Quotes about land
page 8

Edward Jenks photo
Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo photo

“I have spared no effort to establish upon a solid and enduring basis those sentiments of union and concord which are so indispensible for the progress and advancement of all those who dwell in my native land, and, so long as I live, I propose to use all the means at my command to see to it that both races cast a stigma upon the disagreeable events that took place on the Sonoma frontier in 1846. If before I pass on to render an account of my acts to the Supreme Creator, I succeed in being a witness to a reconciliation between victor and vanquished, conquerors and conquered, I shall die with the conviction of not having striven in vain. In bringing this chapter to a close, I will remark that, if the men who hoisted the “Bear Flag” had raised the flag that Washington sanctified by his abnegation and patriotism, there would have been no war on the Sonoma frontier, for all our minds were prepared to give a brotherly embrace to the sons of the Great Republic, whose enterprising spirit had filled us with admiration. Ill-advisedly, however, as some say, or dominated by a desire to rule without let or hindrance, as others say, they placed themselves under the shelter of a flag that pictured a bear, an animal that we took as the emblem of rapine and force. This mistake was the cause of all the trouble, for when the Californians saw parties of men running over their plains and forests under the “Bear Flag,” they thought that they were dealing with robbers and took the steps they thought most effective for the protection of their lives and property.”

Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo (1807–1890) Californian military commander, politician, and rancher

As quoted by George Mason University's History Matters: “More Like A Pig Than a Bear”: Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo Is Taken Prisoner During the Bear Flag Revolt, 1846
Historical and Personal Memoirs Relating to Alta California (1875)

Michel Foucault photo
Alan Moore photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Hoyt Axton photo

“I've rode o'er hot, dry deserts
And over mountains tall
I believed in the bad land sayin'
"A good gun never falls"”

Hoyt Axton (1938–1999) American country singer

"Strongest of Oak" (1965)

Philo photo
Miley Cyrus photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Enoch Powell photo

“To tell the indigenous inhabitants of Brixton or Southall or Leicester or Bradford or Birmingham or Wolverhampton, to tell the pensioners ending their days in streets of nightly terror unrecognisable as their former neighbourhoods, to tell the people of towns and cities where whole districts have been transformed into enclaves of foreign lands, that "the man with a coloured face could be an enrichment to my life and that of my neighbours" is to drive them beyond the limits of endurance. It is not so much that it is obvious twaddle. It is that it makes cruel mockery of the experience and fears of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary, decent men and women…In understanding this matter, the beginning of wisdom is to grasp the law that in human societies power is never left unclaimed and unused. It does not blow about, like wastepaper on the streets, ownerless and inert. Men's nature is not only, as Thucydides long ago asserted, to exert power where they have it: men cannot help themselves from exerting power where they have it, whether they want to or not…It is the business of the leaders of distinct and separate populations to see that the power which they possess is used to benefit those for whom they speak. Leaders who fail to do so, or to do so fast enough, find themselves outflanked and superseded by those who are less squeamish. The Gresham's Law of extremism, that the more extreme drives out the less extreme, is one of the basic rules of political mechanics which operate in this field: it is a corollary of the general principle that no political power exist without being used. Both the general law and its Gresham's corollary point, in contemporary circumstances, towards the resort to physical violence, in the form of firearms or high explosive, as being so probable as to be predicted with virtual certainty. The experience of the last decade and more, all round the world, shows that acts of violence, however apparently irrational or inappropriate their targets, precipitate a frenzied search on the part of the society attacked to discover and remedy more and more grievances, real or imaginary, among those from whom the violence is supposed to emanate or on whose behalf it is supposed to be exercised. Those commanding a position of political leverage would then be superhuman if they could refrain from pointing to the acts of terrorism and, while condemning them, declaring that further and faster concessions and grants of privilege are the only means to avoid such acts being repeated on a rising scale. This is what produces the gearing effect of terrorism in the contemporary world, yielding huge results from acts of violence perpetrated by minimal numbers. It is not, I repeat again and again, that the mass of a particular population are violently or criminally disposed. Far from it; that population soon becomes itself the prisoner of the violence and machinations of an infinitely small minority among it. Just a few thugs, a few shots, a few bombs at the right place and time – and that is enough for disproportionate consequences to follow.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech to the Stretford Young Conservatives (21 January 1977), from A Nation or No Nation? Six Years in British Politics (Elliot Right Way Books, 1977), pp. 168-171
1970s

Edward Jenks photo
Elton John photo

“When are you gonna come down?
When are you going to land?
I should have stayed on the farm,
I should have listened to my old man.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Song lyrics, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (1973)

Wilhelm Reich photo
Winston S. Churchill photo
Eugène Terre'Blanche photo

“[Self-determination] is one of the fundamental principles of democracy, the ability to rule yourself. They don't want to give us that. We are not free. We have everything a nation needs, except a land to call our own.”

