Famous quotes containing the words empire died, empire and/or died:
“On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“The sea, washing the equator and the poles, offers its perilous aid, and the power and empire that follow it.... “Beware of me,” it says, “but if you can hold me, I am the key to all the lands.””
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“These were the sounds that issued from the wigwams of this country before Columbus was born; they have not yet died away; and, with remarkably few exceptions, the language of their forefathers is still copious enough for them. I felt that I stood, or rather lay, as near to the primitive man of America, that night, as any of its discoverers ever did.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)