Emperor Quotes - Page 12

• I began writing for kids because I wanted to effect a change in American society. I continue in that spirit. By the time we reach adulthood, we are closed and set in our attitudes. The chances of a poet reaching us are very slim. But I can open a child's imagination, develop his appetite for poetry, and more importantly, show him that poetry is a natural part of everyday life. We all need someone to point out that the emperor is wearing no clothes. That's the poet's job.

  Arnold Adoff

  Jobs, Attitude, Children

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• The emperor would prefer the poet to keep away from politics, the emperor's domain, so that he can manage things the way he likes.

  Chinua Achebe

  Way, Likes, Poet

  Interview with Bradford Morrow, www.conjunctions.com.

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• He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

  Michel de Montaigne

  Men, Evil, Ordinary

  Michel de Montaigne (1980). “Essays”

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• In our own times, you see, an emperor came to the city of Rome, where there's the temple of an emperor, where there's a fisherman's tomb. And so that pious and Christian emperor, wishing to beg for health, for salvation from the Lord, did not proceed to the temple of a proud emperor, but to the tomb of a fisherman, where he could imitate that fisherman in humility, so that he, being thus approached, might then obtain something from the Lord, which a haughty emperor would be quite unable to earn.

  Saint Augustine

  Christian, Humility, Cities

  Saint Augustine of Hippo (2003). “Sermons III/11”, p.286

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• I have to laugh when the English claim they are such a wonderful nation. Everyone knows that Englishmen are really Germans, that the English kings were German, and that in Russia the emperors were either of German origin or received their education in Germany.

  Hermann Goring

  Kings, Russia, Laughing

  Remark on May 28, 1946. "The Nuremberg Interviews". Book by Leon Goldensohn, 2004.

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• America was the first country in history to be founded on, people have rights. Not the divine right of kings, not the emperor's a god, or idolized, or we have to do what the dear leader says. And, expressly, that it's a system of equal rights, and then governments are instituted to secure those rights.

  Charles Koch

  Country, Kings, Rights

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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• I am provoked at the contempt which most historians show for humanity in general; one would think by them, that the whole human species consisted but of about a hundred and fifty people, called and dignified (commonly very undeservedly too) by the titles of Emperors, Kings, Popes, Generals, and Ministers.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Kings, Thinking, People

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• Can anything be imagined so ridiculous that this miserable and wretched creature, who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?

  Michel de Montaigne

  World, Ridiculous, Miserable

  Michel de Montaigne, William Hazlitt (1860). “The Works of Michael de Montaigne: Comprising His Essays, Letters, and Journey Through Germany and Italy”, p.231

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• Encourage dissent: Leaders should have associates who have contrary views, who are devil's advocates, "variance sensors" who can tell them the difference between what is expected and what is really happening, between what they want to hear and what they need to hear. There are too many naked emperors running around today.

  Warren G. Bennis

  Running, Views, Should Have

  Source: bobmorris.biz

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• Such was the unhappy condition of the Roman emperors, that, whatever might be their conduct, their fate was commonly the same. A life of pleasure or virtue, of severity or mildness, of indolence or glory, alike led to an untimely grave; and almost every reign is closed by the same disgusting repetition of treason and murder.

  Edward Gibbon

  Fate, Unhappy, Might

  Edward Gibbon, William George Smith (1857). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.75

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• For centuries, as pope and emperor tore each other apart in their quarrels over power, the excluded went on living on the fringe, like lepers, of whom true lepers are only the illustration ordained by God to make us understand this wondrous parable, so that in saying 'lepers' we would understand 'outcast, poor, simple, excluded, uprooted from the countryside, humiliated in the cities.' But we did not understand; the mystery of leprosy has continued to haunt us because we have not recognized the nature of the sign.

  Umberto Eco

  Simple, Illustration, Cities

  Umberto Eco (1995). “Name of the Rose”, p.215, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When I was your age — about, ooh, a thousand years ago — I loved a good bedtime story. The Three Little Sontarans. The Emperor Dalek's New Clothes. Snow White and the Seven Keys to Doomsday, eh? All the classics.