Eugène Terre'Blanche (1941–2010) South African police officer, farmer, political activist, white supremacist

Interview by Antoinette Keyser http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=249083&area=/insight/insight__national/, (25 August 2005).

John Martin photo
Charles Lyell photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Adolf Eichmann photo

“I knew that in this 'promised land' of South America I had a few good friends, to whom I could say openly, freely and proudly that I am Adolf Eichmann, former SS Obersturmbannführer.”

Adolf Eichmann (1906–1962) German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer

Meine Flucht, a memoir written by Eichmann in 1961, as quoted in Eichmann Before Jerusalem by Bettina Stangneth (2015).

Eino Leino photo

“Outbursts blossom in Lapland rapidly
. in earth, in barley, grass, dwarf birches too.
This I have pondered very frequently
when people’s daily lives there I review.

Oh why are all our beautiful ones dying
and why do great ones rot in disarray?
Oh why among us many minds are losing?
Oh why so few the kantele now play?

Oh why here everywhere a man soon crashes
like hay when scythed – ambitious man indeed,
a man of honour, sense – it all soon smashes,
or breaks apart one day in life of need?

Elsewhere, a fire still glints in greying tresses,
in old ones glows still spirit of the sun.
But here our new-born infants death possesses
and youth will grave’s dull earth soon press upon.

And what of me? Why ponder I so sadly?
An early sign, be sure, of grim old age.
Oh why the blood-spent rule keep I not gladly,
but sigh instead at people’s mortal wage?

One answer is there only: Lapland’s summer.
In thinking then my mind is soon distressed.
In Lapland birdsong, joy are short – a glimmer –
as flowers’ blooms and gladness wilt and rest.

But winter’s wrath is only long. Dear moment
when resting thoughts delay and don’t take flight,
in search of lands where blazing sun is potent
and take their leave of Lapland’s icy bite.

Oh, great white birds, you guests of summer Lapland,
with noble thoughts we’ll greet you, when you’re here!
Oh, tarry here among us, build your nests and
a while delay your southern journey near!

Oh, from the swan now learn a lesson wholesome!
They leave in autumn, come back in the spring.
It’s our own peaceful shore that us-wards pulls them,
Our sloping fell’s kind shelter will them bring.

Batter the air with whooping wings and leave us!
Wonders perform, enlighten other lands!
But when you see that winter’s gone relieve us –
I beg, beseech, re-clasp our weary hands!”

Eino Leino (1878–1926) Finnish poet and journalist
Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford photo

“A place of dream, the Holy Land
Hangs midway between earth and heaven.”

Harriet Elizabeth Prescott Spofford (1835–1921) American author

The Holy Land.

“The new earth will be like Eden... the deserts will gush with water. … A beautiful and bountiful land will flourish.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 115

Pink (singer) photo
Babe Ruth photo
L. Frank Baum photo
Reginald Heber photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Ramakrishna photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
H.V. Sheshadri photo
Emiliano Zapata photo

“The land belongs to those who work it with their hands.”

Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) Mexican Revolutionary

La tierra es de quien la trabaja con sus manos.
Quoted as a slogan of the revolutionaries in Shirt-Sleeve Diplomat (1947) Vol. 5, p. 199, by Josephus Daniels, and specifically attributed to Zapata by Ángel Zúñiga in 1998, as quoted in Mexican Social Movements and the Transition to Democracy (2005), by John Stolle-McAllister

Alex Jones photo

“The Netherlands is a sociable land where people respect each other. We fight each other with words, not with bullets.”

RTV Rijnmond De moord op Pim Fortuyn http://www.rijnmond.nl/Homepage/Nieuws?view=/News%2FPagina_items%2Fdossiers%2FDe%20moord%20op%20Pim%20Fortuyn, Biografie Pim Fortuyn auf Google Sites http://sites.google.com/site/superlutser/biopim

Dov Weisglass photo

“We gave them 42% of the land. Did we get 42% of peace? Did we even get 20% of peace?”

