Mark Kurlansky Quotes

Gen. de Gaulle is only concerned about history, and no jury can dictate the judgment of history." Georges Pompidou

There is a dreamlike quality to the 1936 Basque government, the fulfillment of a historic longing that was to be crushed only nine months later in carnage the scale of which had never before been seen on earth.

Don't you sense the enormity of your mistake – you invade a country without understanding its music. – Norman Mailer

Children need fairy tales, but it is just as essential that they have parents who tell them about their own lives, so that they can establish a relationship to the past.

A modern revolutionary group, explained Abbie Hoffman, headed for the television station, not the factory.

One of humankind's most enduring misconceptions is that of nature's bounty... the belief that nature is such a powerful force that it is indestructible.

Man wants to see nature and evolution as separate from human activities. There is a natural world, and there is man. But man also belongs to the natural world. If he is a ferocious predator, that too is part of evolution. If cod and haddock and other species cannot survive because man kills them, something more adaptable will take their place. Nature, the ultimate pragmatist, doggedly searches for something that works. But as the cockroach demonstrates, what works best in nature does not always appeal to us.

It is not an overstatement to say that the destiny of the entire human race depends on what is going on in America today. This is a staggering reality to the rest of the world; they must feel like passengers in a supersonic jetliner who are forced to watch helplessly while a passel of drunks, hypes, freaks, and madmen fight for the controls and the pilot's seat. – Eldridge Cleaver, Soul on Ice, 1968

Even creative nonviolence can go unnoticed unless participants are attacked.

It is always easier to promote war than peace, easier to end the peace than end the war, because peace is fragile and war is durable.

In February 1912, ancient China came to an end when the last of three millennia of Chinese emperors abdicated.Imagine twentieth-century Italy coming to terms with the fall of the Roman empire or Egypt with the last pharaoh abdicating in 1912. For China, the last century has been a period of transition - dramatic change and perpetual revolution.

I did not realize at the time, as I have discovered since, that anyone who attempts any thing original in this world must expect a bit of ridicule." Clarence Birdseye