Ken Loach Quotes

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them.

If Brazil should decide on separation, let it be under your leadership, since you are bound to respect me, rather than under one of these adventurers.

The Revolution in America signaled the beginning of a new political era, that this revolution would necessarily determine an important progress in world civilization and that before long, it would cause great changes in the social order which then existed in Europe.

The great object of my life has been the independence of my country; for that I have sacrificed everything that is most dear to man…. The connection with England has been her bane.

The Arab Spring reminds me a bit of the decolonisation process where one country gets independence, and everybody else wants it.

The glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people, struggling to burst their chains and be free.

Throughout history, countries have sought to expand ….Today, the goal of most wars is too make countries smaller rather than larger.

The Irish light as been extinguished by the foulest means that sword and tyranny ever practiced …. Any attempt to rekindle it is to be treated as sedition.

‘Down with imperialism!’ ‘Down with the warlords!’ ‘Down with the corrupt officials!’ ‘Down with the local tyrants and evil gentry!’ -- these political slogans have grown wings, they have found their way to the young, the middle-aged and the old, to the women and children in countless villages, they have penetrated into their minds and are on their lips. For instance, watch a group of children at play. If one gets angry with another, if he glares, stamps his foot and shakes his fist, you will then immediately hear from the other the shrill cry of "Down with imperialism!

Union or death!

Could anything less than the fire of a civil war with all its violence and vicissitudes - a war that nearly rent the great American Republic - have welded the states, not only into a Union of independent units, but into a Nation, in spite of all the ethnic differences that characterized its component parts? That so fundamental a revolution, involving such far-reaching changes in the structure of society, can be achieved through the ordinary processes of diplomacy and education seems highly improbable. We have but to turn our gaze to humanity's blood-stained history to realize that nothing short of intense mental as well as physical agony has been able to precipitate those epoch-making changes that constitute the greatest landmarks in the history of human civilization.

Columbians prefer to descend to the eternal abysses rather than be Spaniards.

Where new states have come into being, they have invariably swaddled themselves in sacred symbols and shibboleths forged in more dedicated struggles, beginning with an often random tricolor and a national anthem.

All the efforts of Lafayette, Kosciuszko and Garibaldi, and all the faith of Mazzini, Mickiewicz and Michelet, were defeated by the fundamental truth that the people they sought to liberate and make happy were simply not interested.

Well before the political or fighting phase of the national movement an attentive spectator can thus feel and see the manifestation of new vigor and feel the approaching conflict. He will note unusual forms of expression and themes which are fresh and imbued with a power which is no longer that of invocation but rather of the assembling of the people, a summoning together for a precise purpose.

The West shall be free from the British Isles.

Independence can only be obtained and secured by a nation that has its spirit raging with determination: Independence or Death!

… at the close of the Spanish-American War the United States paid poor decrepit old Spain $20,000,000 for the Philippines. It was just a case of this country buying its way into good society. Honestly, when I read in the papers that this deal had been made, I laughed until my sides ached. There were the Filipinos fighting like blazes for their liberty. Spain would not hear to it. The United States stepped in, and after they had licked the enemy to a standstill, instead of freeing the Filipinos they paid that enormous amount for an island which is of no earthly account to us; just wanted to be like the aristocratic countries of Europe which have possessions in foreign waters. The United States wanted to be in the swim, and it, too, had to branch out, like an American heiress buying a Duke or an Earl.

The outlook is rather that within a few years India will be given up as Egypt has been given up. The British democracy will not try to retain her by force. Of that we may be sure. The enormous benefits that England has conferred on the country and its swarming millions will count for nothing in retaining their allegiance. The jealousies, rivalries and hatreds of race and creed among the many different peoples, though they may make trouble enough hereafter, have not proved capable of preventing them from combining against their British masters.

God save Ireland, said the heroes God save Ireland said they all. Whether on the scaffold high, Or the battle field we die O’ what matter when for Ireland dear we fall.

THE IRISH PEOPLE TO THE WORLD History bears testimony to the intensity of our sufferings …. Our war is against the aristocratic locusts, whether English or Irish, who have eaten the verdure of our fields—against the aristocratic leeches who drain alike our blood and theirs. Republicans of the entire world, our cause is your cause…. Avenge yourselves…. Herewith we proclaim the Irish Republic

It is time for our great people to reap the harvest of their two revolutions.

The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system …. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, sooner or later revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.

If our founding fathers wanted us to care about the rest of the world, the wouldn't have declared their independence from it.

Simon Bolivar, when history led him - and as Karl Marx said, men can make history, but only as far as history allows us to do so - when history took Bolivar and made him the leader of the independence process in Venezuela, he made that process revolutionary.