1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Poet
“In my opinion, Marxism is a great creed of human liberation. It is the creed which says that when all other empires fade and vanish, our business is to enlarge the empire of the human mind”
Morning Star, 1980
1980s
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Michael Foot 54
British politician 1913–2010Related quotes
“Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.”
Source: My Several Worlds (1954), p. 244
Context: Chinese were born, it seemed to me, with an accumulated wisdom, a natural sophistication, an intelligent naiveté, and unless they were transplanted too young, these qualities ripened in them. To talk even with a farmer and his family, none of whom could read or write, was often to hear a philosophy at once sane and humorous. If ever I am homesick for China, now that I am home in my own country, it is when I discover here no philosophy. Our people have opinions and creeds and prejudices and ideas but as yet no philosophy.
“loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”
Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Speech in the House of Commons (18 November, 1783). Compare: "And with necessity, / The tyrant's plea, / excus'd his devilish deeds", John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book iv, line 393.
“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”
Speech at Harvard University, September 6, 1943 ( full text https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/the-price-of-greatness-is-responsibility, audio https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESiuSi8Qp9U).
The Second World War (1939–1945)