Quotes from The Untold History of The United States

“To fail is not tragic. To be human, is.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Most American view World War II nostalgically as the "good war," in which the United States and its allies triumphed over German Nazism, Italian fascism, and Japanese militarism. The rest of the world remembers it as the bloodiest war in human history. By the time it was over, more than 60 million people lay dead, including 27 million Russians, between 10 million and 20 million Chinese, 6 million Jews, 5.5 million Germans, 3 million non-Jewish Poles, 2.5 million Japanese, and 1.5 million Yugoslavs. Austria, Great Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and the United States each counted between 250,000 and 333,000 dead.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other religions were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. … And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“According to Japanese scholar Yuki Tanaka, the United States firebombed over a hundred Japanese cities. Destruction reached 99.5 percent in the city of Toyama, driving Secretary of War Henry Stimson to tell Truman he "did not want to have the US get the reputation of outdoing Hitler in atrocities," though Stimson did almost nothing to halt the slaughter. He had managed to delude himself into believing Arnold's promise that he would limit "damage to civilians." Future Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, who was on LeMay's staff in 1945, agreed with his boss's comment that of the United States lost the war, they'd all be tried as war criminals and deserved to be convicted.
Hatred towards the Japanese ran so deep that almost no one objected to the mass slaughter of civilians.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“The Nation observed, “If you steal $25, you’re a thief. If you steal $250,000, you’re an embezzler. If you steal $2,500,000, you’re a financier.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Let the capitalists do their own fighting and furnish their own corpses and there will never be another war on the face of the earth.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Either you're born crazy or you're born boring.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Americans, like people everywhere, are in thrall to their visions of the past, rarely realizing the extent to which their understanding of history shapes behavior in the here and now. Historical understanding defines people’s very sense of what is thinkable and achievable. As a result, many have lost the ability to imagine a world that is substantially different from and better than what exists today.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Despite the well-deserved criticism, controlling public opinion became a central element in all future war planning.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“By the early 1920s, the America of Jefferson, Lincoln, Whitman, and the young William Jennings Bryan had ceased to exist. It had been replaced by the world of McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, J. Edgar Hoover, and Woodrow Wilson.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Prominent among the American capitalists with ties to Nazi counterparts was Prescott Bush, the father of one president and grandfather of another.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“Prominent among the American capitalists with ties to Nazi counterparts was Prescott Bush, the father of one president and grandfather of another. Researchers have been trying for years to determine the precise nature of Bush’s ties to Fritz Thyssen, the wealthy German industrialist who played a crucial role in bankrolling Hitler, as revealed in his 1941 memoirs I Paid Hitler. Thyssen ultimately repudiated the Nazi dictator and was himself imprisoned.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“the Berlin Wall failed to elicit a jubilant response on his part. He explained,”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

“The fantasies of ‘academic freedom’ . . . cannot protect a professor who counsels resistance to the law and speaks, writes, disseminates treason. That a teacher of youth should teach sedition and treason, that he should infect, or seek to infect, youthful minds with ideas fatal to their duty to the country, is intolerable.”
― Oliver Stone, quote from The Untold History of The United States

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About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.