Dov Weisglass (1946) Israeli lawyer

(Speaking of the formula, land for peace.) From the documentary Relentless: The Search for Peace in Israel

William Bradford photo
Margaret Thatcher photo

“The choice facing the nation is between two totally different ways of life. And what a prize we have to fight for: no less than the chance to banish from our land the dark, divisive clouds of Marxist socialism and bring together men and women from all walks of life who share a belief in freedom.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech in Perth, Scotland (13 May 1983), quoted in New York Times (14 May 1983) "British Vote Campaign Gets Off to Angry Start"
First term as Prime Minister

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Paul Weller (singer) photo

“The lords and ladies pass a ruling
That sons and girls go hand in land
From good stock and the best breeding
Paid for by the servile class.”

Paul Weller (singer) (1958) English singer-songwriter, Guitarist

The Whole Point Of No Return, from Café Bleu (1984)

John Ruskin photo
Patrick Buchanan photo
Lewis Pugh photo

“I always feel nostalgic when I disembark (off a ship). It's not that I don't like land. I just love being at sea.”

Lewis Pugh (1969) Environmental campaigner, maritime lawyer and endurance swimmer

6 November 2014, Twitter
Speaking & Features

Barbara Hepworth photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Theodor Mommsen photo

“After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion, that Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever, of which Alexander of Macedon died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 323. As it was not very agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the great king turned his arms towards the west, and contested the Carthaginian supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with his phalanxes. It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for such an explanation of their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat provided with soldiers and ships experiences in setting limits to his warlike career. It was an enterprise worthy of a great Greek king to protect the siceliots against Carthage and the Tarentines against Rome.. and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and Etruscans, that long with numerous others made their appearance at Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted with the circumstances of the peninsula, and of contracting relations with it. Carthage with is many connections in the east could not but attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably part of his design to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king over the Tyrian colony into a real one: the apprehensions of the Carthaginians are shown by the Phoenician spy in the suite of Alexander. Whether, however, those ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas were buried with him. For a few brief years a Grecian ruler had held in his hands the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race combined with the whole material resources of the east. On his death the work to which his life had been devoted - the establishment of a Hellenism in the east - was by no means undone; but his empire had barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, admidst the constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined to promote - the diffusion of Greek culture in the east - though not abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Vol. 1., Page 394 - 395. Translated by W.P.Dickson.
The History of Rome - Volume 1

“Go now, go, but forget not the land that first folded you to its peaceful bosom; and from Colchis' conquered shores bring back hither thy sails, I pray thee, by this Jason whom thou leavest in my womb.”
I, memor i terrae, quae vos amplexa quieto prima sinu, refer et domitis a Colchidos oris vela per hunc utero quem linquis Iasona nostro.

Source: Argonautica, Book II, Lines 422–424

Oliver Goldsmith photo

“The land of scholars and the nurse of arms.”

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) Irish physician and writer

Source: The Traveller (1764), Line 356.

John F. Kennedy photo

“This is not the land of my birth, but it is the land for which I hold the greatest affection, and I certainly will come back in the springtime”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Speech at Limerick, Ireland (29 June 1963)
1963

Jonathan Swift photo

“I 've often wish'd that I had clear,
For life, six hundred pounds a year;
A handsome house to lodge a friend;
A river at my garden's end;
A terrace walk, and half a rood
Of land set out to plant a wood.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Imitation of Horace, book ii. Sat. 6.; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Willa Cather photo
Hermann Rauschning photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Henry George photo

“Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death.”

Henry George (1839–1897) American economist

Part I : Declaration, Ch. IV : Mr. Spencer's Confusion as to Rights
A Perplexed Philosopher (1892)
Context: Men must have rights before they can have equal rights. Each man has a right to use the world because he is here and wants to use the world. The equality of this right is merely a limitation arising from the presence of others with like rights. Society, in other words, does not grant, and cannot equitably withhold from any individual, the right to the use of land. That right exists before society and independently of society, belonging at birth to each individual, and ceasing only with his death. Society itself has no original right to the use of land. What right it has with regard to the use of land is simply that which is derived from and is necessary to the determination of the rights of the individuals who compose it. That is to say, the function of society with regard to the use of land only begins where individual rights clash, and is to secure equality between these clashing rights of individuals.

