We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases while the citizens may act only by permission which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history the stage of rule by brute force.

My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government.

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear. That there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

The marvel of all history is the patience with which men and women submit to burdens unnecessarily laid upon them by their governments.

Well for us in history where goodness is a rare pearl he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.

Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people.

All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough you can see the stars.

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

The soles of Neil Armstrong's boots on the moon made permanent impressions on our souls and in our national psyche. Ann and I watched those steps together on her parent's sofa. Like all Americans we went to bed that night knowing we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. God bless Neil Armstrong.

Yesterday is history tomorrow is a mystery today is God's gift that's why we call it the present.

Someday after mastering the winds the waves the tides and gravity we shall harness for God the energies of love and then for a second time in the history of the world man will have discovered fire.

Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners and necessity has made us allies. Those whom God has so joined together let no man put asunder.

Only through acknowledgment of the erasure and void of Jewish life can the history of Berlin and Europe have a human future.

I can't change history I don't want to change history. I can only change the future. I'm working on that.

Whether things turn out for the better depends on what we do. We ought not spend our time masterminding the future but recognize our marching orders: to do the best we can for history and the planet.

It is I claim nonsense to say that it does not matter which individual man acted as the nucleus for the change. It is precisely this that makes history unpredictable into the future.

There comes a time in the history of nations when their peoples must become fully reconciled to their past if they are to go forward with confidence to embrace their future.

Between France and Senegal there's a history. There's a language that we both speak. There's a culture that we share and to which both of our peoples have contributed. But beyond our history beyond our language beyond the links that have united us for so long what unites us today is the future.

To communicate the truths of history is an act of hope for the future.

You have reckoned that history ought to judge the past and to instruct the contemporary world as to the future. The present attempt does not yield to that high office. It will merely tell how it really was.

In retrospect the Millennium marked only a moment in time. It was the events of September 11 that marked a turning point in history where we confront the dangers of the future and assess the choices facing humankind.

After the Berlin Wall came down I visited that city and I will never forget it. The abandoned checkpoints. The sense of excitement about the future. The knowledge that a great continent was coming together. Healing those wounds of our history is the central story of the European Union.

By failing seriously to confront the most predicable economic crisis in our nation's history the President's policies are committing us and our children to a diminished future.