European Imperialism Quotes

What was peculiar about the West was not that it participated in the worldwide evil of slavery, but that it later abolished that evil, not only in Western societies but also in other societies subject to Western control or influence. This was possible only because the anti-slavery movement coincided with an era in which Western power and hegemony were at their zenith, so that it was essentially European imperialism which ended slavery. This idea might seem shocking, not because it does not fit the facts, but because it does not fit the prevailing vision of our time. ~ Thomas Sowell

My body has never been to Europe. My mind has never left it. ~ Brian Spellman

The histories of Islamic fundamentalism and European imperialism have very often been closely, and dangerously, intertwined. In a curious but very concrete way, the fundamentalists of both faiths have needed each other to reinforce each other's prejudices and hatreds. The venom of one provides the lifeblood of the other. ~ William Dalrymple

In the high days of European imperialism, conquistadors and merchants bought entire islands and countries in exchange for coloured beads. In the twenty-first century our personal data is probably the most valuable resource most humans still have to offer, and we are giving it to the tech giants in exchange for email services and funny cat videos. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

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. ~ Christopher Hitchens

...colonialism in Africa was inevitable since the fittest and most creative person was the one that would be destined to lead. ~ S.A. David

It is our sacred duty," says Napoleone, "to instil into all the European peoples the idea of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity. And if necessary - with the help of cannon! ~ Annemarie Selinko

Simply asking the British people to carry on accepting a European settlement over which they have had little choice is a path to ensuring that when the question is finally put - and at some stage it will have to be - it is much more likely that the British people will reject the EU. ~ David Cameron

Over 30 years ago, Airbus was founded by a European consortium of French, German, and later Spanish and British companies to compete in the large commercial aircraft industry with U.S. companies. ~ Norm Dicks

The problem with political ideologues such as arch Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg (a.k.a. JackOff Grease-Smug) is that they are totally divorced from reality with heads stuck firmly in the clouds. Add to that the priggish and rarefied demeanour of this particular outlandishly pompous ass and you end up with a complete disconnect with the way things actually work. Pragmatism and consensus articulated by compassionate people who live in the real world and with feet firmly on the ground must win the day with Britain's economic interests foremost in mind. Get on your Penny Farthing Jacob and start peddling fast. You are a tiresome irrelevance better consigned to a museum for musty relics. ~ Alex Morritt

Being American is, I think, a very difficult thing in art, because all the elements are European ... ~ Kingsley Amis

It was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice. ~ Joseph Conrad

I like independent films ... European films. I do go and see popular films as well because my kids force me. ~ Frances O'Grady

I remain committed to a balanced policy, which will protect our national interests both on our eastern border - I mean with Russia - and of course with the European Union. ~ Viktor Yanukovych

Preacher pulled her gun to her lap, the trigger aimed toward the stranger. . . . He stared at her like he was ready to dial 911, until he saw she was of European heritage, saw her clerical collar, saw the Bible on the dashboard. White, blond, and Christian. Trifecta. The man's shoulders relaxed and he smiled, waved, and kept going. ~ Eric Jerome Dickey

Advocating democracy has, by other people, often been taken as a form of imperialism, and not without some justification. So the important thing in a democracy is that it doesn't necessarily have to agree with what America's interests are, and it doesn't necessarily have to be serving American interests. ~ George Soros

If a Cuban refugee is escaping, we're saying they're a political refugee, but why isn't a Haitian refugee a political refugee? They're escaping the capitalism and degradation of economic imperialism. We don't call them political refugees; we call them unfortunate people. ~ Ian Svenonius

In New York, the European starling - now a ubiquitous avian pest from Alaska to Mexico - was introduced because someone thought the city would be more cultured if Central Park were home to each bird mentioned in Shakespeare. ~ Alan Weisman

I felt it was vital to stress the importance of national security in this debate and the need for a clear path to our exit from the European Union. I hope I have achieved both these objectives. ~ Liam Fox

For a society that constantly claims we shouldn't make any distinctions between men and women, we sure spend an awful lot of time defining exactly what those differences are...I know I'm still learning about what the word 'inequality' really means. Every day. I have to. I'm a white, heterosexual, Western European man with an education and a job. There's not a single organism in the entire universe who knows less about inequality than me. But I'm trying to learn. ~ Fredrik Backman

