Jan Smuts Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Jan Smuts's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Statesman Jan Smuts's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 17 quotes on this page collected since May 24, 1870! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • When in doubt, do the courageous thing.

  • Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.

    1902 Speech at the Vereeniging peace talks, 31 May.
  • This is a good world. We need not approve of all the items in it, nor of all the individuals in it; but the world itself-which is more than its parts or individuals; which has a soul, a spirit, a fundamental relation to each of us deeper than all other relations-is a friendly world.

    Soul   Friendly   Needs  
    Jan Christiaan Smuts (1941). “Greater South Africa: plans for a better world”
  • Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

    Soul   Way   Spirit  
    "Holism and Evolution". Book by Jan Smuts, 1926.
  • ...evolution is the gradual development and stratification of progressive series of wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the highest level of spiritual creation.

  • To me the greatest thing that has happened on this earth of ours is the rise of the human race to the vision of God. That story of the human rise to what I call the vision of God is the story which is told in the Bible.

    Bible   Race   Vision  
  • Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.

    Kings   War   Promise  
    Jan Christian Smuts (1952). “Jan Christian Smuts: a biography”, William Morrow & Company
  • The mountain is not something eternally sublime; it has a great historic and spiritual meaning to us. It stands for us as the ladder of life. Nay, more; it is the ladder of the soul and in a curious way the source of religion. From it came the Law, from it came the Gospel in the Sermon of the Mount. We may trul say that the highest religion is the Religion of the Mountain.

  • When I look at history, I am a pessimist...but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist.

  • In spite of the great advances which have been made in our knowledge, some fundamental gaps remain. Matter, life and mind still remain utter disparate phenomena, yet the concepts of all three arise in experience; and in the human all three meet and intermingle.

  • What was everybody's business in the end proved to be nobody's business. Each one looked to the other to take the lead, and the aggressorsgot away with it.

    Ends  
    1943 Explaining the failure of the League of Nations to the Empire Parliamentary Association, London, 25 Nov.
  • The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear.

    "Holism and Evolution". Book by Jan Smuts, p. 337, 1926.
  • Instead of the animistic, mechanistic, or the mathematical universe, we see the genetic, organic, holistic universe.

    Jan Christiaan Smuts (1941). “Greater South Africa: plans for a better world”
  • History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.

    Jan Christian Smuts (1952). “Jan Christian Smuts: a biography”, William Morrow & Company
  • If there was to be equal manhood suffrage the whites would be swamped all over South Africa by the blacks and the whole position for which whites have striven for 200 years or more would be given up.

    Years   Would Be   Given  
    Statement at the Imperial Conference, 1921.
  • If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation's mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation's needs.

    Mind   Doe   Needs  
    Remark to Princess Frederica of Greece. "Now You Know Royalty". Book by Doug Lennox, p. 57, 2009.
  • A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself

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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 17 quotes from the Statesman Jan Smuts, starting from May 24, 1870! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
Jan Smuts quotes about:

Jan Smuts

  • Born: May 24, 1870
  • Died: September 11, 1950
  • Occupation: Statesman