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Imperialism Quotes

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Imperialism Quotes

“The hard cold facts today indicate that the hope of the people of color in the world may well rest on the American Negro and his ability to reform the structure of racist imperialism from within and thereby turn the technology and wealth of the West to the task of liberating the world from want.”

WorldChangeRacePovertyRacismNeedAfrican AmericansImperialismBlacks
Book:Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?
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“Private property based on the labour of the small proprietor, free competition, democracy, i.e., all the catchwords with which the capitalists and their press deceive the workers and the peasants- are things of the past. Capitalism has grown into a world system of colonial oppression and of the financial strangulation of the overwhelming majority of the people of the world by a handful of "advanced" countries. And this "booty" is shared between two or three powerful world marauders armed to the teeth"..."who involve the whole world in their war over the sharing of their booty.”

PovertyCapitalismLaborImperialismPrivate PropertyPlunderGlobalismOppression WealthOwnership Class
Book:Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
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“The two main criminals are France and the United States. They owe Haiti enormous reparations because of actions going back hundreds of years. If we could ever get to the stage where somebody could say, 'We're sorry we did it,' that would be nice. But if that just assuages guilt, it's just another crime. To become minimally civilized, we would have to say, 'We carried out and benefited from vicious crimes. A large part of the wealth of France comes from the crimes we committed against Haiti, and the United States gained as well. Therefore we are going to pay reparations to the Haitian people.' Then you will see the beginnings of civilization.”

WealthHistoryUnited StatesCrimeGuiltFranceImperialismCivilisationHaitiReparationsApologiesAmerican ImperialismFrench Imperialism
Book:Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
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“Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.”

PeopleEvilPoliticsFreedomMoneyLibertyPowerBloodSocietyMediaCapitalismProfitCorruptionTyrannyDeceptionCorporationsHuman LifeDeceitOccupationCapitalistColonialismFreeGreedyImperialismBadProfitableElectionsCorruptLivesTreasonSuzy KassemEmpireEliteCorporatismProfitsFreedPower To The PeopleProfits Before PeoplePeople Before Profit
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“Having confronted the world with little except a battered typewriter and a certain resilience, he can now take posthumous credit for having got the three great questions of the 20th century essentially 'right.' Orwell was an early and consistent foe of European imperialism, and foresaw the end of colonial rule. He was one of the first to volunteer to bear arms against fascism and Nazism in Spain. And, while he was soldiering in Catalonia, he saw through the biggest and most seductive lie of them all—the false promise of a radiant future offered by the intellectual underlings of Stalinism.”

EuropeLiesFascismColonialism20th CenturyImperialismSpainNazismBritish EmpireStalinismGeorge OrwellIntellectual LifeCataloniaSpanish Civil War
Author:Christopher Hitchens
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“There is an impulse in moments like this to appeal to self-interest. To say: These horrors you are allowing to happen, they will come to your doorstep one day; to repeat the famous phrase about who they came for first and who they'll come for next. But this appeal cannot, in matter of fact, work. If the people well served by a system that condones such butchery ever truly believed the same butchery could one day be inflicted on them, they'd tear the system down tomorrow. And anyway, by the time such a thing happens, the rest of us will already be dead. No, there is no terrible thing coming for you in some distant future, but know that a terrible thing is happening to you now. You are being asked to kill off a part of you that would otherwise scream in opposition to injustice. You are being asked to dismantle the machinery of a functioning conscience. Who cares if diplomatic expediency prefers you shrug away the sight of dismembered children? Who cares if great distance from the bloodstained middle allows obliviousness? Forget pity, forget even the dead if you must, but at least fight against the theft of your soul.”

WarSoulConscienceInjusticeImperialismPalestineSelf InterestGazaGaza WarFirst They Came For
Book:One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
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“No one today is purely one thing. Labels like Indian, or woman, or Muslim, or American are not more than starting-points, which if followed into actual experience for only a moment are quickly left behind. Imperialism consolidated the mixture of cultures and identities on a global scale. But its worst and most paradoxical gift was to allow people to believe that they were only, mainly, exclusively, white, or Black, or Western, or Oriental. Yet just as human beings make their own history, they also make their cultures and ethnic identities. No one can deny the persisting continuities of long traditions, sustained habitations, national languages, and cultural geographies, but there seems no reason except fear and prejudice to keep insisting on their separation and distinctiveness, as if that was all human life was about. Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of the “other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.” It is more rewarding - and more difficult - to think concretely and sympathetically, contrapuntally, about others than only about “us.” But this also means not trying to rule others, not trying to classify them or put them in hierarchies, above all, not constantly reiterating how “our” culture or country is number one (or not number one, for that matter).”

HumanityCultureSurvivalConnectionsLabelsImperialism
Book:Culture And Imperialism
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“Profit should never come at the cost of human blood. Any government that places profit before people is pure evil.”

