Archive

Quotes

I do desire we may be better strangers.

—William Shakespeare, 1600

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

—Henry Clay, 1812

Africa has her mysteries, and even a wise man cannot understand them. But a wise man respects them.

—Miriam Makeba, 1988

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

—Theodor Adorno, 1951

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

—Woodrow Wilson, 1915

This is not a clash between civilizations. It is a clash about civilization.

—Tony Blair, 2006

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

—Voltaire, 1764

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

There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866

By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.

—Confucius, c. 500 BC

All of life is a foreign country.

—Jack Kerouac, 1949

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.

—Joseph Conrad, 1899

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