quotes about Empires
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In summer the empire of insects spreads.
-- Adam ZagajewskiSource : "In Valleys" by Adam Zagajewski, www.newyorker.com. May 2, 2011.
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The story of the fifth century was one of the exploitation of imperial weakness. Thus the Western Empire died.
-- Adrian GoldsworthySource : Adrian Goldsworthy (2009). “The Fall Of The West: The Death Of The Roman Superpower”, p.178, Hachette UK
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Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.
-- Alan Moore -
Empires and churches are born under the sun of death.
-- Albert Camus -
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The American empire should be destroyed.
-- Aleksandr DuginSource : "The Fourth Political Theory". Book by Aleksandr Dugin, 2009.
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The fabric of American empire ought to rest on the solid basis of THE CONSENT OF THE PEOPLE. The streams of national power ought to flow from that pure, original fountain of all legitimate authority.
-- Alexander Hamilton -
Right is the royal ruler alone; and he who rules with least restraint comes nearest to empire.
-- Amos Bronson Alcott -
The time has come to return integrity, performance and dignity to New York and make it the Empire State once again.
-- Andrew Cuomo -
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It's time for the people of the Empire State to strike back.
-- Andrew Cuomo -
My vegetable love should grow Vaster than empires, and more slow;
-- Andrew MarvellSource : "To His Coy Mistress" l. 7 (1681)
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I just would like to keep going. If I kept getting the kind of work that I've been getting for the last 20 years for the next 20, I'd be a bloody Dame of the British Empire. I'd be so happy.
-- Anne-Marie Duff -
Fate of empires depends on the education of youth
-- Aristotle -
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By now it is evident that the Soviet Union must gain control of Europe to maintain its empire.
-- Barbara Amiel -
An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
It is always the adventurers who do great things, not the sovereigns of great empires.
-- Baron de Montesquieu -
The achieved West had given the United States something that no people had ever had before, an internal, domestic empire.
-- Bernard DeVoto -
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Monarch, thou wishest to cover thyself with glory; be the first to submit to the laws of thy empire.
-- Bias of Priene -
It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States.
-- Boutros Boutros-GhaliSource : "Unvanquished: A U.S. - U.N. Saga". Book by Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 1999.
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I would employ the wise and strong of the empire, using righteousness to lead them. In this way, nothing is impossible.
-- Cao CaoSource : "Records of the Three Kingdoms". Book by Chen Shou,
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I see a New York that is once again the empire state.
-- Carl Paladino -
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It is also in theory, conceivable that some universal empire some day might cover the whole globe, leaving no external "barbarians" to serve as invaders.
-- Carroll QuigleySource : Carroll Quigley (1979). “The evolution of civilizations: an introduction to historical analysis”, Liberty Fund Inc.
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Failure to critique US empire allows feminist projects to be used and mobilized as handmaidens in the imperial project.
-- Chandra Talpade Mohanty -
The poor Constitution itself is hardly paid any attention to. It's necessary to ignore it because most of what government does these days is clearly unconstitutional. The original idea, as expressed by James Madison, was that states would do 95 percent of the governing. Today, they are little more than administrative subdivisions of the central empire.
-- Charley Reese -
The evil of predatory global capitalism and empire has spawned the evil of terrorism
-- Chris Hedges -
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Nothing is so fragile as thought in its infancy; an interruption breaks it: nothing is so powerful, even to overturning empires, when it reaches its maturity.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
All power is indeed weak compared with that of the thinker. He sits upon the throne of his Empire of Thought, mightier far than they who wield material sceptres.
-- Christian Nestell Bovee -
Must we, under the happy hope of a false tranquility, sacrifice to the people in power the public welfare, and under vain pretence of preserving the peace, abandon the empire to robbers who would plunder it
-- Claude Adrien Helvetius -
Haters are my favorite. I´ve built an empire with the bricks they´ve thrown at me. Keep on hating.
-- CM Punk -
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the Empire State Building was tall. So what? Just proved New York builders didn't know when to stop at a good story.
-- Craig L. Rice -
Old empires always appeal to modern poets more than new ones.
-- Dana GioiaSource : Dana Gioia (2003). “Barrier of a common language: an American looks at contemporary British poetry”, Univ of Michigan Pr
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In the end it may well be that Britain will be honored by the historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it.
-- David Ormsby-Gore, 5th Baron Harlech -
Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.
-- Dean AchesonSource : 1962 Speech at West Point military academy, 5 Dec. According to the New York Times, 23 Nov1969, Prime Minister Harold Wilson later countered,'Mr Acheson is a distinguished figure who has lost a State Department and not yet found himself a role'.
