Christopher Columbus Quotes

“If and when all the laws governing physical phenomena are finally discovered, and all the empirical constants occurring in these laws are finally expressed through the four independent basic constants, we will be able to say that physical science has reached its end, that no excitement is left in further explorations, and that all that remains to a physicist is either tedious work on minor details or the self-educational study and adoration of the magnificence of the completed system. At that stage physical science will enter from the epoch of Columbus and Magellan into the epoch of the National Geographic Magazine!”
― George Gamow

“Columbus gave Europe a New World; [Alexander von] Humboldt made it known in its physical, material, intellectual, and moral aspects.”
― José Cipriano de la Luz y Caballero

“So long as our history 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 at Europe and its extensions as the seat of all knowledge and intelligence. So long as they simply celebrate Columbus, rather than teach us both sides of the exploit, they encourage us to identify with white Western exploitation rather than study it.”
― James Loewen

“We see it [the as-yet unseen, probable new planet, Neptune] as Columbus saw America from the coast of Spain. Its movements have been felt, trembling along the far-reaching line of our analysis with a certainty hardly inferior to that of ocular demonstration.”
― William Herschel

“No thoughts had I of anything,
Or at least that's what I thought;
I even thought I couldn't think,
But now I think I never thought.”
― Christopher Miller, At This Point in Time

“Long before Christopher Columbus, the celebrated Chinese navigator Zheng He travelled through the south and westward maritime routes in the Indian Ocean and established relations with more than thirty countries in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
― Patrick Mendis, Peaceful War: How the Chinese Dream and the American Destiny Create a New Pacific World Order

“The history of the world is a whitewashed history, where great many facts are distorted to maintain white supremacy – such as Columbus discovering America or Gandhi liberating India – Gandhi didn’t liberate India, Subhas Chandra Bose did and Columbus never even set foot on America.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“The six o’clock news is all about space, all about emptiness: some bald men plays with little toys to show the docking and undocking maneuvers, and then a panel talks about the significance of this for the next five hundred years. They keep mentioning Columbus but as far as Rabbit can see it’s the exact opposite: Columbus flew blind and hit something, these guys see exactly where they’re aiming and it’s a big round nothing.”
― John Updike, Rabbit Redux

“A sailor called Christopher followed his mistake and those who come later have added theirs. Now he's dead, and as some say of the dead, safe and sound in the legacy of the grave. 'Tis a childish saying, for they be yet present with the living. (211)”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

“Christopher Columbus and his brothers were no different from many of the Spanish adventurers of the time. They were a roughhewn lot, who wrote the rules by which they lived. As with their fellow conquistadors, they had a code of honor that sadly did not include the Indians. Since most of the Indians were never baptized, killing or enslaving them was not considered sinful. Human life was cheap to them, as they lived and died by the sword. The same was not true of the gentry or the clergy, many of whom saw that their responsibility was to administer “the Great Commission” as mentioned in the Bible, which was to convert the heathens to Christianity. However, many of the Spanish Adventurers never got outside of their own bubble and had no idea what the World was really all about. It is interesting that Columbus Day is celebrated, when in fact he was not the first to discover America, nor was he really an honorable person, as we understand the word “honorable” now. It can only be said that things were different. Things were the way they were!”
― Captain Hank Bracker, "The Exciting Story of Cuba"

“At ten o'clock we arrived in Aspinwall, or, as it is always called there, Colon, this being the real name of the place, given by the people in honor of Columbus; Aspinwall is the name given by the Americans, but is not used on the Isthmus”
― Helen Josephine Sanborn, A Winter in Central America and Mexico.

“It's time we stop celebrating October 11 as Columbus Day and consider it as "Repentance Day", to acknowledge, and make amends for, the appalling atrocities committed by mindless and heartless oppressors like Columbus.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“Popular belief considers Christopher Columbus as some sort of hero, while in reality he was a murderer. While the world admires him as a brave explorer, all this brainless buffoon did was sail around the Caribbean and slaughtered innocent natives who greeted him with nothing but hospitality. You don't discover a land where people are already living. On top of that, when someone invades their land and starts looting, pillaging and slaughtering, he is neither brave, nor an explorer, he's just a petty thief and brut.”
― Abhijit Naskar, When Veins Ignite: Either Integration or Degradation

“A bookish man, he read widely, but rarely in search of new knowledge. Instead, he sought confirmation of his preexisting fantasy about an orient that lay almost on Europe’s doorstep. This dream drove him across the ocean sea, where he saw and heard things already in his own head; sirens, cannibals, subjects of the great Kahn, even an island off Hispaniola inhabited by Amazons. Other men of his day had clearer vision. “The hidden half of the globe is brought to light,” Peter Martyris, an Italian historian in the Spanish court wrote upon Columbus’ return from his first voyage in 1493. The next year, Martyris became the first European to refer to the Indies as “Ab orbe novo.” The New World. Yet Columbus never grasped the immensity of what he’d done. The more he saw, the less he learned. Mysticism, and dreams of the Orient kept overwhelming the evidence of his own senses.”
― Tony Horwitz, A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

“The seamen were fagged out.”
― Samuel Eliot Morison