Best 92 quotes in «empire quotes» category

Altogether, humankind had spread over less than one-eighth of the galaxy. Expansion was somewhat self-limiting. The U.S. had not been able to hold a colony at two hundred light-years distance. At fifteen hundred light-years, most nations could consider their colonies temporary holdings. Any people it took you two months to reach were not going to pay your taxes or obey your laws. That was human nature. - Wolf Star, Tour of the Merrimack #2

America's over. Get out while you still can.

As Samson demonstrated, going bald ruins lives.

Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.

An Oak tree is a daily reminder that great things often have small beginnings.

As the map of the Great Plain was being redrawn by a young Shazarian councillor, the ageing Shylonian king interrupted mid-speech to ask him his name. With a piercing glare and a haughty flick of his cloak, he retorted ‘Lord Ratilla, Shazarian Imperial Secretary, and who might you be?’ Behind the gasps of horror, the message was clear. It was Shazaria who now bestrode the Amaran world, henceforth the office of Shazarian minister now held greater prestige than even that of foreign monarchs. What became even clearer were the depths of Shazarian treachery. The impudent youth who stood before the kings of Amara stripping them of ancient provinces, was the same adolescent reputed to have delivered an eloquent speech which swayed the Shazarian councillors in favour of war. Had this been their intention all along?

A system is corrupt when it is strictly profit-driven, not driven to serve the best interests of its people.

Because the Empire controls the media, we can turn any news to the Emperor's advantage.

Building castles in the air is only wise if you build a ladder to reach them.

before humanity chokes (or basks) in the dungeon (or paradise) of a Western-centered global empire or of an East Asian-centered world-market society, “it might well burn up in the horrors (or glories) of the escalating violence that has accompanied the liquidation of the Cold War world order.

But I hated the Emperor of the Ke-Han with everything I had in me, for every man I'd lost and every friend who'd died, for every story I'd known was false but had allowed to harden my heart against the enemy anyway.

Do not build a castle around one act of kindness; do not build an empire around one act of cruelty.

Crowns are hourly tumbling.

But there could be no doubt that greatness was seated within; greatness was passing, hidden, down Bond Street, removed only by a hand's-breadth from ordinary people who might now, for the first and last time, be within speaking distance of the majesty of England, of the enduring symbol of the state which will be known to curious antiquaries, sifting the ruins of time, when London is a grass-grown path and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday morning are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust and the gold stoppings of innumerable decayed teeth.

Colonized painting, for instance, is balanced between poles. From excessive submission to Europe resulting in depersonalization, it passes to such a violent return to self that it is obnoxious and esthetically illusory. The right balance not being found, the self-accusation continues. Before and during the revolt, the colonized always considers the colonizer as a model or as an antithesis. He continues to struggle against him. He was torn between what he was and what he wanted to be, and now he is making of himself. Nonetheless, the painful discord with himself continues. In order to witness the colonized's complete cure, his alienation must completely cease. We must await the complete disappearance of colonization--including the period of revolt.

Cody probably wasn’t in danger either, but he wasn’t willing to risk it when these might also be good guys that he might need later to help him sneak into some forgotten city win himself an empire at the price of gallons of blood...

How then can the US society come to terms with its past? How can it acknowledge responsibility? The late Native historian Jack Forbes always stressed that while living persons are not responsible for what their ancestors did, they are responsible for the society they live in, which is a product of that past. Assuming this responsibility provides a means of survival and liberation. Everyone and everything in the world is affected, for the most part negatively, by US dominance and intervention, often violently through direct military means or through proxies.

Do you know why empires fall? Because they can no longer believe their own lies.

Empire– in essence nothing but mechanisms for exploiting coloured labor.

Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice.

