European Powers Quotes

Incendiary capitalism is carrying its out evil works more dangerously than ever, and is doing so in the increasingly dangerous neighborhood of the powder kegs that are the great European military powers.

We never make conquests or ask any other nation to let us establish ourselves in their country as the English, the French and the Dutch have done.

Belgium became dazzled by the dream of empire. [British colonial] Africa is but a small part of Britain; [French colonial] Africa is but a half of larger France. But the Congo is eighty-two times the size of little Belgium …

From Tangiers to Alexandria, the entire African coast of the Mediterranean, with the exception of the great Libyan desert, belongs either to France or to England. Italy, the Mediterranean nation par excellence, is virtually excluded from the control of the Mediterranean; she is imprisoned and besieged in her own ocean.

With the rise of America, the global balance of power shifted away from the old European powers.

If the Philippines secure their independence after heroic and stubborn conflicts, they can rest assured that neither England, nor Germany, nor France, and still less Holland, will dare to take up what Spain has been unable to hold.

The American continents ... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.... We should consider any attempt [by European countries] to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European Power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence, and maintained it ... we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling, in any other manner, their destiny, by any European Power, in any other light than as the manifestations of an unfriendly disposition towards the United States. [The "Monroe Doctrine."]

China will consider herself fortunate if she succeeds in keeping herself intact and is not dismembered or partitioned among the European powers that are colonizing the continent of Asia.

The British arriving in South Africa at the close of the eighteenth century really came there to prevent the French from seizing the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch East India Company.

Our relations with the other powers of Europe have experienced no essential change since the last session.

The 1890s was an intensely patriotic decade for Americans. It was a time of neo-imperialism, when the European powers and the United States were establishing their flags around the globe.

The American continents, by the free and independent condition that they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonisation byany European powers? In the wars of the Europeanpowers inmattersrelating to ourselves, we have never taken any part; nor does it comport with our policy to do so.

We seem at, the present time to have arrived at the acute stage of the colonial fever which during the last three or four years has afflicted the various powers of Europe. Germany is vying with France, England with both, in the haste to seize upon “unoccupied” countries, and to establish “protectorates” – the cant diplomatic for incomplete annexation – over uncivilized peoples.

The first 'world' war was in reality the last European war fought by globally significant European powers.

The Portuguese, Dutch and English have been for a long time year after year, shipping home the treasures of India in their big vessels. We Germans have been all along been left to watch it. Germany would do likewise, but hers would be treasures of spiritual knowledge.

I am not wrong in the belief that its public funds are more secure than those of all the European powers.

The European powers had been anxious to see the United States become embroiled in a civil war and eventually break into two smaller and weaker nations. That would pave the way for their further colonization of Latin American without fear of the Americans being able to enforce the Monroe Doctrine.

The situation of the principal powers of Europe are singular and portentous. Connected with some by treaties and with all by commerce, no important event there can be indifferent to us.

The American continents, by the free and independent condition by which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.

the King of France has given us under his own hand very lately, the most unequivocal assurances of his friendship and support, and is at this time exerting his interest and influence at the different courts in Europe to bring our affairs to a happy and speedy conclusion; and I have in my own mind the most perfect confidence in these assurances. We shall suffer much in this campaign; it will be very bloody, but I hope it will be the last.

With European powers no new subjects of difficulty have arisen, and those which were under discussion, although not terminated, do not present a more unfavorable aspect for the future preservation of that good understanding which it has ever been our desire to cultivate.

The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.

We Italians would speak to the world as representatives of an age-old civilization of which we had inherited countless works of artists and thinkers --a civilization that entitled us to a place among the foremost Powers in Europe--and all the while we were speaking in the name of a very young state, still administratively incomplete, still divided by the remains of a feudal structure, and lacking economic and military independence.

I think [John Adams] developed a much deeper suspicion of France and the other European powers than he had earlier. He lost much if not all of the utopian thinking about international politics and diplomacy expressed in his Model Treaty of 1776 and became much more cynical about the world.

The time must arrive when we will have to contend with some of the great powers of Europe; but let that period be put off as long as possible.