History is Bunk, Says Henry Ford, Special to The New York Times, New York Times, October October 29, 1921. p. 1
Source: More Money than Brains (2010), Chapter Four, Screw U or Hate My Professors, p. 131
“And what is cosmos? | What is the meaning of the world? | History is bunk.”
Dieci stratagemmi
Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche (1994), The Anima as the Woman within the Man
Speech on the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1968)
Context: And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.
“What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.”
Quid enim refert, quantum habeas? multo illud plus est, quod non habes.
Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, bk. 12, ch. 2, sect. 13; translation from Riad Aziz Kassis The Book of Proverbs and Arabic Proverbial Works (Leiden: Brill, 1999) p. 159.
Misattributed
“How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?”
"Blackstar"
Song lyrics, Blackstar (2016)
Context: Something happened on the day he died
Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside
Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar) How many times does an angel fall?
How many people lie instead of talking tall?
He trod on sacred ground, he cried loud into the crowd
(I’m a blackstar, I’m a blackstar, I’m not a gangster)
“What difference at this point does it make?”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee, , quoted in
regarding 2012 attack on US diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya
Secretary of State (2009–2013)
Context: With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans—was it because of a protest or because of guys out for a walk one night and decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.
A Short History of Chemistry (1937)
Context: A great number of our common ideas and ways of looking at the world were really shaped for us by the Greeks of antiquity, and... incorporated into the scientific knowledge of today. Such ideas as those of matter, force, element, number, space, time, etc., came to us from the ancient Greeks.
“It makes no difference how many peaks you reach if there was no pleasure in the climb.”
