Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764Quotes
Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded.
—The Dhammapada, c. 400 BCNo man has any natural authority over his fellow man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762In 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, 1787The less intelligent the white man is, the more stupid he thinks the black.
—André Gide, 1927When 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, 1984I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare, 1600If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.
—Henry Clay, 1812Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.
—Albert Einstein, 1929There is no foreign land; it is the traveler only that is foreign.
—Robert Louis Stevenson, 1883The almost insoluble task is to let neither the power of others, nor our own powerlessness, stupefy us.
—Theodor Adorno, 1951To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.
—William Hazlitt, 1823