Empires Quotes - Page 36

• If Aristotle, Livy, and Harrington knew what a republic was, the British constitution is much more like a republic than an empire. They define a republic to be a government of laws, and not of men. If this definition is just, the British constitution is nothing more or less than a republic, in which the king is first magistrate. This office being hereditary, and being possessed of such ample and splendid prerogatives, is no objection to the government's being a republic, as long as it is bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend.

  John Adams

  Kings, Men, Voice

  John Adams (2015). “The Works of John Adams Vol. 4: Novanglus, Thoughts on Government, Defence of the Constitution I”, p.90, Jazzybee Verlag

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was the son of a publican and a master builder. He ran the Empire Hotel in North Hobart. His name was Max, too. Big Max.

  Max Walker

  Son, Names, Max

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• So that every wand or staff of empire is forsooth curved at top.

  Francis Bacon

  Government, Staff, Wands

  "De Sapientia Veterum". Book by Francis Bacon. Chapter 6: "Pan, sive Natura", 1609.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.

  Edward Young

  Death, Stars, Quench

  Edward Young (1821). “Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality”, p.13

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Who gives an empire, by the gift defeats All end of giving; and procures contempt Instead of gratitude.

  Edward Young

  Gratitude, Giving, Defeat

  Edward Young (1811). “The Works of the Rev. Dr. Edward Young”, p.80

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sneaking arts of underling tradesmen are thus erected into political maxims for the conduct of a great empire; for it is the most underling tradesmen only who make it a rule to employ chiefly their own customers. A great trader purchases his good always where they are cheapest and best, without regard to any little interest of this kind.

  Adam Smith

  Art, Political, Littles

  Adam Smith, Dugald Stewart (1843). “An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, p.174

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If the empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and morality should be over-thrown with it, what advantage will be gained?

  John Adams

  Hypocrisy, Religion, World

  4 Copy quote

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

  Steven Wright

  Funny, Morning, Humor

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Matt Taibbi

  Russia, Unions, Way

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. July 11, 2008.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When I was thirteen, I had a nervous breakdown, and I was put into this grown-up mental hospital with all these 50-, 60-year-old men and women. This big, Victorian mental house. There were like five boys in there, all my age, looked after by this woman who was 22 or 23. And it was like "Empire of the Sun" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"-type of arrangement where you've got this young boy overcoming and becoming heroic in the face of this awful place.

  Duncan Roy

  Boys, Men, Years

  Source: www.indiewire.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I set out with a perfect distrust of my own abilities, a total renunciation of every speculation of my own, and with a profound reverence for the wisdom of our ancestors, who have left us the inheritance of so happy a Constitution and so flourishing an empire, and, what is a thousand times more valuable, the treasury of the maxims and principles which formed the one and obtained the other.

  Edmund Burke

  Profound, Perfect, Principles

  Edmund Burke (1852). “The Works and Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke”, p.269

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!

  Anton Szandor LaVey

  Philosophy, Darkness, Fiction

  21 Copy quote

• One of the enduring lessons of history is that whenever an empire becomes insular to 'protect' itself, intellectual decline and cultural intolerance are sure to follow.

  Irshad Manji

  Intellectual, Lessons, Intolerance

  11 Copy quote

• The more the linguistic Babel corroded and disorganized parliament, the closer drew the inevitable hour of the disintegration of this Babylonian Empire, and with it the hour of freedom for my German-Austrian people.

  Adolf Hitler

  People, Hours, Parliament

  Adolf Hitler (1998). “Mein Kampf”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Discussing the attempts of Augustus' generals to add to the extent of the Roman Empire early in his reign:
  The northern countries of Europe scarcely deserved the expense and labour of conquest. The forests and morasses of Germany were filled with a hardy race of barbarians, who despised life when it was separated from freedom; and though, on the first attack, they seemed to yield to the weight of the Roman power, they soon, by a signal act of despair, regained their independence, and reminded Augustus of the vicissitude of fortune.

  Edward Gibbon

  Country, Yield, Race

  4 Copy quote

• If the English had deep-dish pizza they could have kept their empire.

  Daniel Pinkwater

  Dishes, Pizza, Ifs

  Daniel Manus Pinkwater (1990). “Fish Whistle: Commentaries, Uncommentaries, and Vulgar Excesses”, Addison-Wesley

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Yet by such worthless beings is a great nation to be governed and even made to deify their old king because he is only a fool and a maniac, and to forgive and forget his having lost to them a great and flourishing empire.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Kings, Forgive And Forget, Forgiving

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Being His Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and Other Writings, Official and Private : Published by the Order of the Joint Committee of Congress on the Library, from the Original Manuscripts, Deposited in the Department of State”, p.271

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  Paul R. Ehrlich

  Book, Optimistic, Writing

  "Q&A: Paul Ehrlich". Interview with Jesse Finfrock, www.motherjones.com. 2008.

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Empires, essentially, create order. In their absence, you don't end up with lots of happy, little nation-states full of people sitting around campfires singing John Lennon's "Imagine." What you end up with is civil war, anarchy.

  Niall Ferguson

  War, Order, People

  "Imperial Denial". Interview with Nonna Gorilovkskaya, www.motherjones.com. May 21, 2004.

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• My arguments for liberal empire or whatever you want to call it - hegemony, primacy, you name it - are really activated by a sense that the alternatives involve more violence, more repression, more hardship.

  Niall Ferguson

  Names, Hegemony, Alternatives

  "Imperial Denial". Interview with Nonna Gorilovskaya, www.motherjones.com. May 21, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think the condition of imperial denial is a handicap because if you do not recognize that you are essentially performing the functions of an empire, you are incapable of learning from the mistakes of past empires.

  Niall Ferguson

  Mistake, Past, Thinking

  "Imperial Denial". Interview with Nonna Gorilovskaya, www.motherjones.com. May 21, 2004.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There's a sense that, on a certain day, you want to destroy everything, even the ones you love. Humans are weird like that. You build an empire and you hate it as soon as it's done. That's because we're never satisfied.

  Jamie Lidell

  Hate, Done, Want

  Source: www.believermag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.

  Arthur L. Herman

  Discovery, Long, India

  4 Copy quote

• Ultimately, I think the United States is a pretty awesome country but it very plausibly would have been even awesomer had English and American political leaders in the late 18th century been farsighted enough to find compromises that would have held the empire together.

  Matthew Yglesias

  Country, Thinking, Political

  4 Copy quote

• America is the new Roman Empire. Remember what happened to Rome.

  Eddie Izzard

  Rome, America, Remember

  7 Copy quote