British Empire Quotes

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  • It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.

    Fall   Believe   Power  
    Henry David Thoreau (2009). “Walden”, p.215, Cosimo, Inc.
  • When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.

    "Damehood. A cosy name that conceals some dubious choices" by Catherine Bennett, www.theguardian.com. January 4, 2015.
  • Canada's ruling circles seek to ally themselves more closely with American imperialism without giving up the economic advantages of membership in the British Empire.

    "Tim Buck A Conscience for Canada". Book by Oscar Ryan, 1957.
  • If you want something bad enough, you've got to make a bold move. George Washington, took on the British Empire. Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Ken Titus taped a hotel key to his underwear to score with an airport security guard.

    Moving   Moon   Keys  
    "Titus", www.imdb.com. 2000-2002.
  • I would like to see the Punjab, North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single State. Self-government within the British Empire, or without the British Empire, the formation of a consolidated North-West Indian Muslim State appears to me to be the final destiny of the Muslims, at least of North-West India.

    Sir Muhammad Iqbal (1978). “Letters of Iqbal”
  • 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.

    Believe   Race   Two  
    Joseph Chamberlain (1897). “Foreign & Colonial Speeches”, London ; New York : Routledge
  • It's clear that when we're this outnumbered by the creatures, we have to take a page from the British Empire and rule the lesser species through intimidation. That's why the single most important thing you can do as a human is to dominate an animal. Need more proof?Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground. I'd say that about covers it.

    Moving   Animal   Sea  
  • Maya Jasanoff's Liberty's Exiles places the loyalist experience and the aftermath of the American Revolution in an entirely new light. Alongside the Spirit of 1776, Jasanoff gives us the Spirit of 1783, dedicated to remaking the mighty British Empire, and then offers a stunning reinterpretation of the Loyalists' complicated role in that remaking. Her meticulously researched and superbly written account is historical revision at its finest, and it affirms her place as one of the very finest historians of the rising generation.

  • However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbor, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account. If we have to fight it must be on larger issues than that.

    Powerful   Military   War  
    "Deal or dud: How will history judge Iran agreement?" by Tim Lister, www.cnn.com. November 25, 2013.
  • Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.

    Senior   Army   Troops  
  • 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.'

    War   Moving   Fall  
    Hansard 18 June 1940, col. 60
  • Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

    Tony Benn's Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool, October 2, 1972.
  • The Jews might become the dynamite that will blow up the British Empire.

    Blow   Might   Empires  
  • Classic nineteenth century European imperialists believed they were literally on a mission. I don't believe that the imperialists these days have that same sense of public service. They are simply pirates. Yes, there are fundamentalists, Christian fundamentalists, who appear to be in charge of the White House at the moment, but they are very different from the Christian gentlemen who ran the British Empire and believed they were doing good works around the world. These days it's about naked power.

    Source: progressive.org
  • The sun never sets on the British Empire. But it rises every morning. The sky must get awfully crowded.

    Funny   Morning   Humor  
  • 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.

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

    Land   Numbers   People  
    Source: scottlondon.com
  • 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.

  • ... the reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.

    Franz Halder, Charles Burton Burdick, Hans Adolf Jacobsen (1988). “The Halder war diary, 1939-1942”, Presidio Pr
  • At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

  • The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

    Ideas   Unity   Together  
    1927 Opening, as Duke of York, the first Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.
  • Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.

    "Nicholson Baker: Human Smoke" by James Mustich, www.barnesandnoble.com. April 7, 2008.
  • While we remember that we are contending against brothers and fellow subjects, we must also remember that we are contending in this crisis for the fate of the British Empire.

    Brother   Fate   History  
  • Every empire suffers from hubris, arrogance and condescension, and therefore a moral blindness. That's true of the American empire, it was true of the British Empireearlier, and it will certainly be true of the Chinese Empire in the future.

  • 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.

    Moving   Order   Long  
    Source: www.guernicamag.com
  • 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?

    Believe   Years   Forever  
  • Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.

  • I just would like to keep going. If I kept getting the kind of work that I've been getting for the last 20 years for the next 20, I'd be a bloody Dame of the British Empire. I'd be so happy.

    Years   Lasts   Next  
  • Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet it is probable; it is possible.

    Dream   Recovery   Race  
  • Nothing lasts forever, whether it's Greece, Rome or the British Empire. It doesn't mean that America has to end. The country could be reshaped and reimagined in a way that is even more democratic and less imperial in nature. We're trying to radically reshape the nation in ways that are more just and fairer. That's what I mean when I say that empires eventually fall. I'm not calling for the end of America. I'm just calling for a reimagination of its democratic possibilities.

    Country   Fall   Mean  
    Source: www.theskanner.com
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