Government as we now know it in the USA and other economically advanced countries is so manifestly horrifying, so corrupt, counterproductive, and outright vicious, that one might well wonder how it continues to enjoy so much popular legitimacy and to be perceived so widely as not only tolerable but indispensable. The answer, in overwhelming part, may be reduced to a two-part formula: bribes and bamboozlement (classically "bread and circuses"). Under the former rubric falls the vast array of government "benefits" and goodies of all sorts, from corporate subsidies and privileges to professional grants and contracts to welfare payments and health care for low-income people and other members of the lumpenproletariat. Under the latter rubric fall such measures as the government schools, the government's lapdog news media, and the government's collaboration with the producers of professional sporting events and Hollywood films. Seen as a semi-integrated whole, these measures give current governments a strong hold on the public's allegiance and instill in the masses and the elites alike a deep fear of anything that seriously threatens the status quo.

How could a large land empire thrive and dominate in the modern world without reliable access to world markets and without much recourse to naval power? Stalin and Hitler had arrived at the same basic answer to this fundamental question. The state must be large in territory and self-sufficient in economics, with a balance between industry and agriculture that supported a hardily conformist and ideologically motivated citizenry capable of fulfilling historical prophecies - either Stalinist internal industrialization or Nazi colonial agrarianism. Both Hitler and Stalin aimed at imperial autarky, within a large land empire well supplies in food, raw materials, and mineral resources. Both understood the flash appeal of modern materials: Stalin had named himself after steel, and Hitler paid special attention to is production. Yet both Stalin and Hitler understood agriculture as a key element in the completion of their revolutions. Both believed that their systems would prove their superiority to decadent capitalism, and guarantee independence from the rest of the world, by the production of food. p. 158

Empires fall and drag their brands of civilization down with them.

Esta es una revolución que ningún poder logrará controlar porque biopoder y comunismo, cooperación y revolución, permanecen juntos, en amor, simplicidad y también inocencia. Esta es la irreprimible alegría y gozo de ser comunistas.

He slept that night the sleep of a successfully stubborn man.

He was not the Empire - not every moment of oppression and indignity and torment she had ever suffered. He was an Imperial, a petty, spiteful, scared little man who'd forgotten his own atrocities.

I got tired of constantly watching shrewd little bullies like you walk around like you mean something, like you’re better than the people that make your life possible, like you were born entitled to run the world. And I should confess, Mr. Bunting, that I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun as I’ve had helping to destroy your silly little empire.

I crack the other egg. Surely we have diminished one another.

...if charity begins at home, empire begins in other men's homes.

If the teachings of the early Christians changed Rome and the entire Roman Empire, we can’t point to any great change that the teachings coming from our pulpits today are producing upon our world in general

Intelligence will help you build a company; wisdom will help you build an empire.

I know it is said in missionary meetings that we conquered India to raise the level of the Indians. That is cant. We conquered India as an outlet for the goods of Britain. We conquered India by the sword, and by the sword we shall hold it.

In response to my question about how we might rein in the empire, he said, "That's why I'm meeting with you. Only you in the United States can change it. Your government created this problem and your people must solve it. You've got to insist that Washington honor its commitment to democracy, even when deomcratically elected leaders nationalize your corrupting corporations. You must take control of your corporations and your government. The people of the United States have a great deal of power. You need to come to grips with this. There's no alternative. We in Brazil have our hands tied. So do the Venezeulans. And the Nigerians. It's up to you.

. . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography. Suárez Miranda, Viajes de varones prudentes, Libro IV, Cap. XLV, Lérida, 1658

In the end, the British sacrificed her Empire to stop the Germans, Japanese and Italians from keeping theirs. Did not that sacrifice alone expunge all the Empire's other sins?

I "love" reading. It makes me feel like I am swallowing up Christ, Homer, Confucius, Newton, Franklin, Socrates, Caesar, and the whole world into one gigantic invincible Sir Moffat. Mine is creative reading. I read building empires in mind. I pray I won't read and read and forget to marry.

In an empire as unruly as Rome, it is quite easy to get away with something as thespian as murder.

... instead of trying to grapple with the implications of the story of empire, the British seem to have decided just to ignore it... the most corrosive part of this amnesia is a sense that because the nation is not what it was, it can never be anything again.

It is better to do nothing than to contribute to the invention of formal ways of rendering visible that which Empire already recognizes as existent.

