Craig Ferguson Quotes

When I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.

You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.

'Commonwealth' is not a word I ever used growing up in Colombo. There, in the late 1950s, it would have meant little more than New Zealand lamb and Anchor butter at the cold stores.

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony.

Postcolonial critics are, I suspect, wrong when they argue that the mass of British people still mourn the loss of empire. But Britain's politicians - and its Foreign Office - have found it hard to adjust to the loss, not so much of onetime colonies as of the global clout the colonies once afforded.

And I think Taylor Swift is just an exemplary young lady. It's kind of interesting to see what a profound songwriter she is. I don't even think anyone has realized, the long term is going to be the bigger revelation. It's incredible how quickly she writes songs. We've hung out a couple times, we live near each other in Nashville.

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.

Nigeria has had a complicated colonial history. My work has examined that part of our story extensively.

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.

As any Brit will understand, things get a little easier when you don't have to be number one any more. Really, the fall of an empire is not as bad as everyone thinks. It's like retirement. People fear retirement, but it can turn out be rather pleasant.

When Marcus Garvey died in 1940, the role of the British Empire was already being challenged by India and the rising expectations of her African colonies. Marcus Garvey's avocation of African redemption and the restoration of the African state's sovereign political entity in world affairs was still a dream without fulfillment.

'Viceroy' is the first British film about the Raj and the transfer of power from Britain to India made by a British Indian director. It is a British film made from an Indian perspective.

'Doctor Who' is, unavoidably, a product of mid-twentieth-century debates about Britain's role in the world as its empire unravelled.

Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.

Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.

To come to England in the 1970s was to return to this strange other-world of half-known history. I found the imperial architecture curiously familiar: the post office, the town hall, the botanic gardens.

We have got over our imperial past, and the withdrawal symptoms.

I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

Though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies, and though on every principle of morality and justice she ought to consent to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered—there are strong reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of connection, so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party.

At the attainment of independence, the British handed over to us a decent system of Government in which everyone had a say. …. Organization of African unity or no Organization of African unity, I will claim my citizenship of Ghana and of the Commonwealth in any part of the world. I have been trained in the United Kingdom as a soldier, and I am ever prepared to fight alongside my friends in the United Kingdom in the same way as Canadians and Australians will do.

… there is a notion of exchanging Hong Kong for a more healthy colony.

Free Englishmen had independently settled North America in precisely the same their Saxon ancestors … had possessed themselves of the island of Britain.

The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.

The struggles to overturn colonial rule were long and often bitter. But, over time, most were inevitably successful.