Best 92 quotes in «empire quotes» category

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.

- Oh ! Franz, ce que tu peux être poule mouillée parois ! Tu n’as donc pas envie de participer à ce grand bouleversement qui se prépare, de sortir de ta cage, de prendre ton envol ? Rappelle-toi que tu es le fils d’un Aigle ! Où sont tes ailes ? - Je ne suis pas le fils d’un Aigle, mais d’un vautour, qui pendant vingt ans s’est nourri de cadavres. Du moins c’est ainsi qu’on me le présente ici.

On any given day, Ossifar Distana carried around 5000 passengers, the actual figure varying slightly depending on where she was on the vast elliptical cruise that took her around the Terran Empire. When she entered the system she carried 4984 passengers, 500 crew, one dead body and one very puzzled Captain.

- Oh ! Franz, ce que tu peux être poule mouillée parfois ! Tu n’as donc pas envie de participer à ce grand bouleversement qui se prépare, de sortir de ta cage, de prendre ton envol ? Rappelle-toi que tu es le fils d’un Aigle ! Où sont tes ailes ? - Je ne suis pas le fils d’un Aigle, mais d’un vautour, qui pendant vingt ans s’est nourri de cadavres. Du moins c’est ainsi qu’on me le présente ici.

One bee cannot build a hive; one ant cannot build a colony.

Only in art can empires cheat oblivion,..

Salt and citrus,” Cairdine Farrier said, joining her at the stern with a lemon in each hand. “The chemicals of empire.” “Salt to preserve food for long journeys,” Baru recited. “Citrus for scurvy.

Rebuild your world, rebuild your race, rebuild your empire. Rebuild it all. But make sure you rebuild your ideals too. Rebuild the principles that made you a great and honorable galactic power in the first place. Don't prey on the weak. Don't steal from the helpless. Don't murder the innocent. Be a force for good, not a force for yourself.

One fact, however, we may identify at once: in the grand theatre of European history, Adolf Hitler was, in a way, the last true protagonist, the last momentous ruler of the fair continent; for with him the power of European empires over the globe came to an end - the "Proud Tower" collapsed. Hitler took the last curtain call: after 1945, a new world order emerged, divided between Asia and America.

She'd done better than most; it would take the Empire a whole battle station to end her.

Since emotions are few and reasons many, the behavior or a crowd can be more easily predicted than the behavior of one person can. And that, in turn, means that if laws are to be developed that enable the current of history to be predicted, then one must deal with large populations, the larger the better. That might itself be the First Law of Psychohistory, the key to the study of Humanics. Yet.' R. Giskard Reventlov

She didn’t make him out to be perfect. Vhalla knew Aldrik was horribly flawed. But so was she. He was prone to anger and she prone to selfishness. But they strove together to be better, for themselves and for each other.

Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.

Since its sudden birth the city had expanded, swallowing up acre upon acre of the surrounding grasslands and drawing thousands into its domain. Hardly built on the most advantageous ground, miles from the open waters, decades from the mines at the mountain summits, it yet remained the only settlement of note on the isle. This sprawling mass of a city, once a compact kingdom, was now the keystone of the Castilian Empire.

Sumone Yiden Smiff was a businessman of note. Was, past tense. Through years of sweat and swearing and amazingly smart (or lucky) deals he’d built up a mining empire that spanned the sum of known space. At 74 years, he had reached the apex of a career stretching half a century. His companies mined precious commodities like Impervium, Obstinatium and Bitanium. He wasn’t really famous, or ostentatious. In fact he only ever made the cover of Fortune One Billion once, twenty-five years ago. He’d never married, had lots of children – light-years apart, apparently.

Some women born to raise a beautiful families while some women are born to build an empire from ashes and rule the rest.

So he’d done more of the same. He’d drunk to forget. He’d brawled to let off steam. He’d taken the dangerous jobs to fund his lifestyle – and then began it all again. He wasn’t some chivalrous nomad, skulking from planet to planet doing good deeds and leaving when things got too hot. No, left when the bar-owner’s daughter suddenly wanted to marry him. Kanan didn’t leave because the Empire moved in: He’d stared down Imperials like Vidian before and lived. They knew he was something to ignore. No, he left because where the Empire went, fun usually died.

The creation within the space of a single century of a vast Arab Empire stretching from Spain to India is one of the most extraordinary marvels of history.

Terrorism is vicious, ugly, and dehumanizing for its perpetrators as well as its victims. But so is war. You could says that terrorism is the privatization of war. Terrorists are the free marketeers of war. They are people who don't believe that the state has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.