Basil of Caesarea photo
Aldo Leopold photo
Karel Zeman photo

“Why do I make movies? I'm looking for terra incognita, a land on which no filmmaker has yet set foot, a planet where no director has planted his flag of conquest, a world that exists only in fairy tales.”

Karel Zeman (1910–1989) Czech film director, artist and animator

Proč vůbec točím filmy? Hledám Zemi nikoho, ostrov, na který ještě nevstoupila noha filmařova, planetu, na které ještě žádný režisér nevztyčil vlajku objevitele, svět, který existuje jen v pohádkách.
Quoted on the website of the Karel Zeman Museum in Prague (in English http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/en/karel-zeman/quotes and Czech http://www.muzeumkarlazemana.cz/cz/karel-zeman/citaty).

Diogenes Laërtius photo

“Anaxagoras said to a man who was grieving because he was dying in a foreign land, "The descent to Hades is the same from every place."”

Diogenes Laërtius (180–240) biographer of ancient Greek philosophers

Anaxagoras, 6.
The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers (c. 200 A.D.), Book 2: Socrates, his predecessors and followers

Robert Frost photo

“The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people.”

Robert Frost (1874–1963) American poet

" The Gift Outright http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/994.html" (1941)
1940s

John Bright photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Richard Realf photo
Ai Weiwei photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Tom Robbins photo
Frances Kellor photo

“Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through”

Frances Kellor (1873–1952) American sociologist

What is Americanization? (1919)
Context: When the country first tried in 1915 to Americanize its foreign-born people, Americanization was thought of quite simply as the task of bringing native and foreign-born Americans together, and it was believed that the rest would take, care of itself. It was thought that if all of us could talk together in a common language unity would be assured, and that if all were citizens under one flag no force could separate them. Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through.

Robert T. Bakker photo
Vinayak Damodar Savarkar photo
William L. Shirer photo

“What Wilson and Lloyd George failed to see was that the terms of peace which they were hammering out against the dogged resistance of Clemenceau and Foch, while seemingly severe enough, left Germany in the long run relatively stronger than before. Except for the return of Alsace-Lorraine to France in the west and the loss of some valuable industrialized frontier districts to the Poles, form whom the Germans had taken them originally, Germany remained virtually intact, greater in population and industrial capacity than France could ever be, and moreover with her cities, farms, and factories undamaged by the war, which had been fought in enemy lands. In terms of relative power in Europe, Germany's position was actually better in 1919 than in 1914, or would be as soon as the Allied victors carried out their promise to reduce their armaments to the level of the defeated. The collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had not been the catastrophe for Germany that Bismarck had feared, because there was no Russian empire to take advantage of it. Russia, beset by revolution and civil war, was for the present, and perhaps would be for years to come, impotent. In the place of this powerful country on her eastern border Germany now had small, unstable states which could not seriously threaten her and which one day might easily be made to return former German territory and even made to disappear from the map.”

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Aron Ra photo
James A. Garfield photo

“Mister Speaker, let us learn a lesson from the dealing of God with the Jewish nation. When his chosen people, led by the pillar of cloud and fire, had crossed the Red Sea and traversed the gloomy wilderness with its thundering Sinai, its bloody battles, disastrous defeats, and glorious victories; when near the end of their perilous pilgrimage they listened to the last words of blessing and warning from their great leader before he was buried with immortal honors by the angel of the Lord; when at last the victorious host, sadly joyful, stood on the banks of the Jordan, their enemies drowned in the sea or slain in the wilderness, they paused and made solemn preparation to pass over and possess the land of promise. By the command of God, given through Moses and enforced by his great successor, the ark of the covenant, containing the tables of the law and the sacred memorials of their pilgrimage, was borne by chosen men two thousand cubits in advance of the people. On the further shore stood Ebal and Gerizim, the mounts of cursing and blessing, from which, in the hearing of all the people, were pronounced the curses of God against injustice and disobedience, and his blessing upon justice and obedience. On the shore, between the mountains and in the midst of the people, a monument was erected, and on it were written the words of the law, 'to be a memorial unto the children of Israel forever and ever.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1860s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1866)

H.V. Sheshadri photo
Gildas photo

“I shall also pass over the bygone times of our cruel tyrants, whose notoriety was spread over to far distant countries; so that Porphyry, that dog who in the east was always so fierce against the church, in his mad and vain style added this also, that "Britain is a land fertile in tyrants."”
Et tacens vetustos immanium tyrannorum annos, qui in aliis longe positis regionibus vulgati sunt, it ut Porphyrius rabidus orientalis adversus ecclesiam canis dementiae suae ac vanitatis stilo hoc etiam adnecteret: ""Britannia"", inquiens, ""fertilis provincia tyrannorum"".

