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

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

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

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.

The noblest kind of retribution is not to become like your enemy.

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.

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

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

Many need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.

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

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

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.