Quotes about continent
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John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester photo
David Lloyd George photo
Francis Parkman photo

“The most momentous and far-reaching question ever brought to issue on this continent was: Shall France remain here, or shall she not?”

Francis Parkman (1823–1893) American historian

Introduction
Montcalm and Wolfe http://www.gutenberg.org/files/14517/14517-8.txt (1884)

Patrick Buchanan photo
George W. Bush photo
Muhammad bin Qasim photo
Louis Althusser photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Barry Eichengreen photo
Syama Prasad Mookerjee photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Some of us personally witnessed what was done on the continent under that sign and it is a symbol we shall never forget.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Reacting to a youth who had given the Hitler salute; from a speech in Wolverhampton (6 June 1970), quoted in Simon Heffer, Like the Roman. The Life of Enoch Powell (Phoenix, 1999), p. 558.
1970s

Mark Satin photo
Kent Hovind photo
Joseph Smith, Jr. photo
Nicholas Wade photo
Serzh Sargsyan photo
Leo Igwe photo

“For too long, African societies have been identified as superstitious, consisting of people who cannot question, reason or think critically. Dogma and blind faith in superstition, divinity and tradition are said to be the mainstay of popular thought and culture. African science is often equated with witchcraft and the occult; African philosophy with magical thinking, myth-making and mysticism, African religion with stone-age spiritual abracadabra, African medicine with folk therapies often involving pseudoscientific concoctions inspired by magical thinking. Science, critical thinking and technological intelligence are portrayed as Western — as opposed to universal — values, and as alien to Africa and to the African mindset. An African who thinks critically or seeks evidence and demands proofs for extraordinary claims is accused of taking a “white” or Western approach. An African questioning local superstitions and traditions is portrayed as having abandoned or betrayed the essence of African identity. Skepticism and rationalism are regarded as Western, un-African, philosophies. Although there is a risk of overgeneralizing, there are clear indicators that the continent is still socially, politically and culturally trapped by undue credulity. Many irrational beliefs exist and hold sway across the region. These are beliefs informed by fear and ignorance, misrepresentations of nature and how nature works. These misconceptions are often instrumental in causing many absurd incidents, harmful traditional practices and atrocious acts.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

A Manifesto for a Skeptical Africa (2012)

Winston S. Churchill photo
John Adams photo
Fidel Castro photo
Pat Condell photo
Thomas Jefferson photo
Karel Čapek photo

“Investing is not a destination. It is an ongoing journey through its four continents - theory, history, psychology and business.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 15, A Final Word, p. 297.

John Stuart Mill photo
David Attenborough photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“I am most anxious that in dealing with matters which every Member knows are extremely delicate matters, I should not use any phrase or expression which would cause offence to our friends and Allies on the Continent or across the Atlantic Ocean.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speaking on inter-Allied debts in the House of Commons (December 10, 1924); reported in Parliamentary Debates (Commons) (1925), 5th series, vol. 179, col. 259.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Clifford D. Simak photo
Kamisese Mara photo
Nicholas Roerich photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“A fourth enduring strand of policy has been to help improve the life of man. From the Marshall Plan to this very moment tonight, that policy has rested on the claims of compassion, and the certain knowledge that only a people advancing in expectation will build secure and peaceful lands. This year I propose major new directions in our program of foreign assistance to help those countries who will help themselves. We will conduct a worldwide attack on the problems of hunger and disease and ignorance. We will place the matchless skill and the resources of our own great America, in farming and in fertilizers, at the service of those countries committed to develop a modern agriculture. We will aid those who educate the young in other lands, and we will give children in other continents the same head start that we are trying to give our own children. To advance these ends I will propose the International Education Act of 1966. I will also propose the International Health Act of 1966 to strike at disease by a new effort to bring modern skills and knowledge to the uncared—for, those suffering in the world, and by trying to wipe out smallpox and malaria and control yellow fever over most of the world during this next decade; to help countries trying to control population growth, by increasing our research—and we will earmark funds to help their efforts. In the next year, from our foreign aid sources, we propose to dedicate $1 billion to these efforts, and we call on all who have the means to join us in this work in the world.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Ben Klassen photo

“A Continent is a great quantity of Land, not separated by any Sea from the rest of the World, as the whole Continent of Europe, Asia, Africa.”

