Quotes About Empire

That's the issue that I've been exploring: How did the Republic turn into the Empire? That's paralleled with: How did Anakin turn into Darth Vader? How does a good person go bad, and how does a democracy become a dictatorship? It isn't that the Empire conquered the Republic, it's that the Empire is the Republic.

Confession: When I went to see The Empire Strikes Back I found myself glancing at my watch. The Force is with us, indeed, and a lot of it is hot air. It's a measure of my mixed feelings about The Empire Strikes Back that I'm not at all sure that I understand the plot. The Empire Strikes Back is about as personal as a Christmas card from a bank.

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.

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.

I think of the US as an empire. The UK at one point, because of its reach, was an empire. But these megachurches - for me the concern is to not assume they have more authority than they actually have, to not give them a kind of reach that they really don't possess.

Down with the U.S. empire! It must be said, in the entire world: Down with the empire!

Once I spoke about this subject among a group of English intellectuals. One of them was a professor on Roman Law at one of the leading British universities. I asked him,what was the official language of the Byzantine Empire? He said, maybe sometime in the sixth or the seventh century.The Justinian Codex, the rule of law in the Byzantine Empire which was produced by Emperor Justinian, it was written in Latin.And he looked at me ,he knew that I knew already that the only original copy was found in the beginning of the sixteenth century.

The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. Discuss.

One would have thought that if there was one cause in the world which the Conservative party would have hastened to defend, it would be the cause of the British Empire in India ... Our fight is hard. It will also be long ... But win or lose, we must do our duty. If the British people are to lose their Indian Empire, they shall do so with their eyes open.

The Empire of Wisdom is the only empire on which the sun never sets!

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things.

This is the essence of God's sovereignty; His absolute independence to do as He pleases and His absolute control over the actions of all His creatures. No creature, person, or empire can either thwart His will or act outside the bounds of His will.

I'm building my adult beverage empire the way I built my independent rap label. As my career.

Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire's challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail.

I think democracies are prone to inflation because politicians will naturally spend [excessively] - they have the power to print money and will use money to get votes. If you look at inflation under the Roman Empire, with absolute rulers, they had much greater inflation, so we don't set the record. It happens over the long-term under any form of government.

Julian sincerely abhorred the system of oriental despotism which Diocletian, Constantine, and the patient habits of four score years, had established in the empire. A motive of superstition prevented the execution of the design which Julian had frequently meditated, of relieving his head from the weight of a costly diadem; but he absolutely refused the title of Dominus or Lord, a word which was grown so familiar to the ears of the Romans, that they no longer remembered its servile and humiliating origin.

During the first six years of my life, Hungary was one of the most important components of the Habsburg dynasty's vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War I it became an independent national entity.

Can't' will be the epitaph of the British Empire - unless we wake up in time.

This is the deadening consensus that crosses party lines, that dominates our major media, and that is strangling the liberty and prosperity that were once the birthright of Americans. Dissenters who tell their fellow citizens what is really going on are subject to smear campaigns that, like clockwork, are aimed at the political heretic. Truth is treason in the empire of lies.

I have collected all the writings of the Empire and burnt those which were of no use.

The "can do" logic, by its own nature, does not accept limits. And an empire does not have a graceful way to evolve out of this role. History demonstrates this time and again.

My mind to me an empire is.

What I am trying to figure out in my preface is how Romans could operate without the simple items - maps - that are necessary for running such a huge empire.

Silence, the great Empire of Silence: higher than all stars; deeper than the Kingdom of Death! It alone is great; all else is small.

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.

We have decided to bring to an end the most unequal, most unjust, most barbarous war of our age, and have chosen the road to exile in order that our people will not be exterminated and in order to consecrate ourselves wholly and in peace to the preservation of our empire's independence.

Revisiting the Revolutionary War is a bracing reminder that the fate of a continent, and the shape of the modern world, turned on the free choices of remarkably few Americans defying an empire.

America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman.

Cuba has not accepted the domain and imposition of an empire that has wanted to dominate us for over half a century [America].

Christianity began with 120 in the Upper Room, within three centuries it had become the predominant religion of the Roman Empire. What brought this about? The answer is deceptively simple, while Christianity was being presented to unbelievers in both Word and deed, it was the deed that far exceeded the Word in evangelistic effectiveness.

... the connection between imperial politics and culture is astonishingly direct. American attitudes to American "greatness", to hierarchies of race, to the perils of "other" revolutions (the American revolution being considered unique and somehow unrepeatable anywhere else in the world) have remained constant, have dictated, have obscured, the realities of empire, while apologists for overseas American interests have insisted on American innocence, doing good, fighting for freedom.

Nothing like this has been attempted before. (...) It might be called a literary Porto Alegre. That implies a beginning, with much fierce argument and discussion to come. But whatever the outcome of ensuing criticisms or objections, The World Republic of Letters -- empire more than republic, as Casanova shows -- is likely to have the same sort of liberating impact at large as Said's Orientalism, with which it stands comparison.

America now stands as the world's foremost power. We should be proud: Not since the age of the Romans have one people achieved such preeminence. But we are not Romans; we do not seek an empire. We are Americans, trustees of a vision and a heritage that commit us to the values of democracy and the universal cause of human rights.

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.

We must now face the difficult task of moving towards a single economy, a single political entity .. For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire we have the opportunity to unite Europe.

When it was over my daughter said, 'Oh, I felt so sorry for him - he didn't want to hurt you, he liked you.' That was Victoria. When you visualize him up there on top of the Empire State Building, you do feel sorry for him.

Most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their selfish consumer society and empire. Yet I suspect...they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins, the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans, or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is therefore welcomed and appreciated.

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.

With the NDAA, his failure to close Guantanamo Bay and the ramping use of drones, President Obama looks suspiciously like President Bush, a man on a quest for American Empire.

In my view, [Vladimir] Putin despises the West in general and the United States in particular, both for who we are, our liberal values, and for what we`ve done, which is to take down the Soviet Empire.

The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer.

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

The whole Turkish empire is nothing else but a crust cast by Heaven's great Housekeeper to His dogs.

And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before--and thus was the Empire forged.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

The famous Apollonius being very early at Vespasian's gate, and finding him stirring, from thence conjectured that he was worthy to govern an empire, and said to his companion, This man surely will be emperor; he is so early.

The eastern part of the Roman Empire spoke mostly Greek, and the western parts spoke mostly Latin. So very soon, you begin getting different emphases between the Eastern church and the Western church.

Stalinism - or communism - is the only ideology Americans know how to demonise... no one knows what it is, it's just a synonym for the Empire of Evil.