Great Empires Quotes

• It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Adventure, Greatness, Empires

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• Great empires are not maintained by timidity.

  Tacitus

  Rome, Empires, Timidity

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• That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life.

  Amelia Barr

  Kings, Mistake, Moving

  Amelia Barr (2017). “Jan Vedder's Wife”, p.170, Litres

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• Fate of empires depends on the education of youth

  Aristotle

  Educational, Fate, Empires

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• All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth.

  Aristotle

  Faith, Education, Art

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• Rome did not create a great empire by having meetings, they did it by killing all those who opposed them. If at first you don't succeed, failure may be your style.

  Quentin Crisp

  Rome, Style, May

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• To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers; but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.

  Adam Smith

  Government, Sight, People

  An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations vol. 2, bk. 4, ch. 7 (1776). Other quotation compilations have this ending with "whose government is influenced by shopkeepers," but the first edition reads as above. See Napoleon 5; Josiah Tucker 1

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• 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, Empires

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

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• The great silent man! Looking round on the noisy inanity of the world,--words with little meaning, actions with little worth,--one loves to reflect on the great Empire of Silence.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Men, Silence, World

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.246, Lulu.com

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

  Thomas Carlyle

  Stars, Silence, Kingdoms

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• Posterity will talk of Washington as the founder of a great empire, when my name shall be lost in the vortex of revolution.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Names, Empires, Revolution

  "Quotations for Special Occasions". Book by Maud Van Buren, 1937.

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• Europe is a molehill. All great empires and revolutions have been on the Orient; six hundred millions live there.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Power, Europe, Politics

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• It's always been the case that you have the really rich, and the really poor. But hey, look, all the great empires have their periods where they rule the world, and then they crumble.

  Mickey Rourke

  Looks, Hey, World

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• A great empire and little minds go ill together.

  Edmund Burke

  Mind, Together, Littles

  Speech 'On Conciliation with America' 22 March 1775

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• Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

  Edmund Burke

  Mind, Together, Politics

  Speech 'On Conciliation with America' 22 March 1775

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• A great empire, like a great cake, is most easily diminished at the edges.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Sarcastic, Cake, Political

  Benjamin Franklin, Henry Stueber (1838). “The Life and Essays of Dr. Benjamin Franklin: Carefully Collected from His Own Papers, Containing All His Miscellaneous Pieces”, p.408

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• But if we are to remain a great empire, we must have a greater understanding of the hearts and minds of others.

  Libba Bray

  Heart, Understanding, Mind

  Libba Bray (2010). “The Sweet Far Thing”, p.175, Simon and Schuster

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• [T]he foundation of a great Empire is laid, and I please myself with a persuasion, that Providence will not leave its work imperfect.

  George Washington

  Foundation, Empires, Constitution

  George Washington, Jared Sparks (1847). “pt. III. Private letters from the time Washington resigned his commission as commander-in-chief of the Army to that of his inauguration as president of the United States: December, 1783-April, 1789”, p.184

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• 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.

  Abraham Coles

  Beautiful, Country, Land

  Abraham Coles (1880). “The microcosm, and other poems”

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• In India, as we saw, the Sepoy Mutiny led to a vast reorganization of British colonialism in the area, sending out a viceroy from London and before too long, Queen Victoria was proclaimed “Empress of India,” with this great empire, ruling over maharajahs and other local potentates.

  Webster Tarpley

  Queens, Long, Mutiny

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• Canada is either an idea or it does not exist. It is either an intellectual undertaking or it is little more than a resource-rich vacuum lying in the buffer zone just north of a great empire.

  John Ralston Saul

  Lying, Ideas, Intellectual

  "Reflections of a Siamese Twin". Book by John Ralston Saul, 1997.

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• Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself.

  Publilius Syrus

  Over You, Empires

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• The thing that's really important to understand is, the last thing an empire traditionally does is drive itself into bankruptcy. You've seen that with the great empires.

  Juan Enriquez

  Important, Doe, Empires

  Source: bigthink.com

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