  Mark Gatiss

  Keys, Years, White

  "Doctor Who: Night Terrors". TV Series, September 3, 2011.

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• That was Robert Aldrich. And that [Emperor Of The North] was one of the only times I actually got a part in a movie in the conventional way: The role was there, I auditioned, I auditioned again, and then I actually did a full-fledged screen test, which they shot on a soundstage on the lot at 20th Century Fox. They put up a set, and Robert Aldrich actually directed me in this screen test.

  Keith Carradine

  Roles, Tests, Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• All the people I talk to, increasingly, can see that the emperor has got no clothes. The case for leaving [the EU] is now overwhelming.

  Boris Johnson

  Clothes, People, Leaving

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• The sannyasin knows what it means to be an emperor, because he simply gives; he enjoys giving, he loves sharing. And the miracle of life is: the more you give the more you have.

  Rajneesh

  Mean, Giving, Miracle

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• I think an artist, in my definition of that word, would not be someone who takes sides with the emperor against his powerless subjects. That's different from prescribing a way in which a writer should write.

  Chinua Achebe

  Writing, Artist, Thinking

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• Comedians are the one who have to tell the emperor he has no clothes on.

  Chris Rock

  Clothes, Comedian

  "Chris Rock On Standup, Sellouts And Defining Success". "All Things Considered" with Audie Cornish, www.npr.org. December 5, 2014.

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• The fundamental article of my political creed is that despotism, or limited sovereignty, or absolute power is the same [whether] in a majority of a popular assembly; an aristocratic council; or oligarchical junto and a single emperor - equally arbitrary, cruel, bloody and in every respect diabolical.

  John Adams

  Political, Arbitrary, Fundamentals

  John Adams' Letter to Thomas Jefferson, founders.archives.gov. November 13, 1815.

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• Rastafari is our king or emperor, and being a king, being an emperor you've been taught all the ways of the ancestors. With the knowledge and teachings and studying his majesty, I've learned to put all these principles and precepts into the music, so that is how it inspires me to be singin' good songs and makin' good music for the people. Natural.

  Sizzla

  Song, Kings, Teaching

  Source: www.thepier.org

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• The literature of the emperor penguin is as forbidding, as inaccessible, as the frozen heart of Antarctica itself. Its beauties may be unearthly, but they are not for us.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Heart, Animal, Frozen

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2016). “The Unreal and the Real: The Selected Short Stories of Ursula K. Le Guin”, p.550, Simon and Schuster

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• I know this is weird... I am a Black woman and I am not mixed with any Asian blood or Chinese blood at all, but for some reason, as a child, the movie, The Last Emperor, had a serious affect on me. I can't understand why. But there's something that the movie did to me.

  Tyra Banks

  Children, Blood, Black

  "Model to Mogul and Beyond". Interview with Ty-Ron Mayes, westeastmag.com. October 27, 2012.

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• If a supernatural power tries to make you a saint or an emperor, refuse it, because the greatest beauty of life hides in having no position whatsoever! Positionless is the best position!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Life, Trying, Saint

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• On those remote pages [of 'a certain Chinese encyclopedia'] it is written that animals are divided into (a) those that belong to the Emperor, (b) embalmed ones, (c) those that are trained, (d) suckling pigs, (e) mermaids, (f ) fabulous ones, (g) stray dogs, (h) those that are included in this classification, (i) those that tremble as if they were mad, (j) innumerable ones, (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's hair brush, (l) others, (m) those that have just broken a flower vase, (n) those that resemble flies from a distance.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dog, Distance, Flower

  "The Analytical Language of JohnWilkins" (1942) (translation by Ruth L. C. Simms)

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• We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Leadership, Kings, Men

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1866). “The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Comprising His Essays, Lectures, Poems, and Orations”, p.303

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• The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Kings, Pride, Men

  Friedrich Schiller (1860). “The works of Frederick Schiller”, p.260

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