J. M. Coetzee Quotes

Here is one of the points about this planet which should be remembered; into every penetrable corner of it, and into most of the impenetrable corners, the English will penetrate. They are like that; born invaders. They cannot stay at home.

Like a cyclone, imperialism spins across the globe; militarism crushes peoples and sucks their blood like a vampire.

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.

The great seats of power tend to be wide and open, not vertical and soaring. Red Square, Tiananmen Square, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin - all massive but with large open spaces that project an image of might.

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.

What is wrong with the Iranians in addition to the nuclear bomb? This is the only country on Earth in the 21st century that has renewed imperialistic ambitions. They really want to become the hegemon of the Middle East in an age that gave up imperialism.

Nothing the European mind ever devised was meant to do anything but to facilitate the European's control over the world.

Certainly, imperial power is never peaceably acquired or maintained.

The ambiguous orientation of Japan drove the country into the position of an invader in Asia.

Every empire has to get sucked down the drain. As a British person, I know how it feels.

Every empire eventually falls.

Who cares if virtually the entire world views Obama's drone attacks as unjustified and wrong? Who cares if the Muslim world continues to seethe with anti-American animus as a result of this aggression? Empires do what they want.

I am the Empire at the end of the decadence.

… an imperialist alliance

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

An irresistible movement is bearing the great nations of Europe towards the conquest of fresh territories. It is like a huge steeplechase into the unknown … whole continents are being annexed …

Our people believed too much in the imperial country …

1st RULER and TYRANT of the AMERICAN EMPIRE

The more we work and the less we talk, the better it will be. If we lean this lesson of imperialism, we will keep our empire.

A vast display of Imperial might has shaken all the foreign tribes, and, if they now confess their guilt, we will not be too hard on them.

To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.

Empires can only decline when other nations decline and make way for them.

But though empires, like all the other works of men, have all hitherto proved mortal, yet every empire aims at immortality.

All empires are created of blood and fire.

The underlying reality of imperial power is that it always depends upon the army.