Kenneth Kaunda Quotes

America has always imported history.

Unlike 30 years ago, people now admire the wealth of the West and lament the poverty of China; they stare awestruck at the power of the Western armies and scorn the cowardice of the Imperial troops; they enjoy the fairness and ease of the Customs and detest the fault-finding of China’s own tax collectors; they praise the orderly governance of the Western-Administered cities, and resent the harassment of our officials, big and small.

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.

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

I believe the most compelling explanation of Obama's actions is that he is, just like his father, an anti-colonialist.

Over the past thirty years Europe’s influence has transformed Cairo. Now…we are civilized.

The British especially have no excuse for forgetting that empire is a most complex and persistent beast. And it has claws.

As well as our relationship with Afghanistan, I am researching the legacy of other European empires - in Africa. We think of those empires as history, but actually, they still haunt our everyday lives in the strangest of ways.

You can't rewrite the history books; you can't eliminate the impact of my work and my characters.

Personalities and fame pass; the revolution must remain.

The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organize our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.

It is wrong to blame the problems of today's Africa entirely on colonialism. Much of history consists of peoples conquering or colonizing each other. Yet, from Ireland to South Korea, countries that were once ruthlessly colonized have nonetheless managed to build reasonably just and democratic societies.

It takes time to develop a system of law and order …. In 1960, when the Congo got its independence, we had less than ten college graduates.

The colonial powers especially the more heedless ones ... dumped their former possessions on the threshold of independence with little if any preparation for statehood.

The duty of an American churchman in China is not simply introducing new ideas into the country, but modifying its industrial, social, and political life and institutions. Missionaries are the pioneers of trade and commerce. Civilization, learning, instruction breed new wants which commerce supplies.

China can never be reformed from within. The manifold needs of China will be met permanently, completely, only by Christian civilization. .

We’ve had plenty of populist figures in our past, but they had a different degree of substance than Mr. Trump. William Jennings Bryan [the Democratic nominee for president in 1896, 1900 and 1908] came out of a period like today. The industrial revolution was like our tech revolution and globalization. The pace of life had sped up and made people anxious. Telegrams and telephones were fast. Immigration was huge. And Bryan’s supporters, like Trump’s, were fearful about the way the country was changing.

I was a hardliner with regard to colonialism, which had occupied Africa and large parts of the world. We were waging an armed struggle, and therefore, one had to be strong. But now, no one asks for weapons but for economic aid, which changes your position.

Barack Obama winning the election had an instant impact on everything - race relations, national self-esteem, tolerance. It also had an instant affect on 'Frost/Nixon.' At a stroke, instead of being a piece that reminded people of the agony they were in, it became an uplifting message about the agony they had escaped.

State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

For years, we talked about how the only way to really win the political battles was to win the cultural ones. And rather than simply ignore pop culture, it would be far better to give it a big fat bear hug.

The global capitalist project, which we are all a part of, leaves people behind. I don't know what the answers are - I don't think any actor does - but figuring it out through entertainment can be very useful.

The world in the '90s had seemed somewhat stable. There was talk of the end of history, a calm consensus around where we were all going. Consumer capitalism with some sort of social conscience. Then 9/11 happened, and that illusion was blown out of the water.

For the world's four Chinese-speaking regions - Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China - the longer the colonization, the more advanced a place is.

Society is changing constantly, and changing faster than we think.