To need to dominate others is to need others. The commander is dependent.
—Fernando Pessoa, c. 1935Quotes
Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866Strangers are an endangered species.
—Adrienne Rich, 1980When 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.
—Desmond Tutu, 1984Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.
—Miriam Makeba, 1988Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839In 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.
—Francis Grose, 1787I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare, 1600The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.
—Woodrow Wilson, 1915The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.
—Marcus Aurelius, c. 175The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.
—André Gide, 1927