Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.

To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.

In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.

The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.

I do desire we may be better strangers.

A criminal may improve and become a decent member of society. A foreigner cannot improve. Once a foreigner, always a foreigner. There is no way out for him.

I am a man: I consider nothing human alien to me.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

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.

When the missionaries first came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said, “Let us pray.” We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.

All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.

If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.

Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”