“In this country, some aristocratic families automatically categorize persons with dark skin, thick lips, and kinky hair as "Barias" [Amharic for slave]… let it be clear to everybody that I shall soon make these ignoramuses stoop and grind corn!”
As quoted in Dr. Paulos Milkia's "Mengistu Haile Mariam: The Profile of a Dictator", reprinted from the February 1994 Ethiopian Review
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Mengistu Haile Mariam18
Former dictator of Ethiopia 1937Related quotes
Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer
Original: Vorrei poter essere accanto a te accarezzandoti i capelli, avvertendo il profumo della tua pelle e guardandoti negli occhi, mordere dolcemente le tue labbra.
Source: prevale.net
“I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country.”
Charles Darwin book The Voyage of the Beagle
Source: The Voyage of the Beagle (1839), chapter XXI: "Mauritius To England" (second edition, 1845), pages 499-500 http://darwin-online.org.uk/content/frameset?pageseq=512&itemID=F14&viewtype=image <br class="br">Context: I thank God, I shall never again visit a slave-country. To this day, if I hear a distant scream, it recalls with painful vividness my feelings, when passing a house near Pernambuco, I heard the most pitiable moans, and could not but suspect that some poor slave was being tortured, yet knew that I was as powerless as a child even to remonstrate. I suspected that these moans were from a tortured slave, for I was told that this was the case in another instance. Near Rio de Janeiro I lived opposite to an old lady, who kept screws to crush the fingers of her female slaves. I have staid in a house where a young household mulatto, daily and hourly, was reviled, beaten, and persecuted enough to break the spirit of the lowest animal. I have seen a little boy, six or seven years old, struck thrice with a horse-whip (before I could interfere) on his naked head, for having handed me a glass of water not quite clean; I saw his father tremble at a mere glance from his master's eye. … And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one's blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is a consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.
Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart
Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 131.
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope, and Repair