PeopleGovernmentTruthPoliticalEvilPresidentBloodCitizensHumanGreedProfitHuman LifeEstablishmentColonialismGreedyImperialismPoliticiansCorruptCrookedCasualtiesSuzy KassemCrooksDirty PoliticsPeople Before ProfitPeople Over ProfitCorruption BloodPeople Before Profits
Book:Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
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“It is imperative to think of the task of decolonizing knowledge production as inseparable from every other aspect of our lives. It must be applied to the smallest and most hidden details of life, including but not limited to decolonizing romantic relationships (stop seeing beauty only in whiteness, blue eyes, and blond hair); decolonizing social connections (stop believing that there is more value in socially connecting and networking with powerful people who often happen to be Westerners); decolonizing the workplace (stop believing that expertise, management and power are embodied in Western individuals); decolonize our hobbies and activities (don’t do things or enjoy activities promoted and imposed on us by the West such as going to the beach or wasting one’s life watching TV or Netflix); decolonize travel destinations (shatter the illusion that nowhere is more worth seeing that Europe, or that traveling around Europe equals ‘seeing’ the world). We need to seek and discover new destinations, peoples, and cultures to travel to and learn about and from.”

FreedomKnowledgeDiversityLiberationColonialismImperialismDecolonizationDecolonialityKnowledge Production
Author:Louis Yako
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“in a fast-moving globalised world, how we can think of class difference without having anything to do with military interventions in energy-producing countries, whose natural resources are a game changer when it comes to economic status and class distinction.”

ClassCapitalismImperialismGlobalizationClass DifferenceClass Disparity
Book:Writing Through the Body: Iraqi Responses to the War on Terror
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“We have very few writers and journalists not on the payroll of the empire or the oppressive powers in today’s world. With few exceptions, most accounts and narratives I hear from and read by the so-called ‘journalists’ and ‘experts’ about Middle East affairs remind me of Upton Sinclair’s immortal words … where he writes 'It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it.”

WarIntegrityJournalismPropagandaColonialismImperialismMisinformationFake News Media
Author:Louis Yako
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“What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality? Gandhi and Das's genius was that they realised that better than we did ourselves. They recognised that when it came down to it, the British and the Indians weren't that different, and the way to beat us was to appeal to our better natures — to make us comprehend the moral incongruity of our position in India.”

RaceIndiaIndependenceMoralsColonialismImperialismBritish EmpireFair PlayBritish PeopleNon Violent Protest
Book:Smoke and Ashes
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“Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west.”

WarIslamIraqTyrannyImperialismUnited NationsGulf WarAmerican Foreign PolicyMilitary InterventionSaddam HusseinWestern Hypocrisy
Book:The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
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“Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?”

WarPowerViolenceMilitaryWeaponsBraveryServiceImperialismConquestSoldiersMilitarismJingoismSoldieringSoldiery
Book:City of Blades
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“(Donor Countries) When are we going to understand that donor countries never give anything for free? When are we going to realize that only those with the largest role in destruction offer themselves as benefactors? They donate merely to reshape societies and ravaged lands according to their whims and desires… Their sole aim is to keep the defeated, the marginalized, the disempowered, and the impoverished in that state for as long as possible… When are we going to see that the quickest way to name the world’s greatest criminals is simply to scan the list of donor countries? November 12, 2022”

WarDevelopmentExploitationImperialismThird WorldRefugeesReconstructionDecolonizationArabic PoetryPlundering
Book:سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]
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“This determination of Negro Americans to win freedom from all forms of oppression springs from the same deep longing that motivates oppressed peoples all over the world. The rumblings of discontent in Asia and Africa are expressions of a quest for freedom and human dignity by people who have long been the victims of colonialism and imperialism. So in a real sense the racial crisis in America is a part of the larger world crisis.”

JusticeFreedomRaceOppressionColonialismAfrican AmericansImperialismEquityBlacks
Book:Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story
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“Among the darker nations, Paris is famous for two betrayals. The first came in 1801, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent General Victor Leclerc to crush the Haitian Revolution, itself inspired by the French Revolution. The French regime could not allow its lucrative Santo Domingo to go free, and would not allow the Haitian people to live within the realm of the Enlightenment's " Rights of Man." The Haitians nonetheless triumphed, and Haiti became the first modern colony to win its independence. The second betrayal came shortly after 1945, when a battered France, newly liberated by the Allies, sent its forces to suppress the Vietnamese, West Indians, and Africans who had once been its colonial subjects. Many of these regions had sent troops to fight for the liberation of France and indeed Europe, but they returned home emptyhanded. As a sleight of hand, the French government tried to maintain sovereignty over its colonies by repackaging them as " overseas territories." A people hungry for liberation did not want such measly hors d'oeuvres.”

