Territorial Expansion Quotes

We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!

Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. . . . Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.

The Jews will establish themselves in Palestine in the same way as the French and English established themselves in Canada or the Boers did in South Africa—by settling on the land.

Conquest has made me what I am, only conquest can maintain me.

Africa is still lying ready for us it is our duty to take it. It is our duty to seize every opportunity of acquiring more territory and we should keep this one idea steadily before our eyes that more territory simply means more of the Anglo-Saxon race more of the best the most human, most honorable race the world possesses.

What the city [Constantinople] contains is its own; beyond the walls it has no dominion—owns nothing. If I want to build a castle at the Sacred Mouth, it can’t forbid me. Tell your emperor this: The sultan who now rules is not like his predecessors. What they couldn’t achieve, he can do easily and at once. The things they did not wish to do, he certainly does. The next man who comes here on a mission like this will be flayed alive.

Every exploration is an appropriation.

I want Cuba ... I want Tamaulipas, Potosi, and one or two other Mexican States; and I want them all for the same reason -- for the planting and spreading of slavery

The destiny of the American people is to subdue the continent -- to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean... to change darkness into light and confirm the destiny of the human race.

Germany is a young and growing empire. She has a worldwide commerce which is rapidly expanding, and to which the legitimate ambition of patriotic Germans refuses to assign any bounds. Germany must have a powerful fleet to protect that commerce and her manifold interests in even the most distant seas. She expects those interests to go on growing, and she must be able to champion them manfully in any quarter of the globe. Her horizons stretch far away.

Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.

In the past, on Earth, it has largely been to exploit foreign resources and to expand the domestic territory.

The Russian Czars did a great deal that was bad. They robbed and enslaved the people. They waged wars and seized territories in the interest of landowners. But they did one thing that was good—they amassed an enormous state.

On the acquisition of Louisiana, in the year 1803, the attention of the government of the United States, was early directed towards exploring and improving the new territory.

The sun never sets on the immense empire of Charles V.

The king had a right to all uninhabited countries that should be discovered and possessed by any of his subjects and that the charters he freely granted to American companies had explicitly denied any latent claims of a British Parliament.

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

Man is the only Patriot. He sets himself apart in his own country, under his own flag, and sneers at the other nations, and keeps multitudinous uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people's countries, and keep them from grabbing slices of his. And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for the universal brotherhood of man - with his mouth.

In any event, colonization and the grant of lands were provincial matters.

Those countries cannot be in better hands, my fear is that the Spaniards are too feeble to hold them till our population can be sufficiently advanced to gain it from them piece by piece.

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.

We are forced to invade—we must keep the War South, till they are not only ruined, exhausted, but humbled in pride and spirit.

The conquest of the earth... is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only... not a sentimental pretence but an idea.

The settler and pioneer have at bottom had justice on their side; this great continent could not have been kept as nothing but a game preserve for squalid savages.

The rise of the presidency began with the Louisiana Purchase, which in 1803 doubled the land mass of the United States. History taught the framers that, just as Rome changed from republic to empire with conquest of new lands, territorial acquisition would lead to the centralization of political power.