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Empires Quotes

Browse 1059 quotes about Empires.

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Empires Quotes

“Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand—a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear—while with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again?”

NationsFateCapitalismEconomicsTradeCommunismEmpiresAlienationSupply And DemandProductionInvisible HandExchangeEconomiesGlobal Trade
Book:The German Ideology / Theses on Feuerbach / Introduction to the Critique of Political Economy
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“Ashoka's political and moral philosophy, as he expressed it in his imperial inscriptions, initiated a tradition of religious tolerance, non-violent debate and a commitment to the idea of happiness which has animated Indian political philosophy ever since. But - and it's a big but - his benevolent empire scarcely outlived him. And that leaves us with the uncomfortable question of whether such high ideals can survive the realities of political power. Nevertheless, this was a ruler who really did change the way that his subjects and their successors thought.”

PhilosophyHappinessPoliticsMoralityIdealsIndiaEmpiresRulersReligious ToleranceAshoka
Book:A History of the World in 100 Objects
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“Calf-deep in the soothing water I indulge myself in the wishful vision. I am not unaware of what such daydreams signify, dreams of becoming an unthinking savage, of taking the cold road back to the capital, of groping my way out to the ruins in the desert, of returning to the confinement of my cell, of seeking out the barbarians and offering myself to them to use as they wish. Without exception they are dreams of ends: dreams not of how to live but of how to die. And everyone, I know, in that walled town sinking now into darkness (I hear the two thin trumpet calls that announce the closing of the gates) is similarly preoccupied. What has made it impossible for us to live in time like fish in the water, like birds in air, like children? It is the fault of Empire! Empire has created the time of history. Empire has located its existence not in the smooth recurrent spinning time of the cycle of the seasons but in the jagged time of rise and fall, of beginning and end, of catastrophe. Empire dooms itself to live in history and plot against history. One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation. A mad vision yet a virulent one: I, wading in the ooze, am no less infected with it than the faithful Colonel Joll as he tracks the enemies of Empire through the boundless desert, sword unsheathed to cut down barbarian after barbarian until at last he finds and slays the one whose destiny it should be (or if not his then his son's or unborn grandson's) to climb the bronze gateway to the Summer Palace and topple the globe surmounted by the tiger rampant that symbolizes eternal domination, while his comrades below cheer and fire their muskets in the air.”

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Book:Waiting for the Barbarians
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“Times goin' change again an' things too, and that great British Empire goin' change too, 'cause time ain't got nothin' to do with these empires. God don't like ugly, an' whenever these big great empires starts to get ugly with the thing they does the Almighty puts His hands down once an' for all. He tell them without talkin', fellows, you had your day. (p.101)”

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Book:In the Castle of My Skin
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“This latest shift didn’t really matter all that much: Republic, Empire, it was six to one, half a dozen to the other. It meant little to the average person struggling to make a life. Either form of government could make the mag-levs run on time, and both stepped on individual rights far more than they should. As far as Atour was concerned, the best government was that which governed least. Something a step or two above anarchy would be ideal. Now there was a power-hungry Emperor running things. Both history and personal experience had taught Atour that in as little as a few years, or as much as a few centuries, there would come evolution - or revolution - and this, too, would pass. The new rulers would start out full of promise and hope and good intentions, and gradually settle into mediocrity. A benevolent but inept king was as bad as a despot.”

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Book:Star Wars: Death Star
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“American influence in the world is certainly considerable, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done, save for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the rule.”

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Book:The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the
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“Moral decay first hampers and then strangles honest government, regular commerce, and even the ability to take genuine pleasure in the goods of this world. Compulsion is applied from above as self-discipline relaxes below, and the last liberties expire under the weight of a unitary state.... Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary that divided good from evil is overthrown; kings and nations are guided by chance and none can say where are the natural limits of despotism and the bound of license.”

MenWorldFirstsSoulSelfStatesGovernmentLastsEvilLostNationsNaturalChanceAbilityPleasureLibertyMoralHonestThis WorldKingsDisciplineLimitsWeightBoundsCorruptionBoundariesGenuineRelaxEmpiresGoodsDividedDecayCommerceSelf DisciplineLicenseCompulsionDespotismProminentHamperMoral DecayHonest Government
Author:Russell Kirk
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“The full history of the interlocking participation of the Imperial German Government and international finance in the destruction of the Russian Empire is not yet written...It is not a mere coincidence that at the notorious meeting held at Stockholm in 1916, between the former Russian Minister of the Interior, Protopopoff, and the German Agents, the German Foreign Office was represented by Mr. Warburg, whose two brothers were members of the international banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which the late Mr. Jacob Schiff was a senior member.”

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Author:Boris Brasol
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“With his decision to use force against the violent extremists of the Islamic State, President Obama ... is stepping once again - and with understandably great reluctance - into the chaos of an entire civilization that has broken down. Arab civilization, such as we knew it, is all but gone. The Arab world today is more violent, unstable, fragmented and driven by extremism - the extremism of the rulers and those in opposition-than at any time since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire a century ago.”

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Author:Hisham Melhem
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“Most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their selfish consumer society and empire. Yet I suspect...they do not care. They don’t want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins, the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans, or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is therefore welcomed and appreciated.”

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Author:Curtis White
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“I would say that nobody is going to work harder for your career than yourself - the one with the vision. No matter how many people you hire, nobody is going to get is as much as yourself does. So it's really important to be your own leader at all times and not hand it all off, otherwise the whole empire will fall apart.”

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Author:Skylar Grey
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“And government (to define it de facto, or according to modern prudence) is an art whereby some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest; which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.”

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Book:Harrington: 'The Commonwealth of Oceana' and 'A System of Politics'
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