Famous quotes containing the words british empire, british, empire and/or decline:
“It is said that the British Empire is very large and respectable, and that the United States are a first-rate power. We do not believe that a tide rises and falls behind every man which can float the British Empire like a chip, if he should ever harbor it in his mind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“They have to prove their superiority every day. It’s their one tremendous weakness.”
—Edmund H. North, British screenwriter, and Lewis Gilbert. Captain Shepard (Kenneth More)
“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 (1864–1952)
“But only that soul can be my friend which I encounter on the line of my own march, that soul to which I do not decline, and which does not decline me, but, native of the same celestial latitude, repeats in its own all my experience.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)