British Empire/decolonisation and Decline 1945%e2%80%931997

Famous quotes containing the words british, empire and/or decline:

    For with this desire of physical beauty mingled itself early the fear of death—the fear of death intensified by the desire of beauty.
    Walter Pater 1839–1894, British writer, educator. originally published in Macmillan’s Magazine (Aug. 1878)

    On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.
    Gore Vidal (b. 1925)

    I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
    Orson Welles (1915–1984)