Columbus Quotes - Page 7

• Every genuine poet is necessarily a Columbus. America existed for centuries before Columbus but it was only Columbus who was able to track it down.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  America, Track, Poetry

  Yevgeny Zamyatin (2010). “We: Introduction by Will Self”, p.59, Random House

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• Columbus and his men, they say, Conveyed the virus hither Whereby my features rot away And vital powers wither; Yet had they not traversed the seas And come infected back, Why, think of all the luxuries That modern life would lack.

  Richard Wilbur

  Men, Thinking, Sea

  1957 'Pangloss's Song', from Candide.

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• O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

  George Santayana

  Wise, Art, Believe

  George Santayana (1979). “The complete poems of George Santayana: a critical edition”, Associated Univ Pr

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• I can never quite decide whether the anti-Columbus movement is merely risible or faintly sinister. It is sinister, though, because it is an ignorant celebration of stasis and backwardness, with an unpleasant tinge of self-hatred.

  Christopher Hitchens

  Self, Hatred, Ignorant

  "Minority Report". The Nation, October 19, 1992.

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• America should do a reverse Columbus. The world no longer needs to discover America; but America urgently needs to discover the world's view of America.

  Timothy Garton Ash

  Views, America, Needs

  "Americans need to discover how the world sees them" by Timothy Garton Ash, www.theguardian.com. October 15, 2013.

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• Part of what we want to do with the Heroic Imagination Project is to get kids to think about what it means to be a hero. The most basic concept of a hero is socially constructed: It differs from culture to culture and changes over time. Think of Christopher Columbus. Until recently, he was a hero. Now he's a genocidal murderer! If he were alive today, he'd say, "What happened? I used to be a hero, and now people are throwing tomatoes at me!

  Philip Zimbardo

  Hero, Mean, Kids

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• All publishers are Columbuses. The successful author is their America. The reflection that they-like Columbus-didn't discover what they expected to discover, and didn't discover what they started out to discover, doesn't trouble them. All they remember is that they discovered America; they forget that they started out to discover some patch or corner of India.

  Mark Twain

  Successful, Reflection, America

  Mark Twain (2013). “Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 2: The Complete and Authoritative Edition”, p.73, Univ of California Press

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• In the twelfth century the Basque fishermen of Biarritz used to hunt whales with deadly efficiency. When the whales sensibly moved away, the Basques chased them further and further, with the consequence that the fishermen of Biarritz discovered America before Columbus did. This is a matter for local pride but on a larger view it is not quite so stunning, since with the possible exception of the Swiss everybody discovered America before Columbus did.

  Clive James

  Pride, Views, Whales

  Clive James (1985). “Flying Visits”

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• If it is the case that you need just a first 11 and three or four more players, then why did Christopher Columbus sail to India to discover America?

  Claudio Ranieri

  Soccer, Football, Player

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• I just want to remind everybody that it's Columbus Day. That all those of you that know Italians and like Italians are the people that might venture on to a ship and travel to explore and find new lands, this is your day. It's not St. Patty's Day. That's a different day entirely.

  Les Miles

  Lsu, Land, People

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• I was the adoring son of a Welsh-Irish father, a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, a Catholic Knight of Columbus who was a blue-collar, trade union organizer and, not surprisingly, a fervid Nixon-hater.

  Bob Gunton

  Father, Son, Knights

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• The discontent with the existing order of things pervaded the atmosphere, wherever the conditions were favorable, long before Columbus, seeking the back door of Asia, found himself knocking at the front door of America.

  James Russell Lowell

  Doors, Order, America

  William Makepeace Thackeray, John Henry Newman, Matthew Arnold, John Ruskin, Walter Bagehot (1910). “Essays, English and American: With Introductions and Notes”

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• It is the striving after perfection that makes one an artist. It is the sense that one is imperfect, unfulfilled, unfinished. One attempts by a superhuman effort to fill the gap, to leap over it, to finish it in another medium. And one creates a third and separate thing: 'Adventure rarely reaches its predetermined end. Columbus never reached China. But he discovered America.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Adventure, Artist, America

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1981). “War within and without: diaries and letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1939-1944”, Berkley

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• The true America is the Middle West, and Columbus discovered nothing at all except another Europe.

  W. L. George

  Europe, America, West

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• Columbus was an Abraham, for he went out not knowing whither he went. Columbus was a Moses, for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible. Only the man of faith is the man of power. Only he who can see the invisible can do the impossible. God grant that to-day in that bark we may be wafted by God's blessing, and may land at last on the shores of Heaven, where we shall sing a sweeter Te Deum than that which awoke the echoes on the soil of virgin America, or those amid the splendors of the court at Barcelona.

  Robert Stuart MacArthur

  Blessing, Men, Echoes

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• Man was sent into the world to be a growing and exhaustless force. The world was spread out around him to be seized and conquered. Realms of infinite truth burst open above him, inviting him to tread those shining coasts along which Newton dropped his plummet, and Herschel sailed,--a Columbus of the skies.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Sky, Shining

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• The leader of an Earth organization who makes a commitment to history - of humans living on Earth, to begin permanent settlement/occupation of not the moon, but of another planet - this leader will have a legacy for history that will supersede Columbus, Genghis Khan or almost any recognized leader.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Commitment, Moon, Organization

  "Buzz Aldrin Wants To Send People On A One-Way Trip To Mars". Interview with Rebecca Boyle, www.popsci.com. May 7, 2013.

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• I don't like that word 'discovery.' ... Sinatra was the first one to call Ray Charles a genius, he spoke of 'the genius of Ray Charles.' And after that everybody called him a genius. They didn't call him a genius before that though. He was a genius but they didn't call him that. ... If a white man hadn't told them, they wouldn't've seen it. ... Like, you know, they say Columbus discovered America, he didn't discover America.

  Gayl Jones

  Men, Discovery, White Man

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• Columbus saved the Indians from themselves.

  Rush Limbaugh

  Saved

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• At Columbus Circle, a juggler wearing a trench cloak and top hat, who is usually at this location afternoons and who calls himself Stretch Man, performs in front of a small, uninterested crowd; though I smell prey, and he seems worthy of my wrath, I move on in search of a less dorky target. Though if he'd been a mime, odds are he'd already be dead.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Moving, Men, Odds

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• Columbus not only sent the first slaves acroiss the Atlantic, he sent more slaves than any other individual

  James W. Loewen

  Firsts, Slave, Individual

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• When Columbus took off, the purpose was to improve trade relations with China. That problem has not been solved to this very day, but just look at the by-products.

  Edward Teller

  Looks, Purpose, Modern Life

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• Tobacco is the only excuse for Columbus's misadventure in discovering America.

  Sigmund Freud

  Travel, Home, America

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• So long as our textbooks hide from us the roles that people of color have played in exploration, from at least 6000 BC to the twentieth century, they encourage us to look to Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they say “discover,” they imply that whites are the only people who really matter. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach both sides of his exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it.

  James W. Loewen

  White, Color, Europe

  James W. Loewen (2013). “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong”, p.85, The New Press

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• They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
  When he said the world was round.

  Ira Gershwin

  Public Opinion, World, Said

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