Peter Heylin (1599–1662) English ecclesiastic and author of polemical, historical, political and theological tracts

Cosmographie (1657)

Ignatius Sancho photo
Angela Merkel photo
Richard Pryor photo
Gustavo Gutiérrez photo
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo

“America, you have it better than our continent, the old one.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Amerika, du hast es besser—als unser Kontinent, der alte.
Wendts Musen-Almanach (1831)

Frank Wilczek photo
Justin D. Fox photo
Stephen Harper photo
Christopher Hitchens photo
Mark Steyn photo

“Jesus Christ is personally unknown to the vast masses of men on all continents. His influence is limited by the failure and indifference of his professed followers.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Source: Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life (1920), p. 58

J.M. Coetzee photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Harold Holt photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Perry Anderson photo
Hans Haacke photo
Clement Attlee photo

“We are told that we have to accept the Treaty of Rome. I have read the Treaty of Rome pretty carefully, and it expresses an outlook entirely different from our own. It may be that I am insular, but I value our Parliamentary outlook, an outlook which has extended throughout the Commonwealth. That is not the same position that holds on the Continent of Europe. No one of these principal countries in the Common Market has been very successful in running Parliamentary institutions: Germany, hardly any experience; Italy, very little; France, a swing between a dictatorship and more or less anarchic Parliament, and not very successfully. As I read the Treaty of Rome, the whole position means that we shall enter a federation which is composed in an entirely different way. I do not say it is the wrong way. But it is not our way. In this set-up it is the official who really puts up all the proposals; the whole of the planning is done by officials. It seems to me that the Ministers come in at a later stage—and if there is anything like a Federal Parliament, at a later stage still. I do not think that that is the way this country has developed, or wishes to develop. I am all for working in with our Continental friends. I was one of those who worked to build up NATO; I have worked for European integration. But that is a very different thing from bringing us into a close association which, I may say, is not one for defence, or even just for foreign policy. The fact is that if the designs behind the Common Market are carried out, we are bound to be affected in every phase of our national life. There would be no national planning, except under the guidance of Continental planning—we shall not be able to deal with our own problems; we shall not be able to build up the country in the way we want to do, so far as I can see. I think we shall be subject to overall control and planning by others. That is my objection.”

Clement Attlee (1883–1967) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1962/nov/08/britain-and-the-common-market in the House of Lords on the British application to join the Common Market (8 November 1962).
1960s

Russell Crowe photo
Henry L. Benning photo

“My next proposition is that the North is in the course of acquiring this power to abolish slavery. Is that true? I say, gentlemen, the North is acquiring that power by two processes, one of which is operating with great rapidity-that is by the admission of new States. The public territory is capable of forming from twenty to thirty States of larger size than the average of the States now in the Union. The public territory is peculiarly Northern territory, and every State that comes into the Union will be a free State. We may rest assured, sit, that that is a fixed fact. The events in Kansas should satisfy every one of the truth of that. If causes now in operation are allowed to continue, the admission of new States will go on until a sufficient number shall have been secured to give the necessary preponderance to change the Constitution. There is a process going on by which some of our own slave States are becoming free States already. It is true, that in some of the slave States the slave population is actually on the decrease, and, I believe it is true of all of them that it is relatively to the white population on the decrease. The census shows that slaves are decreasing in Delaware and Maryland; and it shows that in the other States in the same parallel, the relative state of the decrease and increase is against the slave population. It is not wonderful that this should be so. The anti-slavery feeling has got to be so great at the North that the owners of slave property in these States have a presentiment that it is a doomed institution, and the instincts of self-interest impels them to get rid of that property which is doomed. The consequence is, that it will go down lower and. lower, until it all gets to the Cotton States-until it gets to the bottom. There is the weight of a continent upon it forcing it down. Now, I say, sir, that under this weight it is bound to go down unto the Cotton States, one of which I have the honor to represent here. When that time comes, sir, the free States in consequence of the manifest decrease, will urge the process with additional vigor, and I fear that the day is not distant when the Cotton States, as they are called, will be the only slave States. When that time comes, the time will have arrived when the North will have the power to amend the Constitution, and say that slavery shall be abolished, and if the master refuses to yield to this policy, he shall doubtless be hung for his disobedience.”

