Goldwin Smith Quotes

Annexation [of Mexico] … because the United States is destined to supplant all other governments on this continent [and] … leading Mexico to a higher plane of civilization.

If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans.

I repeat that superior races have a right [to establish colonies], because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize inferior races.

From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation.

Colonialism subdues in many dulcet guises. It conquered under the pretext of spreading Christianity, civilization, law and order, to make the world safe for democracy.

Though blessed with many able administrators, the British found India just too large and diverse to handle. Many of their decisions stoked Hindu-Muslim tensions, imposing sharp new religious-political identities on Indians.

Ineptitude and negligence directed British policies in India more than any cynical desire to divide and rule, but the British were not above exploiting rivalries.

A pioneer destroys things and calls it civilization.

Barbarians always think of themselves as the bringers of civilization.

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.

It is through the European that civilization arrives ... precisely because of their superiority, the civilized people our responsible for an evolving world.

The mission of colonization cannot be other than a mission of high civilization.

Destiny beckons us to hold and civilize Mexico.

Unlike more traditional conquerors, we are not content merely to subdue others: We insist that they be like us.

... there was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate the Filipinos, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them, and by God's grace do the very best we could by them.

Plant the Ethiopian flag and make the inhabitants submit in all the country as far as the White Nile.

Westward the Course of Empire takes its Way ;, The four first Acts already past, A fifth shall close the Drama with the Day; Time's noblest Offspring is the last

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.

Is it, perhaps, possible that there are two kinds of Civilization--one for home consumption and one for the heathen market?

Shall we go on conferring our Civilization upon the peoples that sit in darkness, or shall we give those poor things a rest?

When white men first effect contact with some unspoilt race of savages, they offer them all kinds of benefits, from the light of the gospel to pumpkin pie. These, however, much as we may regret it, most savages receive with indifference. What they really value among the gifts that we bring to them is intoxicating liquor which enables them, for the first time in their lives, to have the illusion for a few brief moments that it is better to be alive than dead.

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively continuing in some of the world's most troubled areas.

[regarding US conquest of the Philippines] I turn green in bed at midnight if I think of the horror of a year's warfare in the Philippines ... We must slaughter a million or two foolish Malays in order to give them the comforts of flannel petticoats and electric railways.

We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.

Eduardo Galeano notes that America was conquered, but not discovered, that the men who arrived with a religion to impose and dreams of gold never really knew where they were, and that this discovery is still taking place in our time.