May heaven have mercy on the European intellect if one wanted to subtract the Jewish intellect from it. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

A precursor to the Social Darwinists, Hobbes argued from th premise that the primordial human condition was a war fought by each against each, so brutal and incesssant that it was impossible to develop industry or even agriculture or the arts while that condition persisted. It's this description that culmintes in his famous epithet "And the life of man, solitary, poor, brutish, and short." It was a fiction to which he brought to bear another fiction, that of the social contract by which men agree to submit to rules and a presiding authority, surrendering their right to ravage each other for the sake of their own safety. The contract was not a bond of affection or identification, bot a culture or religion binding togetehr a civilization, only a convenience. Men, in his view, as in that of many other European writers of the period, are stark, mechanical creatures, windup soldiers social only by strategy and not by nature ... ~ Rebecca Solnit

The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Our enemies are all those in league with imperialism - the warlords, the bureaucrats, the comprador class, the big Landlord class and the reactionary section of the intelligentsia attached to them. The leading force in our revolution is the industrial proletariat. Our closest friends are the entire semi-proletariat and petty bourgeoisie. As for the vacillating middle bourgeoisie, their right wing may become our enemy and their left wing may become our friend - but we must be constantly on our guard and not let them create confusion within our ranks. ~ Mao Zedong

If we left the European Union, it would be a one-way ticket, not a return. So we will have time for a proper, reasoned debate. At the end of that debate you, the British people, will decide. ~ David Cameron

There is a preconception held by many people, even on the left, that imperialism made us enter history at the moment when it began its adventure in our countries ~ Amilcar Cabral

Regarding the visa-free regime, it has undoubtedly become a problem for the European Union, above all in terms of its capacity to reach agreements. ~ Sergei Lavrov

There are schools of thought and political movements that seek to purge human culture of imperialism, leaving behind what they claim is a pure, authentic civilisation, untainted by sin. These ideologies are at best naive; at worst they serve as disingenuous window-dressing for crude nationalism and bigotry. Perhaps ~ Yuval Noah Harari

When I look at the chaotic and volatile debate right now, both in Germany and around the world, my impression and concern is that the daily barrage of proposals and political statements is making markets and consumers even more nervous. Still, Brussels is pressing for a joint European approach. ~ Peer Steinbruck

There will be no peace in Europe if the States rebuild themselves on the basis of national sovereignty, with its implications of prestige politics and economic protection ( ... ). The countries of Europe are not strong enough individually to be able to guarantee prosperity and social development for their peoples. The States of Europe must therefore form a federation or a European entity that would make them into a common economic unit. ~ Jean Monnet

Quebec City is the most European of any city in North America; they speak French all the time. There is a part of town called Old Quebec which is really like being in France. The architecture is just gorgeous, food, shopping. I'd say Quebec City is the most beautiful city in North America I've seen. ~ Sebastian Bach

We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War. ~ Andrei Grechko

However, the fact that American forces continued to work with the warlords and pay them gave them new power in their communities. They intimidated local people by telling them they could call in airstrikes on their satellite phones. And to the horror of many of the Europeans, Rumsfeld and other US officials would visit them as if they were important leaders. 'There is a certain illogic in trying to boost the authority of the central government on one hand and in conniving with local warlords on the other,' complained Chris Patten, the European Union Commissioner, when he visited Kabul in May 2002. 'There are things done in the short term which are unhelpful in the long term. ~ Christina Lamb

I've said before that the Ryder Cup is not the European Tour versus the American Tour. It's Europe's best golfers against the US. ~ Lee Westwood

To attribute foreseeable necessity to the catastrophe of Germany and the European Jews would be to give it a meaning that it didn't have. There is an unseemly optimism in such an assumption. In the history of mankind there is more that is spontaneous, wilful, unreasonable and senseless than our conceit allows. - GOLO MANN, GESCHICHTE UND GESCHICHTEN, P. 170 ~ Clive James

Only the unlimited accumulation of power could bring about the unlimited accumulation of capital. ~ Hannah Arendt

Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people. ~ John T. Flynn

Vienna didn't invent the coffeehouse. The world's first sprang up in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1554, the first Western European one nearly a century later when an enterprising young man named Jacob opened a shop in Oxford, England, that served the "bitter black beverage." From the outset, coffee was considered dangerous. It was known as the "revolutionary drink, ~ Eric Weiner

