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Quotes

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

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

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

—Woodrow Wilson, 1915

France has neither winter, summer, nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

—Mark Twain, 1879

The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.

—Frantz Fanon, 1952

Nationalism is an infantile disease, the measles of mankind.

—Albert Einstein, 1929

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850

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.

—Francis Grose, 1787

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

—Denis Diderot, 1774

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

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

—Horace Walpole, 1745

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

—Theodor Adorno, 1951

Some of us would be greatly astonished to learn the reasons why others respect us.

—Marquis de Vauvenargues, 1746
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