Michael Portillo Quotes

The British Empire wasn't some project designed to bring enlightenment to ignorant savages, but rather a brutal and rapacious exploitation of peoples who were often more humane than us.

Britons are good, though often brutal, colonists where they come into relations with entirely uncivilized tribes whose past is so remote as to be forgotten. But they trample with their heavy boots over the sensitive, delicate susceptibilities of an ancient, highly civilized and cultured nation, such as India.

British society has never been cleansed of the filth of imperialism.

Instruction! Instruction! is what the Boers lack above all else; they call themselves Christians, and Kaffirs and Hottentots heathen, and for this reason they believe that they are permitted anything.

Take up the white man's burden — Send forth the best ye breed — Go bind your sons to exile To serve your captives' need.

There is or there has been in the past much selfishness in the northern White man's motives in opening up Africa, and in his interference in the disorders of the Black man or the Brown.

Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms.

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.

The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.

The last four or five hundred years of European contact with Africa produced a body of literature that presented Africa in a very bad light and Africans in very lurid terms. The reason for this had to do with the need to justify the slave trade and slavery.

Those who oppressed us described us as the Dark Continent!

You British plundered half the world for your own profit. Let's not pass it off as the Age of Enlightenment.

Africa suffered under European dominance for centuries.

Do you think that the people of South Africa, or anywhere on the continent of Africa, or India, or Pakistan are longing to be kicked around all over again?

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the plaything of one small corner of the world.

In the past, the greatest weapon the white man has had has been his ability to divide and conquer. If I take my hand and slap you, you don't even feel it. It might sting you because these digits are separated. But all I have to do to put you back in your place is bring those digits together.

Take up the White Man's burden— In patience to abide, To veil the threat of terror And check the show of pride; By open speech and simple, An hundred times made plain, To seek another's profit And work another's gain. Take up the White Man's burden— The savage wars of peace— Fill All the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease.

We are all British gentlemen engaged in the magnificent work of governing an inferior race.

The whites tell us of their enlightened understanding, and the wisdom they have from heaven, at the same time, they cheat us to their hearts’ content. For we are as fools in their eyes, and they say among themselves, the Indians know nothing!

They are a scurvy race and simply savages. We could beat hell out of them.

It is not right that a servile race should inhabit the same locality which their ancestors inhabited in power and glory.

Mexico seems a doomed victim to Anglo Saxon cupidity and love of dominion.

The Cambodians [Khmer] are so stupid that we must frighten them. Ordinary moral suasion has no effect.

What European nation which has undertaken the heavy responsibility of introducing the blessings and vices of civilization into the Dark Continent can claim immunity for its representatives