Columbus Quotes

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

Christmas, 1492….Unfortunately, on Christmas morning 1492 Columbus' ship, the Santa María, ran aground on the northern coast of what is now Haiti. Not having any way to refloat her, the crew off-loaded the provisions and equipment from the ship before she broke up. For protection they then built a flimsy fortification on the beach, calling it “La Navidad.” With the consent of the local Indian Chief, Columbus left behind 39 men with orders to establish a settlement, and appointed Diego de Arana, a cousin of his mistress Beatriz, as the Governor. The story of what happened following this unfortunate incidence, on Christmas morning, so long ago is found in the “FAPA” award winning book “The Exciting Story of Cuba” by Captain Hank Bracker available at Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, BooksAMillion.com and Independent Book Stores everywhere.

Be a Columbus smell the fragrance of the new lands and discover them.

Amit Ray

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

ab Americo Inventore ...quasi Americi terram sive AmericamFrom Amerigo the discoverer ...as if it were the land of Americus, thus America.

Martin Waldseemüller

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

On November 27, 1493, when Columbus returned to Navidad, he found that the 39 crew members that he had left behind had been murdered, and instead of finding a peaceful settlement, he found their corpses bleaching on the beach. The local Taíno Indians had killed them all; because of the ignorant and cruel treatment they had received from the Spaniards. Little wonder that, from that time on, Columbus had problems with the Taínos. Columbus wisely decided to abandon Navidad and established La Isabela as the first capital of Hispaniola. La Isabela’s location was across a sand bar on a shallow river along the coast of what is now the Dominican Republic.

Captain Hank Bracker

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.

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?

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.

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

He was now wealthy beyond his wildest dreams and wanted for nothing, so Columbus retired to Valladolid, which at one time was considered the capital of Castile and Leon, a historic region of northwestern Spain. On October 19, 1469, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand had been married at the Palacio de los Vivero, in the city of Valladolid, giving it great significance for Columbus. It was only a year and a half after retiring, on May 20, 1506, that Christopher Columbus quietly died. Dr. Antonio Rodriguez Cuartero, a professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Granada, stated that the Admiral died of a heart attack caused by Reiter's Syndrome, also known as reactive arthritis. He was only 54 years of age; however, he had been suffering from arthritis for quite some time prior to his death.

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!

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.

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!

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.

Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer. "There are those who know and those who don't know. And for every ten thousand who don't know there's only one who knows. That's the miracle of all time - the fact that these millions know so much but don't know this. It's like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth. But it's different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While the truth is so obvious it's a miracle of all history that people don't know.

Carson McCullers