Words matter. These are the best British Empire Quotes from famous people such as John Boyd Orr, Arthur Henderson, James Larkin, David Olusoga, Rudolf Nureyev, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
In recent times, European nations, with the use of gunpowder and other technical improvements in warfare, controlled practically the whole world. One, the British Empire, brought under one government a quarter of the earth and its inhabitants.
The first condition of success for the League of Nations is, therefore, a firm understanding between the British Empire and the United States of America and France and Italy that there will be no competitive building up of fleets or armies between them.
No, men and women of the Irish race, we shall not fight for England. We shall fight for the destruction of the British Empire and the construction of an Irish republic.
The history of the British empire, the chapter of our national story that would have explained to my classmates why a child born in Nigeria was sat among them, was similarly missing from the curriculum.
I don’t care if Margot is a Dame of the British Empire or older than myself. For me she represents eternal youth; there is an absolute musical quality in her beautiful body and phrasing. Because we are sincere and gifted, an intense abstract love is born between us every time we dance together.
The reason is that a military defeat of Britain will bring about the disintegration of the British Empire. This would not be of any benefit to Germany.
You know, when I was a girl, the idea that the British Empire could ever end was absolutely inconceivable. And it just disappeared, like all the other empires.
I received an OBE from the Queen, which probably doesn’t mean anything in America but is quite nice in England – the Order of the British Empire for services to drama.
The fate of the Celt in the British Empire bids fair to resemble that of the Greeks among the Romans.
Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.
The idea of elegance and aristocratic indulgence of an ocean cruise was born out of the image of the rich men and women who ruled the British Empire slowly sailing to India and the Far East while sipping gin and tonic on deck – served by men in white jackets.
I am now a commander of the British Empire.
Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.
The loss of the American colonies was the first time the process of British empire building had been put significantly into reverse, and became the starting point for a nostalgic yearning for lost colonies – and the wealth and global influence that came with them – that has become part of our national psyche.
I’m for fighting a war on terrorism, not a war in Southwest Asia that Alexander the Great couldn’t win, the British Empire couldn’t win, the Soviet Union couldn’t win. That’s stupid. It’s a waste of resources; a waste of America’s best and brightest.
In a much larger sense, the problem of Sabah is directly influenced by the duplicity of imperial Britain. For whatever devious reason, the dismantling of the British empire created divisions and violence due to ethnic and religious differences.
There can never be a single, satisfactory comprehensive account of the ‘history of the British empire.’
However much we may sympathize with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbours, we cannot in all circumstances undertake to involve the whole British Empire in a war simply on her account.
But while the British empire is easy to write about, it is very difficult to summarise. This is because what we call ’empire’ spans 400 years in time and thousands of miles in space; every continent on Earth was directly affected by it.
Even the building of a second British empire in the 19th century never fully healed the wound of losing America, and the end of Britain’s imperial prestige after the second world war has cut deeper.
The story of the British empire helps to explain the roots of most British people: white, black, and Asian.
I’ve always been drawn to the Edwardian period in England. To me, it seems like such a fascinating time, when the British Empire was at the height of its powers and the strict mores of the Victorian age were dissipating into the decadence of King Edward’s reign.
You don’t expect to get the letter saying, Her Majesty would like to appoint you Knight Commander of the British Empire! It was just a completely overwhelming and exciting day.
When young I did my best to undo that bit of the British Empire I found myself in: that is, old Southern Rhodesia.
Why should we not form a secret society with but one object, the furtherance of the British Empire and the bringing of the whole world under British rule, for the recovery of the United States, for making the Anglo Saxon race but one Empire? What a dream, but yet it is probable; it is possible.
I’ve always felt, with ‘The Iliad,’ a real frustration that it’s read wrong. That it’s turned into this public school poem, which I don’t think it is. That glamorising of war, and white-limbed, flowing-haired Greek heroes – it’s become a cliched, British empire part of our culture.
Teaching the history of the British Empire links in with that of the world: for better and for worse, the Empire made us what we are, forming our national identity. A country that does not understand its own history is unlikely to respect that of others.
I’m from the colonies, so I remember when the sun never set on the British Empire.
I don’t have doctrinaire views about how we should relate to Asia. But novelists reflect the world they live in, and that world propels you, to some extent. I’m a creature of the British Empire, and of the period of transition from the Empire.
The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.
The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.
By 1917, thanks to the new munitions factories and the women that worked in them, the British Empire was supplying more than 50 million shells a year.
Canada evolved within the British Empire: it inherited the Parliamentary system, the Cabinet system and all the other features of the British constitutional system which had been in place, for the most part, for several centuries before Canada was even thought of.
I just would like to keep going. If I kept getting the kind of work that I’ve been getting for the last 20 years for the next 20, I’d be a bloody Dame of the British Empire. I’d be so happy.
I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.
