Edward Said Quotes

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate.

People the world over now see democracy promotion as a dishonest, dangerous cover for the protection of U. S. power and influence.

Might gives the right to conquer and occupy..

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force--nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.

Makers of empire, they have fought for bigger things than crowns and higher seats than thrones.

The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer.

America is an empire. I hope you know that now. All empires, by definition, are bumbling, shambolic, bullying, bureaucratic affairs, as certain of the rightness of their cause in infancy, as they are corrupted by power in their dotage.

History is written by the victors.

Empire can only be achieved with satisfaction, or maintained with advantage, provided it has a moral basis.

Hegemony mean[t] that [Athens] organized and directed their combined efforts without securing permanent political power over the other[s].

The history of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed-upon myth of its conquerors.

Wealth governs this country, and wealth uses military violence to control the rest of the world as best it can.

The events of 11 September will be remembered as the end of the US empire. This is because all empires collapse when they pursue the arrogance of power.

The ignorant classes had been taught to believe that certain words such as "sovereignty," "protection," and so forth had peculiar meanings disastrous to their welfare and significant of future political domination, like that from which they had been recently freed.

Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.

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

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

Opinion is, as it were, the queen of the world, but force is its tyrant.

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right."

If some small storekeeper somewhere decides he's not going to pay the money, the Godfather doesn't let him get away with it. The money doesn't mean anything to him, but he sends in his goons to beat him to a pulp. You have to establish credibility, otherwise conformity to your orders will tend to erode. International affairs runs in much the same way.

Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.

If it had not been for the English I should have been emperor of the East, but wherever there is water to float a ship we are sure to find them in our way.

Force and right are the governors of this world; force till right is ready.

Any conqueror in human history has always been ultimately someone who exists purely for the expansion of their own ego, through amounting more.