Columbus Quotes

“Like a Columbus of the heart, mind and soul I have hurled myself off the shores of my own fears and limiting beliefs to venture far out into the uncharted territories of my inner truth, in search of what it means to be genuine and at peace with who I really am. I have abandoned the masquerade of living up to the expectations of others and explored the new horizons of what it means to be truly and completely me, in all my amazing imperfection and most splendid insecurity.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“It’s like, how did Columbus discover America when the Indians were already here? What kind of shit is that, but white people’s shit?”
― Miles Davis, Miles: The Autobiography

“In 1492, the natives discovered they were indians, discovered they lived in America, discovered they were naked, discovered that the Sin existed, discovered they owed allegiance to a King and Kingdom from another world and a God from another sky, and that this God had invented the guilty and the dress, and had sent to be burnt alive who worships the Sun the Moon the Earth and the Rain that wets it.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Los hijos de los días

“I'll follow him to the ends of the earth,' she sobbed. Yes, darling. But the earth doesn't have any ends. Columbus fixed that.”
― Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker

“Home is where the heart begins, but not where the heart stays.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us

“Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called upon to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.”
― Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism

“The history of Europe before the Conquest is sufficient proof that the Europeans did not have to cross the oceans to find the will to exterminate those standing in their way.”
― Silvia Federici, Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation

“Be a Columbus smell the fragrance of the new lands and discover them.”
― Amit Ray, Peace Bliss Beauty and Truth: Living with Positivity

“There were no mail-order catalogues in 1492. Marco Polo's journal was the wish book of Renaissance Europe. Then, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and landed in Sears' basement. Despite all the Indians on the escalator, Columbus' visit came to be known as a "discovery.”
― Tom Robbins, Another Roadside Attraction

“Advice to explorers everywhere: if you would like to recieve due credit for your discoveries, keep a detailed account of your journeys as Columbus did. On Septemeber 28, 1492, after four weeks at sea, he writes: Dear diary...I means journal. Yes, dear journal. That's what I meant to say. Whew. Anyway, we have yet to discover America, and the crew has become increasingly rebellious. I have decided to turn back if we have not spotted it by Columbus Day. Will write again later if not killed by crew. P.S. Last night's buffet was fabulous, the ice sculptures magnificent.”
― Cuthbert Soup, Another Whole Nother Story

“The willingness to reexamine lifelong beliefs because of conflicting data takes enormous courage, and contrasts sharply with recent examples of public discourse in which our political, cultural, and religious leaders have fit data to preconceived theories.”
― Donal O'Shea, The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe

“...whatever we do whatever way
we move forward
there will be damage carried
from all previous rows and columns
in this mathematical computation
we make, all the multi-configured additions and subtractions
in language America,
in all bases, particularly
I'm thinking about
at the moment
1492, 1776, 1861, 1867, 1980, 2016, 2020.”
― Shellen Lubin

“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

“A poor grasp of dead reckoning may have led Christopher Columbus to North America instead of India, a navigational error of about eight thousand miles.”
― Eric Schlosser, Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety

“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

“As an explorer Columbus was mediocre at best. He knew less about the sea than did the average sailor on his ships, could never determine the latitude and longitude of his discoveries, mistook islands for vast continents, and treated his crew badly. But in one area he was a genius: He knew how to sell himself.”
― Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

“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

“Look at Columbus, or Magellan: looking back, historians call you an explorer, but at the time, you‘re just lost.”
― Sean Stewart, Resurrection Man

“In the 8th Century, the Greek philosopher Homer thought that the Earth was flat. Many of the less educated people in the 15th Century still held on to that concept when Columbus set sail, following the setting sun west. The less informed warned Columbus and his crew of the danger of sailing right off the edge of the Earth. However, navigators and mathematicians knew better, since Greek philosophers in the 5th Century such as Parmenides, Empedocles and Pythagoras had already proved, by using various scientific methods, that the Earth was round. In about 200 BC Eratosthenes, who lived along the Nile near Alexandria, Egypt, calculated the circumference of the Earth to within a very close tolerance. Later in Prussia, Copernicus presented his concept that the Sun was the center of the Solar system and theorized that the planets revolved around it.
It was not coincidental that Copernicus did this shortly after Columbus discovered the new continent. Although the ancients did not have radio and television, they could communicate by various means, and definitely knew what was going on. However there were those who remained superstitious, believing that there were monstrous sea creatures near the edge of the Earth. But Columbus and other relatively educated people knew better!”
― Captain Hank Bracker, The Exciting Story of Cuba, Cuban History

“I was born on an island, a very small island, twelve miles long and eight miles wide; yet when I left it at nineteen years of age I had never set foot on three-quarters of it. I had recently met someone who was born on the other side of the world from me but had visited this island on which my family had lived for generations; this person, a woman, had said to me, ‘What a beautiful place,’ and she named a village by the sea and then went on to describe a view that was unknown to me. At the time I was so ashamed I could hardly make a reply, for I had come to believe that people in my position in the world should know everything about the place they are from. I know this: it was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1493; Columbus never set foot there but only named it in passing, after a church in Spain. He could not have known that he would have so many things to name, and I imagined how hard he had to rack his brain after he ran out of names honoring his benefactors, the saints he cherished, events important to him. A task like that would have killed a thoughtful person, but he went on to live a very long life.”
― Jamaica Kincaid, Lucy

“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

“Here in the United States, very little effort has been made to voice formal apologies, make reparations, or pass political mandates about education. Yet this country was founded in part by genocidal policies directed at Native Americans and the enslavement of Black people. Both of these things are morally repugnant. Still I love my country. In fact, it is because I love my country that I want to make sure the mistakes of our past do not get repeated. We cannot afford to cover over the dark chapters of our history, as we have for decades upon decades. It is time for that to stop.”
― Anton Treuer, Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians But Were Afraid to Ask: Young Readers Edition

“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

“The pale men are far more ruthless and belligerent than our people, and our people too compromising, too conciliatory,¨ Bakako concluded. ¨They have no moral rules, and their Christ-spirit provides an excuse for all evil done in his name. Our respect for harmony and our spirits´ sincerity have left us vulnerable.¨

Tears welled in Yutowa´s eyes, and he shuddered. ¨That´s the essence.¨”
― Andrew Rowen, Columbus and Caonabó: 1493–1498 Retold

“Men are like Columbus. They head to one woman, end up with another.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Nicolas Russell Lincoln NE epitomizes integrity and hard work. Whether in the armed forces or law enforcement, he strives to positively impact others' lives. Nicolas's unwavering dedication and love for his daughter motivate him to become a well-respected member of society.”
― Nicolas Russell Lincoln NE

“Wszyscy święci na nieboskłonie otulili mnie ciepłem swojej łaski i w tamtym momencie wiedziałam już na pewno, że Bóg Ojciec jest Amerykaninem, a Jezus Chrystus narodził się w Columbus, Ohio.”
― Aleksandra Weretelnik, Poza Zasięgiem Część I. Najbardziej Wyjątkowy Płatek Śniegu

“Every generation has its fraudsters like Edison,
Every generation has trashy maniacs like Columbus.
Every generation has war-merchants like Kissinger,
Every generation has its churchillian doofus.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“The west has systematically peddled
morons and monkeys as kings heroic,
white suffering is human suffering, while
the colored belong on national geographic.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavatan: 100 Demilitarization Sonnets

“I saw some who bore marks of wounds on their bodies and I made signs to them to ask how this happened, and they indicated that people from other nearby islands come here and try to take them as slaves. They are well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... I believe that they would be excellent servants. With fifty men, we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want”
― Christopher Columbus