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The Empire State Building is the closest thing to heaven in this city.
-- Deborah KerrSource : "Fictional character: Terry McKay". "An Affair to Remember", www.imdb.com. July 11, 1957.
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Eddie Fisher married to Elizabeth Taylor is like me trying to wash the Empire State Building with a bar of soap.
-- Don Rickles -
We don't seek empires.We're not imperialistic.
-- Donald Rumsfeld -
They are strewn with the wreckage of dead Empires-past Powers only the Albanian "goes on for ever."
-- Edith DurhamSource : "High Albania". Book by Edith Durham, 1909.
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The English sent all their bores abroad, and acquired the Empire as a punishment.
-- Edward Bond -
My mind to me an empire is,While grace affordeth health.
-- Edward Dyer -
While the Romans languished under the ignominious tyranny of eunuchs and bishops, the praises of Julian were repeated with transport in every part of the empire, except in the palace of Constantius.
-- Edward Gibbon -
All empires become arrogant. It is their nature.
-- Edward Rutherfurd -
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Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.
-- Edward Said -
We are at a point in our work when we can no longer ignore empires and the imperial context in our studies. (p. 5)
-- Edward Said -
I am a great admirer of Henry Jeffreys and have been eagerly awaiting his booze and empire book for many years!
-- Elif Batuman -
Reason, which is the glory of our nature, is destined eventually, in the progress of future ages, to overturn the empire of superstition.
-- Elihu PalmerSource : Elihu PALMER (1823). “Principles of Nature; or, a development of the moral causes of Happiness and Misery among the human species”, p.198
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Berkeley hackers liked to see themselves as rebels against soulless corporate empires.
-- Eric S. Raymond -
All empires fall eventually. It is the way of things.
-- Erin Morgenstern -
A nation's path to greatness lies in its economic prowess and ... militarism, empire, and aggression lead to a dead end.
-- Fareed ZakariaSource : Fareed Zakaria (2011). “The Post-American World: Release 2.0 (International Edition)”, p.108, W. W. Norton & Company
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I don't take investment advice from wealth managers. I have grown several businesses from scratch and amassed many millions from my publishing empire - why would I take advice from someone who has never experienced that?
-- Felix Dennis -
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Forests, beyond offering us their plainly utilitarian wealth, have to perform vast physiological functions in the great economy of nature, by contributing predominantly in the empire of vegetation to the liberation of oxygen.
-- Ferdinand von Mueller -
Empires do not suffer emptiness of purpose at the time of their creation. It is when they have become established that aims are lost and replaced by vague ritual.
-- Frank Herbert -
Three hundred years after its appearance Christianity was the recognized state religion in the Roman World Empire, and in barely sixty years socialism has won itself a position which makes its victory absolutely certain.
-- Friedrich Engels -
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming.
-- Garrison Keillor -
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I'm still a member of the Empire! Although I sometimes feel like an American with a British accent - you get contaminated after so long.
-- Gary Oldman -
I have my own dying empire to contend with, and I do not wish for any other.
-- Gary Shteyngart -
He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.
-- Gaston Leroux -
With Heaven's aid I have conquered for you a huge empire. But my life was too short to achieve the conquest of the world. That task is left for you
-- Genghis Khan -
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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 -
It's hard to imagine a more potent sign of a weak, declining empire than having one's national 'credibility' depend upon periodically bombing other countries.
-- Glenn Greenwald -
On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
-- Gore Vidal -
The Russian empire under czars and commissars has been hard to deal with for other countries.
-- Henry A. Kissinger -
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Down with the U.S. empire! It must be said, in the entire world: Down with the empire!
-- Hugo Chavez -
Let's save the human race, let's finish off the U.S. empire,
-- Hugo Chavez -
I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.
-- Hugo Chavez -
It looks perverted and wasteful to us, but then one thing that empires are not about is the efficient use of resources and the spread of happiness; both are typically accomplished despite the economic short-circuiting—corruption and favoritism, mostly—endemic to the system.
-- Iain Banks -
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After 'The Empire Strikes Back,' I got to make big films that I didn't care about, 'Never Say Never Again' and 'RoboCop 2,' and then I got too old.
-- Irvin KershnerSource : "Irvin Kershner obituary" by Ronald Bergan, www.theguardian.com. November 29, 2010.
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But the vagrant owns the whole vast earth that ends only at the nonexistent horizon, and his empire is an intangible one, for his domination and enjoyment of it are things of the spirit.
-- Isabelle Eberhardt -
Can one move an empire as if it were a house?
-- Ismail Kadaré -
Utterly absorbing.... If you did not have the opportunity to witness the Soviet empire in its death throes, Lenin's Tomb will take you there.
