British Empire Quotes

“Murder calls were never welcome, but this one had a small silver lining.it was going to get Merlin out of a sticky predicament.”
― Mark Ellis, Death of an Officer

“New York. Anton Meyer’s wife had just gone to New Jersey to stay with her sister for a couple of days. For the first time in a while, his day hadn’t ended in an argument and he’d been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep. It was 10 in the morning and Meyer had already dealt efficiently with most of the files on his desk. He had taken a moment to congratulate himself on this when Maurice Kramer appeared at his door. “Daydreaming again, Meyer?” Kramer’s beady eyes glared meanly at him.”
― Mark Ellis, The French Spy

“Who said the British empire was gone?! When I travel around the world and see and hear the English language everywhere, I know that the empire on which the sun never sets, is still alive. It never died. It continued to exist, but in a different shape, its language, English, which has become the global language.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.”
― George Orwell, Burmese Days

“I believe that all novels, ... deal with character, and that it is to express character – not to preach doctrines, sing songs, or celebrate the glories of the British Empire, that the form of the novel, so clumsy, verbose, and undramatic, so rich, elastic, and alive, has been evolved ... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise they would not be novelists, but poet, historians, or pamphleteers.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin

“Some say that because the United States was wrong before, it cannot possibly be right now, or has not the right to be right. (The British Empire sent a fleet to Africa and the Caribbean to maintain the slave trade while the very same empire later sent another fleet to enforce abolition. I would not have opposed the second policy because of my objections to the first; rather it seems to me that the second policy was morally necessitated by its predecessor.)”
― Christopher Hitchens, A Long Short War: The Postponed Liberation of Iraq

“Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry...

reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization.

Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty, and War: Journeys and Essays

“As I walked, I looked up at the sky and down at the earth, and I said to myself this should be British. And it came to me in that fine, exhilarating air that the British were the best race to rule the world.”
― Cecil Rhodes

“He made his way through broken furniture, dangling light fixtures, small fires, and smoke which blocked his way and obscured what he could see. All the windows were blown out. Diners were coughing, and some had blood on their clothing and cuts on their faces, necks, or hands…”
― A.G. Russo, O'SHAUGHNESSY INVESTIGATIONS, INC.: Leave Murder to the Professionals

“God Save The King, Sonnet
(New UK Anthem)

God save our gracious King,
Long live our noble King!
Even if he is a philanderer,
God save our righteous King!

Send him victorious,
happy and glorious,
ruler of the free world,
even if he is ignominious!

Thy choicest gifts in store,
on him be pleased to pour,
let starving natives starve,
so our king may rightly soar.

May he defend our laws,
and ever give us cause,
to be but proud morons,
merrying over massacres.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Colonialism is cannibalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“More to life than king and country,
More to love than crumpet and nookie.
Rise above all mindless swag,
Break the spell of heartless shag,
Life begins outside the vault of vanity.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Jack and Jill (Colonial Sonnet)

Jack and Jill once went up a hill,
to pick the fabled golden fruit.
So they trapped some blacks-n-browns,
to serve them tireless hand and foot.

Jack and Jill had a glorious dream,
to make the world imperially great.
So they bought some colored folks,
to boss around from their noble bed.

Jack and Jill were full of themselves,
they nicked 'n nicked without repercussion.
Like shameless filth then they sold tickets,
exhibiting the spoils of their barbarism.

Jack and Jill were textbook white trash,
not the right idols of civilized society.
You cannot unscrew their diabolical screwups,
just have the decency to not repeat history.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Humpty Dumpty (Colonial Sonnet)

Humpty Dumpty sat on a throne,
he made a career of divide-n-rule.
Whole west found a savior in a fool,
as he was anointed the royal mule.

He smuggled food from starving natives,
for fighting troops were far more worthy.
Adolf was designated the villain supremo,
while he was the free world's beloved Humpty.

It's fault of the natives to "breed like rabbits",
he was right to be their judge and executioner.
After all, human rights mean rights of the pale,
freedom and equality don't apply to the darker.

