Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

History had its own way of explaining things. The way historians explain things is by telling a story.

All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

You have to liberate yourself first from the prejudices of the world in which you live.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

From the time I was a little boy I found myself reading history when I had a choice. I read a lot of things, but history had a special appeal for me.

We, to some degree, are like what we are because we inherited certain things from the Greeks and the Romans. One of them that's so striking is the whole area of politics.

I can see that you are a true historian because you really always ought to ask that question about anybody at a different place or a different time: What's the same and what's different?

Throughout the human experience people have read history because they felt that it was a pleasure and that it was in some way instructive. The profession of professor of history has taken it in a very different direction.

Name the greatest of all inventors. Accident.

I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all. But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident.

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.

It was just an accident; I was never going to come out here.

So that is how I ended up with those two titles, I like Accidentally on Purpose better - it is how we work in our trade - is it really an accident, or is there a thread of destiny in there? That was the intention, I am not sure I found out.

Yes, of course that's true but you know, the irony of all that is that before the accident, I'd pretty much lost interest in playing drums.

Because we are in a war situation, this can sometimes be dangerous work. But guys like A.D. Flowers and his technicians just take it in stride and get on with the job. In four years, we've never had a serious accident or injury working with all the explosions.

When I was 21, I got into a motorcycle accident while traveling in Europe and I had to lie around a lot in the aftermath, which was really the first time in my life that I became really focused and inspired to write.

None of the modes by which a magistrate is appointed, popular election, the accident of the lot, or the accident of birth, affords, as far as we can perceive, much security for his being wiser than any of his neighbours.

Before my accident I was a little too... selfish and self-absorbed and for me, to now be at the place where I can kinda give back and inspire people. I'm blessed. I'm really blessed.

It is no accident that I made Cartoon Town a simple little village - in many ways it mirrored my home town. And, yes, many of my puppet characters took on some of the more eccentric characteristics of people I knew there.

It's no accident many accuse me of conducting public affairs with my heart instead of my head. Well, what if I do? Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

After the accident Black Sheep was pretty much at an end.

It's no accident that Tony Hopkins is a wonderful film actor.

Scholarship except by accident is never the measure of a person's power.

I am just at that stage of wondering where I go from here. I came into this business almost by accident, but now it has become serious. What started as a bit of fun, something to do other than be a model, has taken on a different career curve. I have been forced to ask where that curve is going to end up.

Even though things happen by accident, you also unconsciously choose things that help you.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

Fortuitous circumstances constitute the moulds that shape the majority of human lives, and the hasty impress of an accident is too often regarded as the relentless decree of all ordaining fate.

What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself. There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven.

Man becomes weak or ill by accident as a consequence of the lack of resources. Even the most severally ill patients must be treated with the aim of restoring their health.

Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

We have no general conceptual thrust for the band, other than trying to make music that keeps our interest. When things are novel, they are probably things we have discovered by accident or investigation rather than by design.

Art doesn't just happen by accident. It is about pulling out new tricks and trying new things.

Chris was a friend of mine, I loved him. I didn't see him for 18 months before he died, but I'd met him several times after the accident. What was remarkable was his personal growth in his interior life.

I don't really consider myself a novelist, it just came out purely by accident.

They were very generous with me. Everybody was willing to talk about their particular accident, what they had to deal with and how they got back in touch with their competitors' spirit.

Well, we all are what we are, I guess you might say by an accident of birth.

I don't want to die in a car accident. When I die it'll be a glorious day. It'll probably be a waterfall.

In real life, one of my friends was killed in a car accident during our sophomore year.

I ended up in college by accident. Everything in my life, I ended up in by accident. I was down south in this high school doing whatever. It could just not contain me. I quit school and took off and traveled around. Nobody knew where I was I just couldn't handle it anymore. It was a big scandal, I was gone. I left.

I didn't get to the Senate by accident.

One does not become a guru by accident.

Anything that happens that's good, they think, Oh, it's an accident, when is the roof caving in? You've got to get them out of that mental framework.

The novel, for me, was an accident. I really don't consider myself a novelist.

Without history we are the prisoners of the accident of where and when we were born.

I find it very hard to sit down and create an idea or especially a new character on command. Usually my characters evolve by accident out of some story context.

Occasionally a student writer comes up with something really beautiful and moving, and you won't know for years if it was an accident or the first burst of something wonderful.

The space shuttle is a better and safer rocket than it was before the Challenger accident.