WarIndependenceColonialismImperialismThird WorldGlobal South
Book:The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World
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“Feminism is the struggle to end sexist oppression. Therefore, it is necessarily a struggle to eradicate the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels, as well as a commitment to reorganizing society so that the self-development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion, and material desires.”

PoliticsSocietyFeminismCapitalismOppressionIdeologyImperialismDominationRadical Feminism
Book:Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center
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“Emotional neglect lays the groundwork for the emotional numbing that helps boys feel better about being cut off. Eruptions of rage in boys are most often deemed normal, explained by the age-old justification for adolescent patriarchal misbehavior, "Boys will be boys." Patriarchy both creates the rage in boys and then contains it for later use, making it a resource to exploit later on as boys become men. As a national product, this rage can be garnered to further imperialism, hatred and oppression of women and men globally. This rage is needed if boys are to become men willing to travel around the world to fight wars without ever demanding that other ways of solving conflict can be found.”

MenFeminismPatriarchyImperialism
Author:Bell Hooks
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“In the first case, the religious association succumbs to destruction from within, its organism becomes subordinated to goals completely different from the original idea, and its theosophic and moral values fall prey to characteristic deformation, thereupon serving as a disguise for domination by pathological individuals. The religious idea then becomes both a justification for using force and sadism against non-believers, heretics, and sorcerers, and a conscience drug for people who put such inspirations into effect. Anyone criticizing such a state of affairs is condemned with paramoral indignation, allegedly in the name of the original idea and faith in God, but actually because he feels and thinks within the categories of normal people. Such a system retains the name of the original religion and many other specific names, swearing on the prophet’s beard while using this for its doubletalk. Something which was to be originally an aid in the comprehension of God’s truth now scourges nations with the sword of imperialism.”

ReligionPsychologyIdeologyCommunismNarcissismImperialismTotalitarianismPsychopathTheosophyMass Formation
Book:Political Ponerology: A Science on the Nature of Evil Adjusted for Political Purposes
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“Most of our brains are out, but it is good what they did for themselves by leaving this country. They are Cameroon’s reserve for development, for the day that this country shall be free. Your late father was an intelligent man. He was even more than that. He was a sage. He once said to me that the intelligent Bamilekés are those who have sought a better future for themselves and for their families in British Cameroons. He was right. They have not been brainwashed as much as their francophone brothers have. If he were alive today, I am sure he would have judged that the intelligent Cameroonians are those who have sought refuge out of Cameroon.”

LoveLifeInspirationalPhilosophyWisdomHumorMotivationalTruthRomanceSuccessFaithSpiritualityHopeFriendshipFamilyBetrayalLoyaltyPatriotismDictatorshipSolidarityAltruismImperialism
Author:Janvier Chouteu-Chando
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“This Fourth of July, instead of celebrating your Americanness, do something to redeem your humanness. Anybody can become a super power by exploiting and abusing others - that's not greatness, it's bestiality - but to grow super without trampling on anybody, that's greatness - better yet, to grow super together with everybody, that's absolute greatness.”

Social JusticeAmerican HistoryImperialismWhite Supremacy4th Of JulyChristian NationalismNeonazisFourth Of JulySuper PowerJuly 4th
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“In one of my early works I once wrote, "America is a great country, built by great people". And it took me some time to look through the fallacy of this statement. I could still justify it by saying, it depends on the context - which would be technically true. But my dignity, my conscience, my morality - everything that is civilized in me, has been eating me alive for some time now over this one statement. Because if we throw away all technicality and look from a simple, everyday human perspective - nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones. You think America's homeless problem is something new! It's not - America has been making people homeless ever since the pilgrims set foot in Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”

SlaveryAmerican DreamColonialismAmerican HistoryImperialismWhite SupremacyAmerican CultureColonizationNative AmericansColonial History
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Nothing about the the birth of America is great - America is a terrorist nation, built by terrorists who invaded other people's land, stripped them of their homes, and built a spin-off of the ruthless British empire over their blood and bones. You think America's homeless problem is something new! It's not - America has been making people homeless ever since the pilgrims set foot in Plymouth Rock. The pilgrims were not pioneers, they were terrorists.”

SlaveryAmerican DreamColonialismAmerican HistoryImperialismWhite SupremacyAmerican CultureColonizationNative AmericansColonial History
Book:Tum Dunya Tek Millet: Greatest Country on Earth is Earth
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“Those who live by the labor of others are taught by religion to practice charity while on earth, thus offering them a very cheap way of justifying their entire existence as exploiters and selling them at a moderate price tickets to well-being in heaven. Religion is opium for the people. Religion is a sort of spiritual booze, in which the slaves of capital drown their human image, their demand for a life more or less worthy of man.”

SpiritualReligionCapitalismCharityImperialismCapitalProletariatCapitalistsImperialistsExploiters
Book:Socialism and religion
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