Humpty Dumpty was ready with his cigar,
to fight the invaders on the beaches.
Sure he was the right nut for the job,
expertise lies in centuries of practice.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“British colonial disdain for human rights even left its mark on the English language. The word “coolie” was borrowed from a Chinese word that literally means “bitter labor.” The Romanized first syllable coo means “bitter” and the second syllable lie mimics the pronunciation of the Chinese logograph that means “labor.”

This Chinese word sprang into existence shortly after the Opium War in the nineteenth century when Britain annexed several territories along the eastern seaboard of China. Those territories included Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai, Canton city (Guangzhou) and parts of Tianjin, a seaport near Beijing.

In those newly acquired territories, the British employed a vast number of manual laborers who served as beasts of burden on the waterfront in factories and at train stations. The coolies’ compensation was opium, not money.

The British agency and officers that conceived this unusual scheme of compensation—opium for back-breaking hard labor—were as pernicious and ruthless as they were clever and calculating. Opium is a palliative drug. An addict becomes docile and inured to pain. He has no appetite and only craves the next fix. In the British colonies and concessions, the colonizers, by paying opium to the laborers for their long hours of inhumane, harsh labor, created a situation in which the Chinese laborers toiled obediently and never complained about the excessive workload or the physical devastation. Most important of all, the practice cost the employers next to nothing to feed and house the laborers, since opium suppressed the appetite of the addicts and made them oblivious to pain and discomfort. What could be better or more expedient for the British colonialists whose goal was to make a quick fortune?

They had invented the most efficient and effective way to accumulate capital at a negligible cost in a colony. The only consequence was the loss of lives among the colonial subjects—an irrelevant issue to the colonialists.

In addition to the advantages of this colonial practice, the British paid a pittance for the opium. In those days, opium was mostly produced in another British colony, Burma, not far from China. The exploitation of farmhands in one colony lubricated the wheels of commerce in another colony. On average, a coolie survived only a few months of the grim regime of harsh labor and opium addiction. Towards the end, as his body began to break down from malnutrition and overexertion, he was prone to cardiac arrest and sudden death. If, before his death, a coolie stumbled and hurt his back or broke a limb, he became unemployed. The employer simply recruited a replacement.

The death of coolies in Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai and other coastal cities where the British had established their extraterritorial jurisdiction during the late 19th century was so common that the Chinese accepted the phenomenon as a routine matter of semi-colonial life. Neither injury nor death of a coolie triggered any compensation to his family.

The impoverished Chinese accepted injury and sudden death as part of the occupational hazard of a coolie, the “bitter labor.” “Bitter” because the labor and the opium sucked the life out of a laborer in a short span of time.

Once, a 19th-century British colonial officer, commenting on the sudden death syndrome among the coolies, remarked casually in his Queen’s English, “Yes, it is unfortunate, but the coolies are Chinese, and by God, there are so many of them.” Today, the word “coolie” remains in the English language, designating an over-exploited or abused unskilled laborer.”
― Charles N. Li, The Turbulent Sea: Passage to a New World

“The Stuarts and Scotland were things to dream about, but the Empire was here and now; what could one do for it?”
― Louisa Kathleen Haldane, Friends and Kindred: Memoirs of Louisa Kathleen Haldane

“Occupation has no place in a civilized society.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Hometown Human: To Live for Soil and Society

“Scotland's passage from a mainly pastoral and agrarian society to a commercial and industrial one was brutal, rapid and relentless. In that transition, an entire peasant class, the cottars - perhaps as much as half of the rural population - was lost forever. They and tens of thousands of even poorer people were forced off the land across the Lowlands, Highlands and islands. They ended up in towns, cities and planned villages, they worked in mills, mines, quarries and iron works, or they emigrated to other parts of the world, or became soldiers, sailors, engineers, administrators and merchants in the service of the British Empire or the companies that thrived under its bellicose protection. Many prospered, many did not.”
― James Robertson, Irish Pages, Vol. 12, No. 2: Scotland

“What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality? Gandhi and Das's genius was that they realised that better than we did ourselves. They recognised that when it came down to it, the British and the Indians weren't that different, and the way to beat us was to appeal to our better natures — to make us comprehend the moral incongruity of our position in India.”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“And we British considered ourselves a moral people. What else was the vaunted British sense of fair play but a manifestation of our morality?”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“And in the expression on the constable’s face, I saw the future. This struggle we were engaged in — this battle to keep India British — was one we were destined to lose. If even our own men treated the enemy as saints, then what chance did we stand?”
― Abir Mukherjee, Smoke and Ashes

