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Quotes

Strangers are an endangered species.

—Adrienne Rich, 1980

Children are all foreigners. We treat them as such.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1839

Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.

—Hebrews, c. 60

Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.

—Voltaire, 1764

Let the French but have England, and they won’t want to conquer it.

—Horace Walpole, 1745

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

—Albert Einstein, 1929

The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.

—André Gide, 1927

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.

—Desmond Tutu, 1984

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

—Terence, 163 BC

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.

—Francis Bacon, 1625

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

—The Dhammapada, c. 400 BC

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.

—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655

Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.

—Euripides, 431 BC