Winston Churchill Quotes

On you, it primarily rests whether Ireland shall remain an integral portion of a great empire, sharing in its glory … or whether … Ireland shall become the focus and the center of foreign intrigue and deadly conspiracy.

The State of Israel is a state that was formed before the people were even in it. You have to understand: In India, in Burma, in Pakistan - all of the people were already there. Their problem was for the English to leave so they could be independent.

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.

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. You know, when people talk about the British Empire, they always forget that all the European countries had empires.

In the span of a human lifetime, and well within the collective memory, Britain went from a stable imperial power ruling an appreciable fraction of the Earth's surface to being a tumultuous patchwork which was at least superficially in decline.

Filipinos are not worse than any other colonized people except that our colonization was a little longer, and the independence movement was always dictated in political terms, never in social ones. We borrowed terms, but we didn't understand them.

Margaret Thatcher inherited a country in transition. The British Empire was still a considerable entity well into the 20th century.

Were you to read the British press today, you would learn that the British Empire never forgets its defeats.

National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule.

After centuries the time has come when India has gained independence from foreign rule and it's the time when we all [the Independent Princely States) should unite for our motherland""

I am not a magician. I believe that it is the Indians who have got to find out a solution. You cannot expect the British to solve all your problems.

That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.

To make a union with Great Britain would be fusion with a corpse.

We have got over our imperial past, and the withdrawal symptoms.

Our colonies are great and growing nationalities.

Though Great Britain could do perfectly well without her colonies, and though on every principle of morality and justice she ought to consent to their separation, should the time come when, after full trial of the best form of union, they deliberately desire to be dissevered—there are strong reasons for maintaining the present slight bond of connection, so long as not disagreeable to the feelings of either party.

At the attainment of independence, the British handed over to us a decent system of Government in which everyone had a say. …. Organization of African unity or no Organization of African unity, I will claim my citizenship of Ghana and of the Commonwealth in any part of the world. I have been trained in the United Kingdom as a soldier, and I am ever prepared to fight alongside my friends in the United Kingdom in the same way as Canadians and Australians will do.

That the Kingdom of Ireland is a distinct kingdom with a parliament of her own, the sole legislature thereof, that there is no body of men competent to make laws to bind the nation but the king, lords, and commons of Ireland, nor any Parliament which hath any authority or power or any sort whatever in this country, save only the Parliament of Ireland, to assure his Majesty that we humbly conceive that in this right the very essence of our liberty exists, a right which we, on the part of the people of Ireland do claim as their birthright, and which we cannot yield but with our lives

When Britain first, at Heaven's command, Arose from out the azure main, This was the charter of the land, And guardian angels sung this strain: 'Rule, Britannia, rule the waves; Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.'

The colonial powers especially the more heedless ones ... dumped their former possessions on the threshold of independence with little if any preparation for statehood.

It is an invariable maxim, that every acquisition of foreign territory is at the absolute disposal of the King. [And not to Parliament.]

Some time ago, the United States was an English colony. If an Englishman were asked if the United States would be independent, he would have said no, that it would always be an English colony.

Cuba came to be the last country to get rid of Spanish colonialism and the first to shake off the heinous imperialist tutelage.

Britain is the only colony in the British Empire and it is up to us now to liberate ourselves.

Latin America, for the first time in 500 years, is moving towards a degree of independence.