Et tacens vetustos immanium tyrannorum annos, qui in aliis longe positis regionibus vulgati sunt, it ut Porphyrius rabidus orientalis adversus ecclesiam canis dementiae suae ac vanitatis stilo hoc etiam adnecteret: "Britannia", inquiens, "fertilis provincia tyrannorum".
Section 4.
Gildas's quotation is in fact from St. Jerome's Epistula 133.9.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon photo
Muammar Gaddafi photo

“I call on the Libyan people, men and women, to go out into the squares and the streets in all the cities in their millions. … Go peacefully… be courageous, rise up, go to the streets, raise our green flags to the skies. … Don't be afraid of anyone. You are the people. You have right on your side. You are the rightful people of this land.”

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

Audio message broadcast on the pro-Gaddafi Syrian Al Rai TV on 20 September 2011, as quoted in Libya conflict: Muammar Gaddafi urges mass protests http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-15206478, BBC World News, 6 October 2011
Speeches

Hassan Rouhani photo

“After all, in our region there's been a wound for years on the body of the Muslim world under the shadow of the occupation of the holy land of Palestine and the beloved al-Quds”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

Jerusalem
Rouhani misquoted in remarks on Israel - state TV http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/02/uk-iran-israel-idUKBRE9710GL20130802Iran's, Reuters, (August 2, 2013)

Ebenezer Howard photo

“All, then, are agreed on the pressing nature of this problem, all are bent on its solution, and though it would doubtless be quite Utopian to expect a similar agreement as to the value of any remedy that may be proposed, it is at least of immense importance that, on a subject thus universally regarded as of supreme importance, we have such a consensus of opinion at the outset. This will be the more remarkable and the more hopeful sign when it is shown, as I believe will be conclusively shown in this work, that the answer to this, one of the most pressing questions of the day, makes of comparatively easy solution many other problems which have hitherto taxed the ingenuity of the greatest thinkers and reformers of our time. Yes, the key to the problem how to restore the people to the land — that beautiful land of ours, with its canopy of sky, the air that blows upon it, the sun that warms it, the rain and dew that moisten it — the very embodiment of Divine love for man — is indeed a Master-Key, for it is the key to a portal through which, even when scarce ajar, will be seen to pour a flood of light on the problems of intemperance, of excessive toil, of restless anxiety, of grinding poverty — the true limits of Governmental interference, ay, and even the relations of man to the Supreme Power.”

Ebenezer Howard (1850–1928) British writer, founder of the garden city movement

Introduction.
Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898)

