Happy Columbus Day!

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.
Christopher Columbus

Gold is a treasure, and he who possesses it does all he wishes to in this world, and succeeds in helping souls into paradise.
Christopher Columbus

But in truth, should I meet with gold or spices in great quantity, I shall remain till I collect as much as possible, and for this purpose I am proceeding solely in quest of them.
Christopher Columbus

Their houses are all built in the shape of tents, with very high chimneys.
Christopher Columbus

For the execution of the voyage to the Indies, I did not make use of intelligence, mathematics or maps.
Christopher Columbus

They... brought us parrots and balls of cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything they owned.... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.
Christopher Columbus

I should be judged as a captain who went from Spain to the Indies to conquer a people numerous and warlike, whose manners and religion are very different from ours, who live in sierras and mountains, without fixed settlements, and where by divine will I have placed under the sovereignty of the King and Queen our Lords, an Other World, whereby Spain, which was reckoned poor, is become the richest of countries.
Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.
James Joyce

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
Carl Sagan

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.
Stephen Hawking

If Columbus had an advisory committee he would probably still be at the dock.
Arthur Goldberg

In all parts of the Old World, as well as of the New, it was evident that Columbus had kindled a fire in every mariner's heart.  That fire was the harbinger of a new era, for it was not to be extinguished. 
Charles Kendall Adams

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.
Oscar Wilde

If America had been discovered as many times as I have, no one would remember Columbus.
Sean Connery

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.
Georg C. Lichtenberg

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.
Woody Harrelson

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

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

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white man came, an Indian said simply, "Ours." 
Vine Deloria, Jr.

So Columbus said, somebody show me the sunset and somebody did and he set sail for it,
And he discovered America and they put him in jail for it,
And the fetters gave him welts,
And they named America after somebody else.
Ogden Nash

America's one of the finest countries anyone ever stole. 
Bobcat Goldthwaite

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered.  I myself would say that it had merely been detected. 
Oscar Wilde