Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.

Man cannot live by bread alone. Man after all is composed of intellect and soul.

There is no power or authority without responsibility, and he who accepts the one cannot escape or evade the other.

Mahatma Gandhi will always be remembered as long as free men and those who love freedom and justice live.

As is commonly said, ‘to start anything is simple; to develop it and bring it to a successful culmination takes great effort.’