A Quote by Nelson Mandela

It is not the kings and generals that make history, but the masses of the people.

Nelson Mandela

Quote Topics

Generals History Kings Make Masses People

Quote Author

Nelson Mandela
South African - Statesman
July 18, 1918 - December 5, 2013

Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.

Rutger Bregman

When I went to high school - that's about as far as I got - reading my U.S. history textbook, well, I got the history of the ruling class. I got the history of the generals and the industrialists and the presidents that didn't get caught. How 'bout you? I got all of the history of the people who owned the wealth of the country, but none of the history of the people that created it.

Utah Phillips

Health, money. That's what people worried about in the 14th century as much as today. I find it so much more interesting than the supposed activities of kings, queens, generals.

Peter Ackroyd

We had generals who were admirals and admirals who wanted to be generals. Generals acting as admirals are bad enough, but it was the admirals who wanted to be generals who imperiled victory among the coral islands.

Holland Smith

History is no longer just a chronicle of kings and statesmen, of people who wielded power, but of ordinary women and men engaged in manifold tasks. Women's history is an assertion that women have a history.

Toshiko Kishida

History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.

George Santayana

The Jewish nation is indeed, the heart of the world and there is no reason for the existence of empires, kings, rulers, masses or systems aside from their reaction to the Jewish people.

Meir Kahane

All through history it's the nations that have given most to generals and the least to the people that have been the first to fall

Harry S. Truman

Why, it appears that we appointed all of our worst generals to command the armies and we appointed all of our best generals to edit the newspapers. I mean, I found by reading a newspaper that these editor generals saw all of the defects plainly from the start but didn't tell me until it was too late. I'm willing to yield my place to these best generals and I'll do my best for the cause by editing a newspaper.

Robert E. Lee

I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.

Lord Chesterfield

The people have a right supreme To make their kings, for Kings are made for them. All Empire is no more than Pow'r in Trust, Which when resum'd, can be no longer just. Successionm for the general good design'd, In its own wrong a Nation cannot bind.

John Dryden

The history of the Roman Empire is also the history of the uprising of the Empire of the Masses, who absorb and annul the directing minorities and put themselves in their place. Then, also, is produced the phenomenon of agglomeration, of "the full." For that reason, as Spengler has very well observed, it was necessary, just as in our day, to construct enormous buildings. The epoch of the masses is the epoch of the colossal.

Jose Ortega y Gasset

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.

Edward Abbey

The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum.

Jean Fritz

For the profit of travel: in the first place, you get rid of a few prejudices.... The prejudiced against color finds several hundred millions of people of all shades of color, and all degrees of intellect, rank, and social worth, generals, judges, priests, and kings, and learns to give up his foolish prejudice.