Woodrow Wilson Quotes

You have acquired so enormous a mass of territory that it will be years before you can settle it or control it, or make it capable of defense or make it amenable to the acts of your administration

The history of exploration across nations and across time is not one where nations said, 'Let's explore because it's fun.' It was, 'Let's explore so that we can claim lands for our country, so that we can open up new trade routes; let's explore so we can become more powerful.'

Those countries cannot be in better hands, my fear is that the Spaniards are too feeble to hold them till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.

The Italy of today wishes to develop her African possessions for the benefit not only of the home-land but also of the subject populations and of humanity as a whole. Where the benefits of civic organization are refused by recalcitrant natives who want to continue under the tyrannical and arbitrary rule of their petty feudal lords, Italy takes such measures to reestablish order as seem advisable in the given case. Where natural riches are wasted through backward management, she establishes a regime of scientific exploitation. Where production demands more labor than can be had locally, she creates suitable conditions for the cooperation of her sturdy colonists with the native workers. In short, Italy wishes to govern her African colonies by introducing her surplus man-power among backward populations and integrating the two, never by unnecessarily substituting the former for the latter.

Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail . We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on earth to rule all of humanity.

So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It's a huge empire. It's been extremely successful.

Imperialist enterprise draws political consequences.

In the past, on Earth, it has largely been to exploit foreign resources and to expand the domestic territory.

Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf and blind to the history of the last sixty years.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

There's a belief that since Africa got a raw deal from the colonial West, then the Chinese must be Africa's best friend. But the evidence doesn't show that, and the main criticism is that they are building infrastructure in exchange for Africa's resources in deals that are structured to favor China.

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

The decades of Imperialism have been prolific in wars; most of these wars have been directly motived by aggression of white races upon "lower races," and have issued in the forcible seizure of territory. Every one of the steps of expansion in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific has been accompanied by bloodshed; each imperialist Power keeps an increasing army available for foreign service; rectification of frontiers, punitive expeditions, and other euphemisms for war ...

Look how the whole capitalist world is stretching out long arms towards the barbarous world and grabbing and clutching in eager competition at countries whose inhabitants don't want them; nay, in many cases, would rather die in battle, like the valiant men they are, than have them

Who colonized the other – us or them? Did Algeria colonize France, or vice versa? Did Egypt colonize England, or vice versa? We are the victims...

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

The idea of governing provinces and colonies by force is visionary and chimerical. The experiment has often been tried, and it has never succeeded. It ends infallibly in the ruin of one country or the other.

The World Trade Organization is a fearful instrument of re-colonialization and exploitation

If you drop a perpendicular from the frontier of Tunis, through Lake Chad to the Congo, you could say that the greatest part of the territories bounded by this line and the sea … are French, or destined to be included in France’s sphere of influence. We have a vast domain which it is for us to colonize and make fruitful …

I’m sure if I quite openly charged Stanley with the task of taking possession in my name of some parts of Africa, the English will stop me. If I ask their advice they will stop me just the same. So I think I’ll just give Stanley some job of exploration which would offend no one, and will give us the bases and headquarters we can take over later.

It was thought good policy to settle those lands as fast as possible, and that the granting them to men of the first consequence who were likeliest and best able to procure large bodies of people to settle on them was the most probable means of effecting the end proposed.

Colonies, then, are the seeds of nations begun and nourished by the care of wise and populous Countries, as conceiving them best for the increase of human stock, and beneficial for commerce. Some of the wisest men in history have justly taken their fame from this design and service

We seem at, the present time to have arrived at the acute stage of the colonial fever which during the last three or four years has afflicted the various powers of Europe. Germany is vying with France, England with both, in the haste to seize upon “unoccupied” countries, and to establish “protectorates” – the cant diplomatic for incomplete annexation – over uncivilized peoples.

We will not tolerate being cheap labor for industrialized nations, and the purchase of our national resources to be taken abroad.

The purpose of the imperialists is to keep us backward, to keep us in our present miserable state so they can exploit our riches, our underground wealth, our lands and our human resources. They want us to remain afflicted and wretched, and our poor to be trapped in their misery ... they and their agents wish to go on living in huge palaces and enjoying lives of abominable luxury…. In order to assure the unity of the Islamic umma, in order to liberate the Islamic homeland from occupation and penetration by the imperialists and their puppet governments, it is imperative that we establish a government. ... we must overthrow the oppressive governments installed by the imperialists and bring into existence an Islamic government of justice ...