Henry L. Benning (1814–1875) Confederate Army general

Speech to the Virginia Convention (1861)

Francis Parkman photo
T. E. Lawrence photo
Anthony Burgess photo
Anthony Eden photo
David Lloyd George photo
Steven Erikson photo
Will Cuppy photo
Kent Hovind photo
Paul Harvey photo
Robert E. Howard photo
Richard Bertrand Spencer photo
Brigham Young photo

“Some, in their curiosity, will say, "But you Mormons have another Bible! Do you believe in the Old and New Testaments?" I answer we do believe in the Old and New Testaments, and we have also another book, called the Book of Mormon. What are the doctrines of the Book of Mormon? The same as those of the Bible…"What good does it do you, Latter-day Saints?" It proves that the Bible is true. What do the infidel world say about the Bible? They say that the Bible is nothing better than last year's almanack; it is nothing but a fable and priestcraft, and it is good for nothing. The Book of Mormon, however, declares that the Bible is true, and it proves it; and the two prove each other true. The Old and New Testaments are the stick of Judah. You recollect that the tribe of Judah tarried in Jerusalem and the Lord blessed Judah, and the result was the writings of the Old and New Testaments. But where is the stick of Joseph? Can you tell where it is? Yes. It was the children of Joseph who came across the waters to this continent, and this land was filled with people, and the Book of Mormon or the stick of Joseph contains their writings, and they are in the hands of Ephraim. Where are the Ephraimites? They are mixed through all the nations of the earth. God is calling upon them to gather out, and He is uniting them, and they are giving the Gospel to the whole world. Is there any harm or any false doctrine in that? A great many say there is. If there is, it is all in the Bible.”

Brigham Young (1801–1877) Latter Day Saint movement leader

Journal of Discourses 13:174-175 (May 29, 1870)
1870s

Vladimir Putin photo
Stephen Leacock photo
Harold Holt photo
Angela Merkel photo

“And therefore I wish, that in 50 years the citizens of Europe will say: At that time, in Berlin, the united Europe has set the course correctly. At that time, in Berlin, the European Union has pursued a good future. Then it has renewed its fundamentals to make its contribution inwards, on this old continent, as well as outwards, in this big-small world.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Und so wünsche ich mir, dass die Bürgerinnen und Bürger Europas in 50 Jahren sagen werden: Damals, in Berlin, da hat das vereinte Europa die Weichen richtig gestellt. Damals, in Berlin, da hat die Europäische Union den richtigen Weg in eine gute Zukunft eingeschlagen. Sie hat anschließend ihre Grundlagen erneuert, um nach innen, auf diesem alten Kontinent, wie nach außen, in dieser einen großen-kleinen Welt, einen Beitrag zu leisten.
Speech at the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaties of Rome on March 25, 2007
2007

Donald Tusk photo

“Europe is not old, haggard or barren. Europe is young, dynamic and vital. Our continent remains the best place in the world to live.”

Donald Tusk (1957) Polish politician, current President of the European Council

Speech to the European Parliament https://twitter.com/eucopresident/status/555009986515173376 (13 January 2015)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo
Karen Blixen photo
Niall Ferguson photo
Fidel Castro photo
John Hirst photo
Mobutu Sésé Seko photo
Thomas Jefferson photo

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and the corporations which grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Respectfully Quoted says this is "obviously spurious", noting that the OED's earliest citation for the word "deflation" is from 1920. The earliest known appearance of this quote is from 1935 (Testimony of Charles C. Mayer, Hearings Before the Committee on Banking and Currency, House of Representatives, Seventy-fourth Congress, First Session, on H.R. 5357, p. 799)
Misattributed

Jeremy Clarkson photo

“The job of dedicated missile boats is to pootle about, like mice in carpet slippers, waiting for an order to destroy an entire continent.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

I Know You Got Soul (2004)

Ayn Rand photo

“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures. They are typically nomads. Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it's the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Ayn Rand Ford Hall Forum lecture, 1974, text published on the website of The Ayn Rand Institute http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer?pagename=media_america_at_war_israeli_arab_conflict

Andrew Dickson White photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo

“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe. There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Speech (10 April 2006), quoted in New York Sun (6 September 2009) "Terrorists Promise More Attacks Like 9/11" by Steven Stalinsky
Speeches

Alistair Cooke photo

“In life no such colour brightened the grey picture of a man devoted to the daily study of warfare on several continents with all the ardour of a certified public accountant.”

Alistair Cooke (1908–2004) British journalist and broadcaster

(1959) About George Marshall
Source: Letter from America, 1946-2004 (2007).