Beginning with a trip out to Ellis Island, I saw for myself where thousands of European immigrants took their first steps onto American soil, bringing with them nothing but their ambition: people such as Erich von Stroheim and Adolph Zukor. ~ Paul Merton

The liberal psyche wants to protect minorities, to apologize for imperialism, colonialism, slavery, and the appalling treatment of black people during the civil rights movement. At the same time, they want to continue to defend the rights of individuals. ~ Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Kundera was also a postmodernist writer, but he completely lacked this embracing of other worlds, with him the world was always the same, it was Prague and Czechoslovakia and the Soviets who had either invaded or were on the point of doing so, and that was fine, but he kept withdrawing his characters from the plot, intervening and going on about something or other while the characters stood still, waiting as it were, by the window or wherever it was they happened to be until he had finished his explanation and they could move forward. Then you saw that the plot was only 'a plot' and that the characters were only 'characters', something he had invented, you knew they didn't exist, and so why should you read about them? Kundera's polar opposite was Hamsun, no one went as far into his characters' world as he did, and that was what I preferred, at least in a comparison of these two, the physicality and the realism of Hunger, for example. There the world had weight, there even the thoughts were captured, while with Kundera the thoughts elevated themselves above the world and did as they liked with it. Another difference I had noticed was that European novels often had only one plot, everything followed one track as it were, while South American novels had a multiplicity of tracks and sidetracks, indeed, compared with European novels, they almost exploded with plots. One of my favourites was A Hundred Years of Solitude by García Márquez, but I also loved Love in the Time of Cholera ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

European Muslims need to feel ownership of security, rather than viewing the police as an occupying army. ~ David Ignatius

Imperialism as he [Kipling] sees it is a sort of forcible evangelising. ~ George Orwell

A lot of performers don't want to leave the circuit, the European opera house circuit, partly because most singers don't sing many concerts, or at least not while they are in their prime. ~ Renee Fleming

Among my European ancestors were piano builders, goldsmiths, and vintners but, to the best of my knowledge, no professionals of any kind. ~ Herbert A. Simon

I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport. ~ Jack Kemp

But you see, "libertarian" has a special meaning in the United States. The United Statesis off the spectrum of the main tradition in this respect: what's called "libertarianism" here is unbridled capitalism. Now, that's always been opposed in the European libertarian tradition, where every anarchist has been a socialist - because the point is, if you have unbridled capitalism, you have all kinds of authority: you have extreme authority. If capital is privately controlled, then people are going to have to rent themselves in order to survive. Now, you can say, "they rent themselves freely, it's a free contract" - but that's a joke. If your choice is, "do what I tell you or starve," that's not a choice - it's in fact what was commonly referred to as wage slavery in more civilized times, like the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, for example.
The American version of "libertarianism" is an aberration, though - nobody really takes it seriously. I mean, everybody knows that a society that worked by American libertarian principles would self-destruct in three seconds. The only reason people pretend to take it seriously is because you can use it as a weapon. Like, when somebody comes out in favor of a tax, you can say: "No, I'm a libertarian, I'm against that tax" - but of course, I'm still in favor of the government building roads, and having schools, and killing Libyans, and all that sort of stuff.
Now, there are consistent libertarians, people like Murray Rothbard [Am ~ Noam Chomsky

Let us hope that the US (Democratic and Republican party) allows us, their European cultural and economical crown vassals, to liberate ourselves and deport the Muslims without them militarily intervening. We shouldn't forget that we have many allies in the US including a sizable faction of the Republican Party. ~ Anders Behring Breivik

Seventy years after China emerged from the Second World War, the greatest threat facing the nation's leadership is not imperialism but skepticism. ~ Evan Osnos

Imagine a German as president of the European Commission. If he or she goes to some particular country and says do this or that, it won't be very well received. The president quickly ends up being the evil German. But if the president is elected by and controlled by 700 representatives from all EU countries, that legitimizes him or her in a very different way. ~ Martin Schulz

Now, the entire world community recognizes Georgia. We are members of the United Nations and the Council of Europe. Everything is being prepared so that we will soon enter the European Union. ~ Eduard Shevardnadze

Socialism is the expression of the principle of violence crying from the workers' soul, just as Imperialism is the principle of violence speaking from the soul of the official and the soldier. ~ Ludwig Von Mises