Empire Collapse Quotes

World power is fleeting. Nations rise and fall.

The dream of empire died when Shanghai surrendered without a fight. Even at the age of 11 or 12, I knew that no amount of patriotic newsreels would put the Union Jack jigsaw together again. From then on, I was slightly suspicious of all British adults.

The Ottoman Empire whose sick body was not supported by a mild and regular diet, but by a powerful treatment, which continually exhausted it.

I’ve been listening to how the Roman Empire fell and all I can say is, it didn’t fall nearly fast enough!”-Iggy

It is when empires begin to fall, that they tend to cause the most mayhem.

Deprived of national pride in their lifelong beliefs, Russians experienced a bit of my eyes of the Soviet era as the end of empire, and a sense of national identity. In a state of moral, material and physical despair, they yearned to feel better about themselves and their land.

Germany collapsed as a result of having engaged in a struggle for empire with the concepts of provincial politics.

There... Poor little things. You see them? Standing with their numbers on their blank, indifferent faces, Nuremberg in miniature, the ranks of painted wooden men... Poor dominoes. Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers down it goes.

Empires inevitably fall, and when they do, history judges them for the legacies they leave behind.

Empires always have the hubris to think they are indestructible, when in fact they are always unsustainable.

The fall of Empire, gentlemen, is a massive thing, however, and not easily fought. It is dictated by a rising bureaucracy, a receding initiative, a freezing of caste, a damming of curiosity — a hundred other factors. It has been going on, as I have said, for centuries, and it is too majestic and massive a movement to stop.

There's no longer a monolithic evil empire somewhere, spreading a different philosophy of life. That doesn't exist.

The organization of independent nations which has followed the disappearance of the Holy Roman Empire is in the main the outgrowth of that progress in civilization which leads peoples to seek the liberty of local self-government according to their own ideas.

Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.

The foundations of empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.

The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.

It was the example of the United States that toppled most of the kingdoms and empires of the world. We did this by asserting the greatness of the human spirit.

The fate of nations is intimately bound up with their powers of reproduction. All nations and all empires first felt decadence gnawing at them when their birth rate fell off.

The Turkish Empire has just committed suicide.

... of oppression, international murder and plunder ... [of a] sick and dying empire.

The events of 11 September will be remembered as the end of the US empire. This is because all empires collapse when they pursue the arrogance of power.

Looking back as an historian, I find myself having great respect for Ronald Reagan's consistency: his absolute conviction that the Soviet Union - the only competing world empire at the time - was bound to collapse!

The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

Real people speak in my books about the main events of the age, such as the war, the Chernobyl disaster, and the downfall of a great empire.