The crescent moon in the sky appeared and disappeared between the branches and the thickets, or behind the playful diaphanous night clouds, like the jewel in the crown that shines or blurs according to the destiny of the empire.

That's how tyranny succeeds. When folks think it won't affect them until eventually it does.

The mind is an empire unto itself.

The empires collapsed to rubble. Skyscrapers dragged down to the ground. It was chaos. I could smell the end. It smells of tequila, cannabis, and strawberry shampoo. It's so cold so cold so cold. But I'm not shivering from cold. My own teeth are frigid icepicks. Carved diamond hard, I think I've cut my lip. Maybe it was someone else's teeth that nipped me.

The proposition is peace. Not peace through the medium of war; not peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negotiations; not peace to arise out of universal discord, fomented from principle, in all parts of the empire; not peace to depend on the juridical determination of perplexing questions, or the precise marking the shadowy boundaries of a complex government. It is simple peace, sought in its natural course and in its ordinary haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of peace, and laid in principles purely pacific.

The Sun Tzu School (which wrote the Art of War) surely never imagined that their antiwar, pro-empire treatise would become known and accepted after the fall of the first empire as a text on military tactics. Likewise, they would have been surprised to see the Ping-fa military metaphor—an inspired teaching device—come to be seen as the message and not the medium.

the wages of empire is myopia

The era of manufacturing consent has given way to the era of manufacturing news. Soon media newsrooms will drop the pretence, and start hiring theatre directors instead of journalists.

There are no moral obligations in the game of empire.

The sun's glow had given way to a brilliant twilight that colored the great mountains with violet and orange rivers.

This is my empire, Uriang-Khadai. I will not be made to leave. Ready the tumans for battle, Orlok. I will face my enemies and I will destroy them.

Thus the British Empire came into existence; and thus - for there is no stopping damp; it gets into the inkpot as it gets into the woodwork - sentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics, and little trifles that had been essays a column long were now encyclopaedias in ten or twenty volumes.

Throughout the world what remains of the vast public spaces are now only the stuff of legends: Robin Hood’s forest, the Great Plains of the Amerindians, the steppes of the nomadic tribes, and so forth… Rousseau said that the first person who wanted a piece of nature as his or her own exclusive possession and transformed it into the transcendent form of private property was the one who invented evil. Good, on the contrary, is what is common.

Violence and resistance are the only answer. Empire has to feel pain or it will never stop devouring you. It is only when a gun is put in a person’s face that anything changes. All empires are hungry cannibals...

We ought not to speak only about the economics of globalization, but about the psychology of globalization. It's like the psychology of a battered woman being faced with her husband again and being asked to trust him again. That's what is happening. We are being asked by the countries that invented nuclear weapons and chemical weapons and apartheid and modern slavery and racism - countries that have perfected the gentle art of genocide, that colonized other people for centuries - to trust them when they say that they believe in a level playing field and the equitable distribution of resources and in a better world. It seems comical that we should even consider that they really mean what they say.

this supercluster has to be Jurassic Park on crack

What does a great empire do when faced with imminent invasion and destruction? It can rearm at home and seek allies abroad; but more cunningly it can revisit its history to forge a myth that will unite the people and carry them through to victory, a myth that will demonstrate to everyone that their country has been specially chosen by history to uphold justice and righteousness.

What is Empire? Empire cannot be tasted or touched. You cannot smell it or breathe it or fuck it. It is not a fleet or a capital or a person. It is a story that is only real as long as people keep telling it. So we are not attacking a fleet or a capital or people. We are attacking the story. We are attacking the symbols that roar and screech at the heart of that story. That is how we will uproot and destroy Empire.

When avarice takes the lead in a state, it is commonly the forerunner of its fall.

Why do you accept being treated like an inmate?

You cannot build an empire hands folded.

You strike me as a good man, Commander, but where the good are put in charge of the wicked, empires will be destroyed. It is when the wicked are given oversight of the good, does empire become strong.

When you live in the United States, with the roar of the free market, the roar of this huge military power, the roar of being at the heart of empire, it's hard to hear the whispering of the rest of the world. And I think many US citizens want to. I don't think that all of them necessarily are co-conspirators in this concept of empire. And those who are not, need to listen to other stories in the world - other voices, other people.

You don't need to work hard to earn an empire; there is an army of slaves to do it for you.

A house you build with your hands, but an empire you build with your heart.

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

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

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

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?

Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.

As Samson demonstrated, going bald ruins lives.