Archive

Quotes

To think ill of mankind, and not wish ill to them, is perhaps the highest wisdom and virtue.

—William Hazlitt, 1823

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

“Abroad,” that large home of ruined reputations.

—George Eliot, 1866

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

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

—Tony Blair, 2006

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

—L.P. Hartley, 1953

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

—Evelyn Waugh, 1938

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

—Henry Clay, 1812

Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.

—Karl Kraus, 1909

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

At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference.

—Søren Kierkegaard, 1850
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