“The shores of History are strewn with the wrecks of Empires.”

— Winston S. Churchill

Peopling the Wide, Open Spaces of Empire, News of the World, 22 May 1938
Reproduced in The Collected Essays of Sir Winston Churchill, Vol IV, Churchill at Large, Centenary Edition (1976), Library of Imperial History, p. 444. ISBN 0903988453
The 1930s

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The shores of History are strewn with the wrecks of Empires." by Winston S. Churchill?

Winston S. Churchill photo

Winston S. Churchill 601

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom 1874–1965

Related quotes

“Of Christian souls more have been wrecked on shore
Than ever were lost at sea.”

Charles Henry Webb (1834–1905) American poet

With a Nantucket Shell, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“"Step in some afternoon," he said, as affectionately as if I were a fellow-shipmaster wrecked on the lee shore of age like himself.”

Sarah Orne Jewett book The Country of the Pointed Firs

Source: The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896), Ch. 7

“… the wreck of the Batavia provides the greatest dramatic tragedy in Australian history, beside which the Mutiny on the Bounty is an anaemic tale.”

Thomas Davies Mutch

Private letter to Henrietta Drake-Brockman, 1947. Published in the Foreword to Drake-Brockman's 1963 Voyage to Discovery.

“The stately ship is seen no more,
The fragile skiff attains the shore;
And while the great and wise decay,
And all their trophies pass away,
Some sudden thought, some careless rhyme,
Still floats above the wrecks of Time.”

William Edward Hartpole Lecky (1838–1903) British politician

On an old Song. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of able and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.”

George Macartney (1737–1806) British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat

Our First Ambassador to China (Biography, 1908)

“The world's great age begins anew,
The golden years return,
The earth doth like a snake renew
Her winter weeds outworn;
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam,
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Hellas

Source: Hellas (1821), l. 1060

“Empires were like seawalls, he thought sadly, even those which embodied the best of hopes. The tide of chaos beat at them, and as soon as no one was shoring up the stones any more…”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

Source: Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, To Green Angel Tower (1993), Part 2, Chapter 6, “The Circle Narrows” (p. 150).

“Your pretty empire took so long to build, now, with a snap of history's fingers, down it goes.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

“If architecture is the history of all phallic emotion, the Empire State Building is utter catharsis, and we are sitting in its silhouette.”

Timothy Levitch (1970) American actor

The Cruise (1998)

“The only relationships I haven't wrecked right away were the ones that wrecked me later.”

Melissa Bank book The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Source: The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing

Related topics