Top 39 Empire Quotes

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Some empires have been around for a long time. However, historically, they all eventually fall. With that in mind, check out the top 39 empire quotes.

#39 – 36. Empire Quotes

39. All who have meditated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empires depends on the education of youth. – Aristotle

38. We seem, as it were, to have conquered and peopled half the world in a fit of absence of mind. – Sir John Robert Seeley

37. To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising up a people of customers, may at first sight appear a project fit only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation that is governed by shopkeepers. – Adam Smith

36. The fall of Rome is often regarded as an object lesson in the wages of sin. Its contemporaries, however, more frequently laid the blame on the rise of Christianity. . . . Although they do not inquire into the future, and either forget or do not know the past, yet defame present times as most unusually beset, as it were, by evils because there is belief in Christ and worship of God, and increasingly less worship of idols. – Orosius

#35 – 30. Empire Quotes

35. Sovereignty over any foreign land is insecure. – Seneca (Seneca the Elder)

34. An empire is an immense egotism. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

33. My fellow Americans: Last night when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that the troops of the United States and our allies were crossing the channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far. And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join me in prayer: Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization. . . – Franklin D. Roosevelt

32. In the second century of the Christian era, the Empire of Rome comprehended the fairest part of the earth, and the most civilised portion of mankind. The frontiers of that extensive monarchy were guarded by ancient renown and disciplined valour. The gentle but powerful influence of laws and manners had gradually cemented the union of the provinces. Their peaceful inhabitants enjoyed and abused the advantages of wealth and luxury. – Edward Gibbon

31. Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role. – Dean Acheson

30. And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, and the epitaph drear: A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East. – Rudyard Kipling

#29 – 26. Empire Quotes

29. How is the Empire? – King George V

28. Reading is difficult. People just aren’t meant to read anymore. We’re in a post-literate age. You know, a visual age. How many years after the fall of Rome did it take for a Dante to appear? Many, many years. – Gary Shteyngart

27. Empires built on force will always be destroyed. Those built on trust in Christ will remain. – Joseph R. Sizoo

26. How marvelous it all is! Built not by saints and angels, but the work of men’s hands; cemented with men’s honest blood and with a world of tears, welded by the best brains of centuries past; not without the taint and reproach incidental to all human work, but constructed on the whole with pure and splendid purpose. Human, and yet not wholly human — for the most heedless and the most cynical must see the finger of the Divine. – Lord Rosebery

#25 – 20. Empire Quotes

25. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it. – Joseph Conrad

24. A thousand years may scare form a state. An hour may lay it in ruins. – Lord (George Gordon) Byron

23. The foundation of empire is art and science. Remove them or degrade them, and the empire is no more. Empire follows art and not vice versa as Englishmen suppose. – William Blake

22. A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within. – Ariel Durant

21. The various modes of worship which prevailed in the Roman world were all considered by the people as equally true; by the philosopher as equally false; and by the magistrate as equally useful. – Edward Gibbon

20. We must annex those people. We can afflict them with our wise and beneficent government. We can introduce the novelty of thieves, all the way up from street-car pickpockets to municipal robbers and Government defaulters, and show them how amusing it is to arrest them and try them and then turn them loose — some for cash and some for political influence. We can make them ashamed of their simple and primitive justice. We can make that little bunch of sleepy islands the hottest corner on earth, and array it in the moral splendor of our high and holy civilization. Annexation is what the poor islanders need. Shall we to men benighted, the lamp of life deny? – Mark Twain

#19 – 16. Empire Quotes

19. The arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and assistance to foreign hands should be curtailed, lest Rome fall. – Taylor Caldwell

18. The day of small nations has long passed away. The day of Empires has come. – Joseph Chamberlain

17. To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace. – Tacitus

16. The genius of America may be that it has built “the fall of Rome” into its very makeup: it is very consciously a constant work in progress, designed to accommodate and build on revolutionary change. – Cullen Murphy

#15 – 10. Empire Quotes

15. I have a multivolume history of the world from the 19th century that begins with Noah’s flood as though it’s as historical a fact as the rise and fall of Rome. – Neil deGrasse Tyson

14. Keep our Empire undismembered guide our Forces by Thy Hand, gallant blacks from far Jamaica, Honduras and Togoland; protect them Lord in all their fights, and even more, protect the whites. – John Betjeman

13. Roman, remember that you shall rule the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to make peace the custom, to spare the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low. – Virgil

12. When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls–the World. – Lord Byron

11. Take up the White Man’s burden — send forth the best ye breed — go, bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need. – Rudyard Kipling

10. If Germany is to become a colonizing power, all I say is, God speed her! She becomes our ally and partner in the execution of the great purposes of Providence for the advantage of mankind. – William Ewart Gladstone

#9 – 6. Empire Quotes

9. The reluctant obedience of distant provinces generally costs more than it The Territory is worth. Empires which branch out widely are often more flourishing for a little timely pruning. – Thomas Babington Macaulay

8. Cowards die many times before their actual deaths. – Julius Caesar

7. Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise. – Han Suyin

6. The greater part of our best years has been passed for our generation in these two great world convulsions. All will be changed after this war, which spends in one month more than nations earned before in years there is no more security in our time than in those of the Reformation or the fall of Rome. – Stefan Zweig

#5 – 1. Empire Quotes

5. There is no human failure greater than to launch a profoundly important endeavor and then leave it half done. This is what the West has done with its colonial system. It shook all the societies in the world loose from their old moorings. But it seems indifferent whether or not they reach safe harbor in the end. – Dame Barbara Ward

4. In discussing Barbarism and Christianity I have actually been discussing the Fall of Rome. – Edward Gibbon

3. Julius Caesar quote: If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all…If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it. – Julius Caesar

2. Without the Empire we should be tossed like a cork in the cross current of world politics. It is at once our sword and our shield. – William Morris Hughes

1. The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation. – William McKinley

Ideas for the top 39 empire quotes come from the following sources.^[1]Quoteland – Empire^[2]azquotes – Fall Of Rome Quotes