Empires Quotes - Page 14

• My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'

  John McGahern

  Window, Building, My Favorite

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• Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.

  Thomas Gray

  Life, Hands, Might

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, Tobias Smollett, George Gilfillan (1855). “The Poetical Works of Johnson: Parnell, Gray, and Smollett, with Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes”, p.201

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• The empire of Christ the King includes not only Catholic nations, not only baptized persons who, though of right belonging to the Church, have been led astray by error, or have been cut off from her by schism, but also all those who are outside the Christian faith: so that truly the whole of mankind is subject to the power of Jesus Christ.

  Pope Leo XIII

  Christian, Jesus, Kings

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• He was skinning a bear. I was terrified at first, because the corpse resembled a naked man quartered between two trees. He'd created a deadfall trap over some big talus blocks and the bear had fallen in. He used the skin for something and jerked the meat. If it wasn't astonishing enough behavior in a national park, the next day he made donuts, using bear fat for grease ! Surely, by now, he's created an empire somewhere in the world.

  Dave Cook

  Block, Men, Climbing

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• Imperial politics represents the conquest of domestic politics and the latter's conversion into a crucial element of inverted totalitarianism. It makes no sense to ask how the democratic citizen could 'participate' substantively in imperial politics; hence it is not surprising that the subject of empire is taboo in electoral debates. No major politician or party has so much as publicly remarked on the existence of an American empire.

  Chalmers Johnson

  Party, Elements, Citizens

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• It is scarcely possible that the eyes of contemporaries should discover in the public felicity the latent causes of decay and corruption. This long peace, and the uniform government of the Romans, introduced a slow and secret poison into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evaporated.

  Edward Gibbon

  Military, Eye, Men

  The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire ch. 2 (1776 - 1788)

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• The decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the cause of the destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest; and, as soon as time or accident and removed the artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight. The story of the ruin is simple and obvious: and instead of inquiring why the Roman Empire was destroyed we should rather be surprised that it has subsisted for so long.

  Edward Gibbon

  Simple, Greatness, Rome

  Edward Gibbon (1906). “The History of the Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire”

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• Ferguson argued that British involvement in World War I was unnecessary, far too costly in lives and money for any advantage gained, and a Pyrrhic victory that in many ways contributed to the end of the Empire.

  David Harsanyi

  War, Victory, Ferguson

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• It is fundamental to Socialism that we should liquidate the British Empire as soon as we can.

  Stafford Cripps

  Fundamentals, Socialism, Should

  "Hull Daily Mail" Newspaper, March 2, 1936.

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• Our German Fatherland to which I hope will be granted... to become in the future as closely united, as powerful, and as authoritative as once the Roman world-empire was, and that, just as in the old times they said, Civis romanus sum, hereafter, at some time in the future, they will say, I am a German citizen.

  Wilhelm II

  Powerful, Citizens, World

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• The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated.

  Arthur Koestler

  Past, Looks, Stories

  Arthur Koestler (1976). “The thirteenth tribe: the Khazar empire and its heritage”, Random House Inc

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• When my son, James, was doing homework for school, he would have five or six windows open on his computer, Instant Messenger was flashing continuously, his cell phone was constantly ringing, and he was downloading music and watching the TV over his shoulder. I don’t know if he was doing any homework, but he was running an empire as far as I could see, so I didn’t really care.

  Ken Robinson

  Running, School, Son

  Ken Robinson Ph.D., Lou Aronica (2009). “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything”, p.21, Penguin

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• When in August 1793 a British delegation showed their hosts a terrestrial globe, it turned into a diplomatic incident, for the Chinese were furious to see that their empire covered so little of it. For centuries the Chinese had thought of themselves as 'The Middle Kingdom', that is the centre of the civilized world. To see otherwise was a shock.

  Margaret Thatcher

  August, Chinese, World

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• American poetry has been part of a culture in conflict....We are a people tending toward democracy at the level of hope; at another level, the economy of the nation, the empire of business within the republic, both include in their basic premise the idea of perpetual warfare

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Ideas, People, Democracy

  Muriel Rukeyser (2004). “Selected Poems”

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• Afghanistan is more than the 'graveyard of empires.' It's the mother of vicious circles.

  Maureen Dowd

  Mother, Circles, Vicious

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• You always fashioned yourself as the Empire's harshest Fist, didn't you, Korbolo Dom? As if cruelty's a virtue.

  Steven Erikson

  Fists, Virtue, Doms

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• To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.

  Martin Cruz Smith

  Political, Novelists, Cost

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• To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely to God, a thing most contrary to his revealed will and approved ordinance; and finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.

  John Knox

  Order, Cities, Justice

  1558 First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women.

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• Wherever God may keep you at any time, from there itself must you undertake the pilgrimage to God-realization. In all forms, in action and non-action is He, the One Himself. While attending to your work with your hands, keep yourself bound to Him by sustaining japa, the constant remembrance of Him in your heart and mind. In God's empire, it is forgetfulness of Him that is detrimental. The way to Peace lies in the remembrance of Him and of Him alone.

  Anandamayi Ma

  Lying, Heart, Hands

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• All these mountains of Irish dead, all these corpses mangled beyond recognition, all these arms, legs, eyes, ears, fingers, toes, hands, all these shivering putrefying bodies and portions of bodies once warm living and tender parts of Irish men and youths - all these horrors in Flanders or the Gallipoli Peninsula, are all items in the price Ireland pays for being part of the British Empire.

  James Connolly

  Eye, Men, Hands

  James Connolly (1988). “Collected Works: Labour and Easter Week”

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• American Empire- it is an empire that lacks the drive to export its capital, its people and its culture to those backward regions which need them most urgently and which, if they are neglected, will breed the greatest threats to its security. It is an empire, in short, that dare not speak its name. It is an empire in denial.

  Niall Ferguson

  Names, People, Needs

  Niall Ferguson (2002). “Empire: the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power”, Basic Books (AZ)

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• In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets. [...] The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question.

  Cecil Rhodes

  Country, War, Order

  "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism". Essay by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, www.marxists.org. 1917.

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• In careless ignorance they think it civilization, when in reality it is a portion of their slavery...To ravage, to slaughter, to usurp under false pretenses, they call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace.

  Tacitus

  Ignorance, Reality, Thinking

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• Sleep is a state in which a great part of every life is passed. No animal has yet been discovered, whose existence is not varied with intervals of insensibility; and some late philosophers have extended the empire of sleep over the vegetable world.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sleep, Animal, Vegetables

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• Extended empires are like expanded gold, exchanging solid strength for feeble splendor.

  Samuel Johnson

  Focus, Gold, Splendor

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