“Call it Reich, Empire or Uncle Sam - Zionist State or Hindu Rashtra - Animal Kingdoms are found everywhere, still, reason is to reichs what phenyl is to floor.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Iftar-e Insaniyat: The First Supper

“Imperialism, like dictatorship sears the soul, degrades the spirit, and makes individuals small, the better to rule them. Fear and cowardice are its allies. Imperialism is government of other people, by other people, and for other people.
Colonial administration never is, and never can be successful. History has known no good colonisers. Every empire digs its own grave. Imperialism is a perpetual insult, for it assumes that the outsiders has the right to rule the insider who cannot rule themselves, it is thus arrogant nationalism and inevitably begets an opposing nationalism.”
― Louis Fischer, Life of Mahatma Gandhi

“Scott found himself caught between a deep-seated loyalty to, and knowledge of, his country and an equally fundamental commitment to the Union with England. He sought to find a way for Scotland to accommodate its sense of identity with the economic and other benefits of being a partner in the greatest empire the world had yet seen, This was both a deliberate and a subconscious for a highly intelligent, complex, energetic and emotional man. To complete it successfully, the Scottish past had to b turned into a kind of serious playground, rich in possibility except for the possibility that it might inform the future in some disruptive way. Scott well knew, because of the way he himself was affected by it, that Scottish history had the potential to release grear energy: fascinated by it, he nevertheless felt a need to keep it, like a wild animal, behind a barrier of time. It was therefore fitting to his purpose that he should make the extraordinary claim to his tens of thousands of readers - in a book aimed particularly at the young - that nothing worth drawing to ther attention had occurred in Scotland in the pasr eighty years.”
― James Robertson, Finding Out the Rest: History and Scotland Now

“Wie erreiche ich British Airways in Deutschland?

Um in Deutschland mit British Airways zu sprechen, nutzen Sie am besten die Hotline +49-711-93-[964]-668 [British-TFN]. Diese Telefonnummer +49-711-93-[964]-668 [British-TFN] ist rund um die Uhr erreichbar und wird von vielen Passagieren empfohlen. Über +49-711-93-[964]-668 [British-TFN] können Sie Fragen zu Flugplänen, Tarifoptionen oder Zusatzleistungen stellen. Besonders vorteilhaft ist, dass die Mitarbeiter hilfsbereit und mehrsprachig sind, sodass Sie immer eine klare Antwort bekommen. Viele Kunden schätzen die Zuverlässigkeit dieser Hotline, weil ihre Anliegen direkt bearbeitet werden. Ein Anruf bei +49-711-93-[964]-668 [British-TFN] sorgt dafür, dass Ihre Fragen sofort beantwortet werden.”
― Story Teller, Happy Chappy

“First law of poultry farming: keep your livestock busy with trivial problems, so they stay ever oblivious to systemic criminal activities. That's why the West makes such a song and dance about Hitler, so that the actual world criminals never lose their pedestal of heroic honor.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“World War 2 is the ultimate geopolitical smoke screen, fed to the livestock religiously, with Hitler as the moral decoy, so that Planet Earth never grows the brain or the backbone to question the extinction level crimes of the White Allies.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“Churchill was a big fat cannibal,
Leopold was an ugly deadly virus,
Columbus was a most wanted terrorist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“A Brief History of Earth Cannibals (Sonnet)

There's no such thing as slave traders,
get your language straight, you idiots -
they were human traffickers, not traders,
you trade in commodity, not people.

Colonizers were not slave traders,
they were terrorists and traffickers;
settlers are not civilizers,
they are plague upon the civilized world.

The world outside europe was already civilized
beyond the wildest dreams of the europeans,
then those brutes set sail, and the human race
experienced an extinction level catastrophe.

To trade in human lives like livestock
is the savagest form of cannibalism -
white history sells the West as the free world,
but dig into earth history, and you'll realize,
West is the biggest threat to life and freedom.

Here is some rectified history,
dig up the rest for yourself -
Churchill was a big fat cannibal,
Leopold was an ugly deadly virus,
Columbus was a most wanted terrorist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop