George W. Bush Quotes

Whereas the British were generally quite open about the fact that they were running an empire, few Americans politicians today would use the “e” word as anything other than a term of abuse.

The United States although a superpower was never an empire..

America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused - preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.

If ... America is to become an empire, there is very little chance that it can avoid becoming a virtual dictatorship as well.

If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

The American empire will not disappear... because America does not have an empire.

The gulf between imperial ideals and empire on the ground has customarily proved disillusioning not only for colonial peoples but also for some in the occupying power.

All comparisons between America's current place in the world and anything legitimately called an empire in the past reveal ignorance and confusion about any reasonable meaning of the concept empire, especially the comparison with the Roman Empire.

At the height of the British Empire very few English novels were written that dealt with British power. It's extraordinary that at the moment in which England was the global superpower the subject of British power appeared not to interest most writers.

You know, the Brits had a way of - running an empire. And I don't think America is comfortable with an empire.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without.

Whenever I say that America has become an empire, someone is sure to say I'm being ridiculous.

You annex foreign land, not your own country.

History is not reassuring on the subject of the longevity of seemingly lasting great nations, is it?

Britain kept its position as the dominant world power well into the 20th century despite steady decline. By the end of World War II, dominance had shifted decisively into the hands of the upstart across the sea, the United States, by far the most powerful and wealthy society in world history.

Empires aren’t out there to do good. They are out there to benefit the nation state.

All empire is no more than power in trust.

Look at the history of empires. They come and they go. They ebb and they flow.

We live in the age of the American empire.

America has been an empire ever since Theodore Roosevelt.

The British Empire is the greatest secular agency for good now known to mankind.

God caused the sun of Empire to shine in the mansion of the Turks … and gave them sovereignty, and made them kings of the age, and placed the reins of the people of the time in their hands.

What the city [Constantinople] contains is its own; beyond the walls it has no dominion—owns nothing. If I want to build a castle at the Sacred Mouth, it can’t forbid me. Tell your emperor this: The sultan who now rules is not like his predecessors. What they couldn’t achieve, he can do easily and at once. The things they did not wish to do, he certainly does. The next man who comes here on a mission like this will be flayed alive.

With nearly every great European empire today walks its dark colonial shadow …