation of the 1840s the great crash of 1929.
The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes on those which were best and greatest it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen.
The past always seems somehow more golden more serious than the present. We tend to forget the partisanship of yesteryear preferring to re-imagine our history as a sure and steady march toward greatness.
World War II ended the Great Depression with one of the great public-private industrial collaborations in the history of man.
From Jefferson to Jackson to Lincoln to FDR to Reagan every great president inspires enormous affection and enormous hostility. We'll all be much saner I think if we remember that history is full of surprises and things that seemed absolutely certain one day are often unimaginable the next.
The middle class one of the great achievements in history is becoming more of a relic than a reality.
The long-established and noble rule of Law one of the greatest products of the character and tradition of British history has suffered a deadly blow. Blackmail has become respectable.
The history of thought may be summed up in these words: it is absurd by what it seeks and great by what it finds.
The United States is the only power in history that became great by giving and not by taking. I think the crisis was when the United States had more money than ideas. Money doesn't produce money. Ideas produce money.
I do have to say that I think that President Obama is the greatest President in the history of all of our Presidents and that he can do no wrong in my book. So how's that for prejudice on the Democratic side?