L’impératrice Tarunesh inclina son visage généreux aux traits réguliers à son adresse, bien que le jeune Sorcelier ne puisse affirmer si c’était en signe de remerciement ou une simple notification de sa remarque. Le Dejazmach Elias sembla vouloir en tirer parti : - Voyez, Ô Reine des Rois, une bête fauve et quoi d’autre par-dessus le marché ! Permettez-moi de risquer ma vie plutôt que d’exposer votre auguste personne inutilement… Il y eut des murmures d’approbation mais Célian nota que Nyssa, qui à son grand plaisir le rejoignait, ne partageait visiblement pas l’avis d’Elias. - Votre inquiétude n’est pas de mise, Dejazmach, s’exclama Tarunesh avec une douceur voilée, ses yeux brillants emplis d’assurance. Le jour où une bête des herbes grasses aura ma vie, je ne serai effectivement plus digne de régner ! Assez perdu de temps. Selamawit, Mengistu, escortez notre Nigiste Negest ! commanda le Dejazmach Elias en se redressant vivement, se tournant vers les guerriers et la foule assemblés derrière lui.

It is not in the entrails of doves that the fall of empires can be read, but in the breeding of secrets and the multiplication of lies.

I was a slave, but never a fool. This empire is vast beyond imagining and we have killed only a fraction of the force they will bring against us. They will kill us, all of us, for we are slaves and we cannot be allowed even the barest hope of freedom. Without us, they have no empire.

It's very painful... I see a lot of poverty. I see a lot of spiritual poverty. This is a nation that has been deceived and abused. And you can't be a happy people when your reality is based on deception... we're causing incredible harm to countries like Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan... but the other side of the sword is cutting us.

Mumbai is the sweet, sweaty smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it's the sour, stifled smell of greed, which is the opposite of love. It's the smell of Gods, demons, empires, and civilizations in resurrection and decay. Its the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the island city, and the blood metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and the waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and love that produces courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of hunderd bazaar devoted exclusively to perfume, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. That smell, above all things - is that what welcomes me and tells me that I have come home. Then there were people. Assamese, Jats, and Punjabis; people from Rajasthan, Bengal, and Tamil Nadu; from Pushkar, Cochin, and Konark; warrior caste, Brahmin, and untouchable; Hindi, Muslim, Christian, Buddhist, Jain, Parsee, Animist; fair skin and dark, green eyes and golden brown and black; every different face and form of that extravagant variety, that incoparable beauty, India.

Mapidéré was but one man-and indeed, judging by rumors of his decrepit state near death, a weak, sickly man-but his creation, the empire, had taken on a life of its own. Killing the emperor would not have been enough. We have to kill the empire.

Meradinis! Turtle Island! It was a little corner of chaos! This was the scene the speeding black ship had left behind three days ago, fleeing in humiliating shame, those three days a constant running battle. For three days the accursed Imperial ship Indomitable had followed, firing on them at every opportunity. Death or imprisonment now awaited those who called themselves Corsairs – and though this death was now more certain rather than just a possibility, Sona Kilroy, or “The Hammer” as he was called by his men, was not prepared to give up his freedom so easily. Piracy was his life and he’d known no other. He was tough and cruel, a despicable man, a case in point when academics quoted the barbarism by which the Corsairs had made themselves known and feared across the star systems of the peaceful Terran Empire.

Minimal damage, but huge impact,” Mom said. “Something that some empire builders, or Emperors, fail to think about when they charged and conquered their neighbors. Not only were warfare expensive and costly, but the damage to the land and massive deaths were something the winning side of the war would inherit as well.” - Amazon Lee Adventures in China by Kira G. and Kailin Gow

Mohammad never assigned himself a status more than a common man and a messenger of God. People had faith in him when he was surrounded by poverty and adversity and trusted him while he was the ruler of a great Empire. He was a man of spotless character who always had confidence in himself and in God's help. No aspect of his life remained hidden nor was his death a mysterious event.

Only in art can empires cheat oblivion,..

No empire lasts forever, no dynasty continues unbroken. Some day, you and I will be mere legends. All that matters is whether we did what we could with the life that was given to us.