George William Curtis photo

“And are there no laws of moral health? Can they be outraged and the penalty not paid? Let a man turn out of the bright and bustling Broadway, out of the mad revel of riches and the restless, unripe luxury of ignorant men whom sudden wealth has disordered like exhilarating gas; let him penetrate through sickening stench the lairs of typhus, the dens of small-pox, the coverts of all loathsome disease and unimaginable crimes; let him see the dull, starved, stolid, lowering faces, the human heaps of utter woe, and, like Jefferson in contemplating slavery a hundred years ago in Virginia, he will murmur with bowed head, 'I tremble for this city when I remember that God is just'. Is his justice any surer in a tenement-house than it is in a State? Filth in the city is pestilence. Injustice in the State is civil war. 'Gentlemen', said George Mason, a friend and neighbor of Jefferson's, in the Convention that framed the Constitution, 'by an inscrutable chain of causes and effects Providence punishes national sins by national calamities'. 'Oh no. gentlemen, it is no such thing', replied John Rutledge of South Carolina. 'Religion and humanity have nothing to do with this question. Interest is the governing principle with nations'. The descendants of John Rutledge live in the State which quivers still with the terrible tread of Sherman and his men. Let them answer! Oh seaports and factories, silent and ruined! Oh barns and granaries, heaps of blackened desolation! Oh wasted homes, bleeding hearts, starving mouths! Oh land consumed in the fire your own hands kindled! Was not John Rutledge wrong, was not George Mason right, that prosperity which is only money in the purse, and not justice or fair play, is the most cruel traitor, and will cheat you of your heart's blood in the end?”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Martin Luther King, Jr. photo
Jonathan Stroud photo
Edward Lear photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“First there are the Jews who, dwelling in every country throughout the world, identify themselves with that country, enter into its national life and, while adhering faithfully to their own religion, regard themselves as citizens in the fullest sense of the State which has received them. Such a Jew living in England would say, 'I am an English man practising the Jewish faith.' This is a worthy conception, and useful in the highest degree. We in Great Britain well know that during the great struggle the influence of what may be called the 'National Jews' in many lands was cast preponderatingly on the side of the Allies; and in our own Army Jewish soldiers have played a most distinguished part, some rising to the command of armies, others winning the Victoria Cross for valour. There is no need to exaggerate the part played in the creation of Bolshevism and in the actual bringing about of the Russian Revolution, by these international and for the most part atheistical Jews, it is certainly a very great one; it probably outweighs all others. With the notable exception of Lenin, the majority of the leading figures are Jews. Moreover, the principal inspiration and driving power comes from the Jewish leaders. Thus Tchitcherin, a pure Russian, is eclipsed by his nominal subordinate Litvinoff, and the influence of Russians like Bukharin or Lunacharski cannot be compared with the power of Trotsky, or of Zinovieff, the Dictator of the Red Citadel (Petrograd) or of Krassin or Radek -- all Jews. In the Soviet institutions the predominance of Jews is even more astonishing. And the prominent, if not indeed the principal, part in the system of terrorism applied by the Extraordinary Commissions for Combating Counter-Revolution has been taken by Jews, and in some notable cases by Jewesses. The same evil prominence was obtained by Jews in the brief period of terror during which Bela Kun ruled in Hungary. The same phenomenon has been presented in Germany (especially in Bavaria), so far as this madness has been allowed to prey upon the temporary prostration of the German people. Although in all these countries there are many non-Jews every whit as bad as the worst of the Jewish revolutionaries, the part played by the latter in proportion to their numbers in the population is astonishing.”

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

"Zionism versus Bolshevism", Illustrated Sunday Herald (February 1920)
Early career years (1898–1929)

Margaret Thatcher photo

“It seems like cloud cuckoo land… If anyone is suggesting that I would go to Parliament and suggest the abolition of the pound sterling – no! … We have made it quite clear that we will not have a single currency imposed on us.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

To the media immediately after the EEC Rome summit meeting (28 October, 1990); as reported in A Conservative Coup: The Fall of Margaret Thatcher (1992) by Alan Watkins.
Third term as Prime Minister

Noam Chomsky photo

“In order to make it look dramatic, they staged what was ridiculed by some Israeli commentators, correctly, they staged a national trauma… There was a huge media extravaganza, you know, pictures of a little Jewish boy try to hold back the soldiers destroying his house… And a lot of the settlers were allowed in, so there could be a pretense of violence, though there wasn't any… The withdrawal could have been done perfectly quietly. All that was necessary was for Israel to announce that on August 1st the army will withdraw. And immediately the settlers, who had been subsidized to go there in the first place, and to stay there, would get on to the trucks that are provided for them and move over to the West Bank where they can move into new subsidized settlements. But if you did that way, there wouldn't have been any national trauma, any justification for saying, "never can we give up another 1 mm² of land". What made all of this even more ridiculous was that it was a repetition of what was described in Haaretz as "Operation National Truama 1982". After Israel finally agreed to Sadat's 1971 offer, they had to evacuate northeastern Sinai, and there was another staged trauma, which again was ridiculed by Israel commentators. By a miracle, none of the settlers who were resisting needed a Band-Aid, while Palestinians were being killed all over the place.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The Current Crisis in the Middle East" at MIT, September 21, 2006 http://mitworld.mit.edu/video/403/
Quotes 2000s, 2006

Edwin Abbott Abbott photo
Robert Mugabe photo

“Let Blair and the British government take note and listen. Zimbabwe is for Zimbabweans. Our people are overjoyed. The land is ours. We are now the rulers and owners of Zimbabwe.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Michael White, Andrew Meldrum, "Commonwealth leaders delay decision on defiant Mugabe", The Guardian, 6 December 2003, p. 2.
Speech to ZANU-PF Congress, 5 December 2003.
2000s, 2000-2004

Stanley Baldwin photo
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Anthony Burgess photo