Joseph Conrad Quotes

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.

The one without a sword gets humiliated.

Might gives the right to conquer and occupy..

History teaches us that whenever a weak and ignorant people possess a thing which a strong and enlightened people want, it must be yielded up peaceably.

The future condition of the conquered power depends on the will of the conquerer.

Don't be deceived. There is no justice but strength.

No laws, human or divine, prevent the Romans from seizing and destroying enemies or friends, those near them and those far off, weak or powerful, and from considering every government that does not serve them, especially monarchies, as their enemies.

When imperialism feels weak, it resorts to brute force.

In the eyes of empire builders men are not men but instruments.

Conquest has made me what I am, only conquest can maintain me.

Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Any conqueror in human history has always been ultimately someone who exists purely for the expansion of their own ego, through amounting more.

Imperialism is a paper tiger.

At this hour Lie at my mercy all mine enemies.

Physical violence is the basis of authority.

In a confrontation with the politics of power, the soft center has always melted away.

Might was the measure of right.

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

Not by the forces of civil war can you govern the very weakest woman. You can kill that woman, but she escapes you then; you cannot govern her. No power on earth can govern a human being, however feeble, who withholds his or her consent.

The only safety for the conquered is to expect no safety.

Every country we conquer feeds us. And these are just a few of the good things we'll have when this war is over. Slaves working for us everywhere while we sit back with a fork in our hands and a whip on our knees.

It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.

Certainly, imperial power is never peaceably acquired or maintained.

Empires won by conquest have always fallen either by revolt within or by defeat by a rival.

These people are very unskilled in arms... with 50 men they could all be subjected and made to do all that one wished.