Empire Quotes - page 10
![[President George W. Bush] has a vision which can be described with two other words: Manichaean paranoia... the notion that he is leading the forces of good against the empire of evil, that in that setting, the fact that we are morally superior justifies us committing immoral acts. And that is a very dangerous posture for the country that is the number one global power. ... The fact is he squandered our credibility, our legitimacy, and even respect for our power. (Zbigniew Brzezinski)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/20/zbigniew-brzezinski-bush-committing-444720.webp)
Difficult as the course is, the dangers do not come from the difficulties; they come from extremists in India and at home. I will tell you what I mean. I am firmly convinced that such writings as appear in such papers as the Daily Mail will do more to lose India for the British Empire, will do more to cause a revolutionary spirit, than anything that can be done in any way by anyone else. I got many letters, I need hardly say, of all points of view. I had a very characteristic one last week... It was from a colonel; he was an old man, you could tell that by his writing; and he used this phrase: He said, "You and Lord Irwin are negrophiles." Perhaps he was a member of the United Empire party. That is not the way to cement the Empire. This sort of thing, and the spirit behind it, will break up our Empire infallibly, and that is what I am out to fight.
Stanley Baldwin
If we refuse...what are the prospects? Repression, and nothing but repression, and it is a very uncomfortable repression; a kind of repression from which we shall get neither credit nor success. It is the repression of the masses of the people, the great proportion of these masses being women and children. It is the repression not of organisations and not of bodies; it will develop into the repression of the whole of the population. ... If, on the other hand, you wish to bind India to you by bonds of confidence, to make her happy within your Empire and Commonwealth, if you wish to hear her praise you in gratitude and remain with you in pride, then accept the work that has been done by the Conference, and instruct the Government to proceed with it to a complete conclusion.
Ramsay MacDonald
I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based upon morality. I do not care for military greatness or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England who is less likely to speak irreverently of the Crown and Monarchy of England than I am; but crowns, coronets, mitres, military display, the pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge Empire, are, in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering, unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment, and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial castles, great halls, stately mansions, do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in the cottage; and unless the light of your constitution can shine there, unless the beauty of your legislation and the excellence of your statesmanship are impressed there on the feelings and condition of the people, rely upon it you have yet to learn the duties of Government.
John Bright
I want no array of figures, I want no official documents, I want no speeches of six hours, to establish to my satisfaction the public policy of maintaining the Legislative Union [with Ireland]. I feel and know that the Repeal of it must lead to the dismemberment of this great empire; must make Great Britain a fourth-rate power of Europe, and Ireland a savage wilderness; and I will give therefore, at once, and without hesitation, an emphatic negative to the motion for Repeal.
Robert Peel
Something mysterious happened when Barack Obama entered the Oval Office in 2009. Something vanished from that room, and no one could quite explain why. It was a bust of Winston Churchill – the great British war time leader. It was a fine goggle-eyed object, done by the brilliant sculptor Jacob Epstein, and it had sat there for almost ten years. But on day one of the Obama administration it was returned, without ceremony, to the British embassy in Washington. No one was sure whether the President had himself been involved in the decision. Some said it was a snub to Britain. Some said it was a symbol of the part-Kenyan President's ancestral dislike of the British empire – of which Churchill had been such a fervent defender. Some said that perhaps Churchill was seen as less important than he once was. Perhaps his ideas were old-fashioned and out of date. Well, if that's why Churchill was banished from the Oval Office, they could not have been more wrong.
Boris Johnson
Europe resolved a great problem – the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless. What Hitler and the German Nazis did to the Jews of Europe at that time was partly due to these circumstances with the Jews. They wanted to expel the Zionists from Europe because they always were a pain in the neck for the governments there. This is how this calamity fell upon the Muslims, especially the Palestinians, and you all know this history, more or less. [...]The first goal was to save Europe from the evil of Zionism, and in this, they have been relatively successful.
Hashemi Rafsanjani
The affairs of the world do not stand still...I could not go, as the representative of His Majesty's Government, to meeting after meeting of the League of Nations, to conference after conference with the representatives of foreign countries, and say, "Great Britain is without a policy. We have not yet been able to meet all the Governments of the Empire, and we can do nothing." That might be possible for an Empire wholly removed from Europe, which existed in a different hemisphere. It was not possible for an Empire the heart of which lies in Europe and next door to the Continent of Europe, and where every peril to the peace of Europe jeopardised the peace of this country.
Austen Chamberlain
The first thoughts of an Englishman on appointment to the office of Foreign Secretary must be that he speaks in the name, not of Great Britain only, but of the British Dominions beyond the seas, and that it is his imperative duty to preserve in word and act the diplomatic unity of the British Empire. Our interests are one. Our intercourse must be intimate and constant, and we must speak with one voice in the Councils of the world.
Austen Chamberlain
I know very well how limited and how open to criticism, English freedom is. It is race-bound and it's class-bound. It means freedom for the Englishman, but not for the subject-races of his Empire. If you invite the average Englishman to share his liberties with the inhabitants of India or Kenya, he will reply, "Never," if he is a Tory, and "Not until I consider them worthy" if he is a Liberal.
E. M. Forster
I am 80. I cannot take much more part in public affairs, but I rejoice to think I see growing up younger generations, one by one, who instinctively follow the great example of their forefathers and are predestined with undiminished lustre to carry to future ages the glories of the British Empire.
Arthur Balfour
Suppose [he said to the Americans] that it was a familiar thought in your minds that there never was at any moment of the year within the limits of your State more than seven weeks food for the population, and that that food had to be replenished by overseas communication...Then you will understand why every citizen of the British Empire, whether he comes from the far Dominions of the Pacific, or the small island in the North Sea, can never forget...that without sea communication he, and the Empire to which he belongs, would perish.
Arthur Balfour
Parliament is the centre of the British Empire. It is the responsibility of the members of Parliament, to whatever party they belong, to see that the tradition which has insensibly grown up, which is not a product of this or that constitution-monger, but which is the result of the unthought-out efforts for the public good of the various constituent individuals who from generation to generation, either in this House or in the other, had the conduct of public affairs is continued. It is their action which has made Great Britain what it is, and has founded all over the world institutions modelled upon ours and showing that, whether the British Constitution be or be not the best Constitution in the world for all kinds and sorts of men, it is undoubtedly the best Constitution for people of British origin, British tradition, British hopes, and British ideals. That is why I am consoled by the gradual rising of new generations as old generations vanish.
Arthur Balfour
Russia will in due time become a power almost as great as the old Roman Empire. She can become mistress of all Asia, except British India, whenever she chooses to take it; and when enlightened arrangements shall have made her revenue proportioned to her territory, and railways shall have abridged distances her command of men will become enormous, her pecuniary means gigantic, and her power of transporting armies over great distances most formidable. Germany ought to be strong in order to resist Russian aggression, and a strong Prussia is essential to German strength.
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
Our interests require that Egypt should remain what it is, an integral part of the Turkish empire. We do not want it or wish it for ourselves, any more than any rational man with an estate in the North of England and a residence in the South would have wished to possess the inns on the North Road.
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston
America has created the evil that is attacking it. The evil will not disappear even if I die and Osama dies and others die. This is U.S. policy. The U.S. should step back and review its policy. It should stop trying to impose its empire on the rest of the world, especially on Islamic countries.
Mohammed Omar