-- Jack F. Matlock, Jr. -
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The massacres are the result of a policy which, as far as can be ascertained, has been entertained for some considerable time by the gang of unscrupulous adventurers who are now in possession of the Government of the Turkish Empire. They hesitated to put it in practice until they thought the favorable moment had come, and that moment seems to have arrived about the month of April.
-- James Bryce -
Some have called Afghanistan 'the graveyard of empires,' and it probably is the graveyard of empires.
-- James G. Stavridis -
Rhino-mounted Bantu shock troops could have overthrown the Roman Empire. It never happened.
-- Jared Diamond -
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.
-- Jerry Bridges -
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Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones, And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
-- John Armstrong -
Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.
-- John Boyd Orr -
Kings fight for empires, madmen for applause.
-- John Dryden -
The splendid empire of Charles the Fifth was erected upon the grave of liberty.
-- John Lothrop MotleySource : John Lothrop Motley (1863). “The Rise of the Dutch Republic: Complete in One Volume”, p.5
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My favorite optimist was an American who jumped off the Empire State Building, and as he passed the 42nd floor, the window washers heard him say, 'So Far, so good.'
-- John McGahern -
Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.
-- John Oliver -
Westward the star of empire takes its way.
-- John Quincy Adams -
It is a bitter thought, how different a thing the Christianity of the world might have been, if the Christian faith had been adopted as the religion of the empire under the auspices of Marcus Aurelius instead of those of Constantine.
-- John Stuart Mill -
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I remember everything What have I become? My sweetest friend? E veryone I know goes away in the end You could have it all My empire of dirt I will let you down I will make you hurt.
-- Johnny Cash -
My last days at MGM were like the fall of the Roman Empire in fast motion.
-- Joseph BarberaSource : "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.
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If one's fated to be born in Caesar's Empire, let him live aloof, provincial, by the seashore...
-- Joseph Brodsky -
The day of small nations has passed away; the day of Empires has come.
-- Joseph ChamberlainSource : Speech at Birmingham, 12 May 1904, in 'The Times' 13 May 1904
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The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us.
-- Josiah Warren -
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.
-- Justin SaneSource : "Anti-flag's general strike is a soundtrack for occupied America" by Scott Thill, www.wired.com. March 29, 2012.
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Jordan has a strange, haunting beauty and a sense of timelessness. Dotted with the ruins of empires once great, it is the last resort of yesterday in the world of tomorrow. I love every inch of it.
-- King Hussein ISource : "The Arab World", Arab Information Center, p. 30, 1965.
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I have heard that one can conquer the empire on horseback, but one cannot govern it on horseback.
-- Kublai Khan -
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Don’t underestimate the ripple effect of what you do. These kinds of actionshave toppled empires.
-- Leila Janah -
Islam united all heresies persecuted in Byzantine Empire and synthesised them well into a conseffion that later became a symbol of Arab self-affirmation.
-- Lev Gumilev -
The pre-war empire had been sufficiently informal and sufficiently cheap for Parliament to claim authority over it without having to concern itself too much about what this authority entailed. The post-war empire necessitated a much greater investment in administrative machinery and military force. This build-up of control had to be paid for, either by British taxpayers or by their colonists.
-- Linda Colley -
Empires are not brought down by outside forces, they are destroyed by weaknesses from within.
-- Lionel -
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The English, a spirited nation, claim the empire of the sea; the French, a calmer nation, claim that of the air.
-- Louis XVIII of FranceSource : "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 615-17, when Comte de Provence (1783). Impromter sur nos decouverte aerostatiques. Year of the aeronautical experiments of the brothers Montgolfier, Pilatre de Rozier, and Marquis d'Arlandes, 1922.
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The home is the empire! There is no peace more delightful than one's own fireplace.
-- Marcus Tullius Cicero -
Rupert Murdoch's vast newspaper empire has waged a relentless pro-war propaganda war before and since the war began.
-- Margo KingstonSource : "Murdoch's war on truth in war reporting". www.smh.com.au. April 7, 2003.
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I come from a very left wing Socialist family, anti-war and anti-empire.
-- Marianne Faithfull -
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I think it's a great shame that America stopped being a republic and became an empire.
-- Marianne Faithfull -
Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.
-- Marisha Pessl -
The current health crisis, however, is a little more the work of the evil empire. We were told, we were assured, that the more meat and dairy and poultry we ate, the healthier we'd be
-- Mark Bittman -
To capture the human cost of fallen empire with all its horror and absurdity, Sheets offers the right combination: the political insight of a top reporter and the power of a novelist.
-- Martin Cruz Smith -