Quotes About Empire

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.

I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.

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.

Having lived in a collapsed empire before - I lived in Russia right after the Soviet Union collapsed - you can see a lot of the classic signs of an empire that's on its way out.

Human beings can be redeemed. Empires cannot. Our refusal to face the truth about empire, our refusal to defy the multitudinous crimes and atrocities of empire, has brought about the nightmare Malcolm predicted. And as the Digital Age and our post-literate society implant a terrifying historical amnesia, these crimes are erased as swiftly as they are committed.

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.

In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us.

This is not the colonial empire that somehow he has in his hand. I’ve never felt that from him. I felt that from [George] W [Bush]. I felt that from [Bill] Clinton. I felt that from every American president, including ones I disagreed with, including [Jimmy] Carter. I don’t feel that from President Obama.

There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is awar to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in freedom--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.

Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.

The descendants of Holy Roman Empire monarchies became feeble-minded in the twentieth century, and after World War I had been done in by the democracies; some were kept on to entertain the tourists, like the one they have in England.

O, beautiful and grand, My own, my native land! Of thee I boast: Great empire of the west, The dearest and the best, Made up of all the rest, I love thee most.

If I had my own world I'd build you an empire from here to the far lands to spread love like violence!

The Roman Empire was fairly tolerant of religious choice as long as you made a point not of thumbing your nose in public at the Roman gods.

Take your vitamins. Don't drink vodka. Get used to empire waistlines.

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.

Everything that everyone is afraid of has already happened: The fragility of capitalism, which we don't want to admit; the loss of the empire of the United States; and American exceptionalism. In fact, American exceptionalism is that we are exceptionally backward in about fifteen different categories, from education to infrastructure.

Overall, The Population Bomb was probably too optimistic. I was writing about climate change - Anne and I actually wrote the book. We discussed whether or not you'd have to take a gondola to the Empire State Building, and that sort of thing, but we didn't know at the time whether the climate change would be in the direction of heating or cooling. We just didn't know enough about it.

I've said it would have to be our Empire Strikes Back for me to come back and for me to pull the whole team back together. I think we do have that idea. We do have the idea that feels big and really blows the doors off this franchise. It's hinted at promises of something for two movies now, for thirty years, so it's time to deliver on that.

So you can't live in Manhattan?' she asked. Amos's brow furrowed as he looked across at the Empire State Building. 'Manhattan has other problems. Other gods. It's best we stay separate.

My mind to me an empire is.

[I watch] all that stuff - Game of Thrones and all the other series. How about House of Cards? As for Boardwalk Empire - that's another period of government overreach, but at least they use the amendment process! In real life, the executive branch, by violating the Constitution, is using statutes in place of constitutional amendments to diminish our liberty.

The time has come to return integrity, performance and dignity to New York and make it the Empire State once again.

Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.

It lies upon the people's shoulders to prepare for the war, but it lies upon the Israeli army to carry out the fight with the ultimate object of erecting the Israeli Empire.

Today's empire is tomorrow's ashes...

Labor, with its coarse raiment and its bare right arm, has gone forth in the earth, achieving the truest conquests and rearing the most durable monuments. It has opened the domain of matter and the empire of the mind. The wild beast has fled before it, and the wilderness has fallen back.... its triumphal march is the progress of civilization.

We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator - or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles - or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection, instead of trust and respect. We are allies. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments - and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled.

The difference between a republic and an empire is the loyalty of one's army

The People's Republic of China has not yet reached the military might of the Soviet Empire. It requires a little more time and a little more infusion of Western aid, loans, technology and the hard currency of our tourists.

Words, words, word. Once, I had the gift. I could make love out of words as a potter makes cups of clay. Love that overthrows empire. Love that binds two hearts together, come hellfire & brimstone. For sixpence a line, I could cause a riot in a nunnery. But now -- I have lost my gift. It's as if my quill is broken, as if the organ of my imagination has dried up, as if the proud -illegible word- of my genius has collapsed.

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.

... 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.

The Queen of England gave me the honor of the Order of the British Empire for working with children.

It has been said that the people of this country are deeply interested in the humanitarian and philanthropic considerations involved in [the Eastern Question]. All must appreciate such feelings. But I am mistaken if there be not a yet deeper sentiment on the part of the people of this country, one with which I cannot doubt your lordships will ever sympathise, and that is - the determination to maintain the Empire of England.

...there are two (inter alia) two ways of ruining a society - namely, letting the market "be the sole director of the fate of human beings," and allowing technology to permeate every aspect of our lives. In the United States, both of these developments have converged, creating a huge chasm between rich and poor and pushing us over the edge into a kind of antisociety... While these developments have been widely hailed as the dawn of a golden age, the likelihood is that they actually amount to a death knell, the beginning of the end of the American empire.

You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne. But I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget the country or the empire, which, as Prince of Wales and lately as King, I have for twenty-five years tried to serve.

The childhood shows the man As morning shows the day. Be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend, So let extend thy mind o'er all the world.

The lust that drives others to enslave an empire, had become, in her limits, a passion for power over him. She had set out to break him, as if, unable to equal his value, she could surpass it by destroying it, as if the measure of his greatness would thus become the measure of hers, as if the vandal who smashed a statue were greater than the artist who had made it, as if the murderer who killed a child were greater than the mother who had given it birth.

A British imperium enabled Scots to feel themselves peers of the Ebglish in a way still denied them in an island kingdom. The language bears that out very clearly. The English and the foreign are still all too inclined to refer to the island of Great Britain as 'England'. But at no time have they ever customarily referred to an English empire.

Americans are poorly served by their media, you know, for the war machine and propaganda machine and the global empire and they're poorly served by what they are being told is representative government.

This is an age of science. ... All important fields of activity from the breeding of bees to the administration of an empire, call for an understanding of the spirit and the technique of modern science. The nations that do not cultivate the sciences cannot hold their own.

Needless to say, they refused to submit to the Empire, conducting such a persistent guerrilla war that the Romans gave up hope of conquering Scotland, and the Wee Free Men remained both wee and free.

People of the United States have to really consider whether they want to be an empire. Sweden is not worried about terrorism. New Zealand is not worried about terrorism. Holland is not worried about terrorism. Why not be a modest little country without all of these enormous ambitions?

Today, on our own turf, we face pagan ignorance about God every bit as deep as that which the early church faced in the Roman Empire.

Okay. Look, why don't you take care of the half a million things you've been letting dangle in Roarke's Empire of Everything?" "Catchy title. I may use it one day.

In Russia whenever you encounter a minor official, he lets you know that he is above you and that you depend on him. It is reflected in the superpower mentality that nourishes the Kremlin. An empire always demands sacrifices from its people.