A Quote by Oscar Wilde
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
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In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered America. Now, some have argued Columbus actually discovered the West Indies, or that Norsemen had discovered America centuries earlier, or that you really can't get credit for discovering a land already populated by indigenous people with a developed civilization. Those people are communists. Columbus discovered America.
If America had been discovered as many times as I have, no one would remember Columbus.
Yeah, I know he discovered the West Indies; it wasn't America. But the whole thing with Columbus was that people had been telling him, 'Don't go. The world's flat.' But he kept going. He found land.
The history taught in our schools is scandalous. We grew up believing that Columbus actually discovered America. We still celebrate Columbus Day. Columbus was after one thing only - gold.
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.
The role of Ronald Reagan had been deliberately diminished; the role of the Europeans, who, with the exception of Helmet Kohl, were often keen to undermine America when it mattered, had been sanitized; and the role of Mr. Gorbachev, who had failed spectacularly in his declared objective of saving communism and the Soviet Union, had been absurdly misunderstood.
We say that Columbus discovered America and Newton discovered gravity, as though America and gravity weren't there until Columbus and Newton got wind of them.
So 2000 to 2008 probably is the last time we had leadership in Washington with any power which had the belief that America is the solution to problems in the world/ America always has been. We've got some things wrong but our motivations and interests have always been aboveboard.
Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.
A few years ago, I was trying to buy a piece of land next to a house I had in Newfoundland. I discovered that the plot had been owned by a family, and the son had gone off to World War I and been killed. It began to interest me: What would have happened on that land if the son had lived, had brought up his own family there?
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.
I recognized him then; that is, I finally comprehended what I had known but had never been able to formulate: he had always been complete. He had finished the work of becoming himself, long before any of us could even imagine such a feat was possible.
If cathedrals had been universities If dungeons of the Inquisition had been laboratories If Christians had believed in character instead of creed If they had taken from the bible only that which is GOOD and thrown away the wicked and absurd If temple domes had been observatories If priests had been philosophers If missionaries had taught useful arts instead of bible lore If astrology had been astronomy If the black arts had been chemistry If superstition had been science If religion had been humanity The world then would be a heaven filled with love, and liberty and joy
Hunger, I discovered, is very much a matter of the mind, and as I began to study my own appetites, I saw that my teenage craving had not really been for food. That ravenous desire had been a yearning for love, attention, appreciation. Food had merely been my substitute.
Do you think we care about the feelings of Native Americans when we celebrate Columbus Day? That's the day that the white man discovered a land where Indians had been living for a few thousand years.
He had lived a very long time, and only since he gained Anna had he learned to fear. He’d discovered that he had never been brave before—just indifferent. She had taught him that to be brave, you have to fear losing something.
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