Built Quote by Stephen Colbert

The Panama Canal was dug with a microscope.

— Ronald Ross

The problem was that Panama technically belonged to Colombia, which refused to sign a treaty leasing it to the United States. So Roosevelt sent…

— Dave Barry

“One had only to look at the map to see that Panama was the proper place for the canal. The route was already well…

— David McCullough

When President Teddy Roosevelt posed for the cameras astride a massive steam shovel during construction of the Panama Canal in 1906, it was more…

— Alan Huffman

So everything that ever happened, we knew about in Panama.

— Ruben Blades

We should keep [the Panama Canal]. After all, we stole it fair and square.

— S. I. Hayakawa

“It's in you,' my dad assured me once. 'You were born in Panamá. It's in your bones.' I spent a lot of time trying…

— Cristina Henriquez

“Since 1849 I have studied incessantly, under all its aspects, a question which was already in my mind since 1832. I confess that my…

— Ferdinand de Lesseps

America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.

— Samuel Eliot Morison

“To the majority of those on the job his presence had been magical. Years afterward, the wife of one of the steam-shovel engineers, Mrs.…

— David McCullough

This is our history - from the Transcontinental Railroad to the Hoover Dam, to the dredging of our ports and building of our most…

— Cory Booker

I don't want to go into history; I want to go into the Canal Zone.

— Omar Torrijos Herrera