British Empire Quotes - Page 2

• When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.

  John Henrik Clarke

  Dream, Expectations, Political

  "The Impact of Marcus Garvey" by John Henrik Clarke, www.raceandhistory.com.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• Savagery was a word that Westerners used to, again, to consciously differentiate them from non-Westerners, to assert that superiority, that cultural superiority. It goes back to the British Empire, and again, you know, what was the purpose of the British Empire? To bring civilization to the savage no matter where they were, whether it was India or Asia or Australia or whatever. It's that civilizing mission that characterizes so much of the history of Western colonialism.

  Robert A. Williams, Jr.

  Purpose, Western, Savagery

  Source: www.truth-out.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.

  Lord Randolph Churchill

  Senior, Army, Troops

  5 Copy quote

• We thought being offered the M.B.E. [Member of the Order of the British Empire] was as funny as everybody else thought it was. Why? What for? We didn't believe it. It was a part we didn't want. We all met and agreed it was daft.

  John Lennon

  Music, Believe, Order

  "The Beatles". Book by Hunter Davies, 1968.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free, and life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fall, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age... Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Moving, Fall

  Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60

  46 Copy quote

  Show source

• I venture to claim two qualifications for the great office which I hold, which to my mind, without making invidious distinctions, is one of the most important that can be held by any Englishman; and those qualifications are that in the first place I believe in the British Empire, and in the second place I believe in the British race. I believe that the British race is the greatest of the governing races that the world has ever seen.

  Joseph Chamberlain

  Believe, Race, Two

  Joseph Chamberlain (1897). “Foreign & Colonial Speeches”, London ; New York : Routledge

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

  Tony Benn

  Empires, British, Britain

  Tony Benn's Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, October 2, 1972.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• To destroy Christianity, we must first destroy the British Empire.

  Karl Marx

  Gun, Empires, Firsts

  17 Copy quote

• I turned down the OBE because its not a club you want to join when you look at the villains whove got it. Its all the things I think are despicable: patronage, deferring to the monarchy and the name of the British Empire, which is a monument of exploitation and conquest.

  Ken Loach

  Thinking, Names, Looks

  41 Copy quote

• The britishh seizure of Hong Kong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the britishh Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

  Robert Trout

  India, Use, Ugly

  9 Copy quote

• If we don't stop behaving like the British Empire, we will end up like the British Empire.

  Pat Buchanan

  Peace, War, Empires

  22 Copy quote

• I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.

  Arthur L. Herman

  Discovery, Long, India

  4 Copy quote

• I shall endeavor to marshal British opinion against a course of action which would bring in my opinion the greatest evils upon the people of India, upon the people of Great Britain and upon the British Empire itself.

  Winston Churchill

  People, Evil, India

  Winston Churchill, Robert Rhodes James (1980). “Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963”, Atheneum

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• You can't anticipate history. It's only when you look back you see what the Romans did, and what various other empires did, what the British Empire did. We're now beginning to see the long shadow that it created, so one must be hopeful and say that what's going on in Asia, that what's going on in the Middle East, that all these various areas of conflict, that they will pass and move onto another area. But it would seem that the natural order of things is there is this cyclic behavior of destruction followed by a calm period.

  Roma Tearne

  Moving, Order, Long

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Song, Believe, Character

  Ursula K. Le Guin, Susan Wood (1980). “The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction”, p.102, Ultramarine Publishing

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.

  Stockwell Day

  Empires, Canada, Cabinets

  7 Copy quote

• When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

  Doris Lessing

  Southern, Empires, Found

  "Damehood. A cosy name that conceals some dubious choices" by Catherine Bennett, www.theguardian.com. January 4, 2015.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the same way the Brits had to get used to the idea that the sun had set on the British Empire, I think that there's the subrosa feeling that we are at the end of the American century, and I think that's very, very hard for Americans to take.

  Anna Quindlen

  Thinking, Ideas, Feelings

  4 Copy quote

• I would like my personal reading map to resemble a map of the British Empire circa 1900.

  Nick Hornby

  Reading, Maps, Empires

  Nick Hornby (2006). “Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt”, McSweeneys Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In England, the population explosion can be linked very clearly with the enclosure of the commons that uprooted the peasants from their land. In India, it was the same thing: the population increased at the end of the 18th century when the British took over and Indian lands were colonized. Instead of the land feeding Indian people it started to feed the British empire. So we had destitution. Destitute people who don't have their own land to feed themselves can only feed themselves by having larger numbers, therefore they multiply. It's the rational response of a dispossessed people.

  Vandana Shiva

  Land, Numbers, People

  Source: scottlondon.com

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you look at my life, you can go back to the late 1930s, what I saw was, first of all, Hitler, he was going to live forever. Mussolini was in for 10,000 years. You had the Soviet Union, which was, by definition, going to last forever. There was the British empire -- nobody imagined it could come to an end. So why should one believe in any kind of permanence?

  Doris Lessing

  Believe, Years, Forever

  4 Copy quote

• The best, most solid place to stand as you look at our present situation is on a foundation of history. The Roman Empire, the British Empire, and the Nazi empire all have things in common.

  Dar Williams

  Empires, Foundation, Looks

  Source: progressive.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is not in the British empire a man who more cordially loves a union with Great Britain than I do. But by the God that made me, I will cease to exist before I yield to a connection on such terms as the British Parliament propose.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Men, Yield, Connections

  Thomas Jefferson (1853). “The writings of Thomas Jefferson: being his autobiography, correspondence, reports, messages, addresses, and other writings, official and private : published by the order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the original manuscripts, deposited in the Department of State”, p.203

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I feel like Ive been engaged to the British Empire since 1980 and tonight you have given me the ring knighthood.

  Steven Spielberg

  Tonight, Knighthood, Empires

  8 Copy quote

• His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular.

  Idi Amin

  Uganda, Doctors, Sea

  Attributed in "Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience" by Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, 1999.

  830 Copy quote

  Show source