Haile Selassie quotes

Haile Selassie was the Emperor of Ethiopia and an influential figure in African and world history. Revered as a symbol of African independence, his leadership inspired movements for liberation and unity. He played a pivotal role in the founding of the United Nations and is also regarded as a messianic figure in the Rastafari movement. Here are 55 of his quotes:

We have finished the job. What shall we do with the tools?

Haile Selassie

We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.

Haile Selassie

Spiritual power is the eternal guide, in this life and the life after, for man ranks supreme among all creatures. Led forward by spiritual power, man can reach the summit destined for him by the Great Creator.

Haile Selassie

Imagination, devotion, perseverance, together with divine grace, will assure your success.

Haile Selassie

In the history of the human race, those periods which later appeared as great have been the periods when the men and the women belonging to them had transcended the differences that divided them and had recognized in their membership in the human race a common bond.

Haile Selassie

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man's basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act - and if necessary, to suffer and die - for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.

Haile Selassie

This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults.

Haile Selassie

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

Haile Selassie

Here is our opportunity and our challenge. If the nuclear powers are prepared to declare a truce, let us seize the moment to strengthen the institutions and procedures which will serve as the means for the pacific settlement of disputes among men.

Haile Selassie

An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.

Haile Selassie

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.

Haile Selassie

A house built on granite and strong foundations, not even the onslaught of pouring rain, gushing torrents and strong winds will be able to pull down. Some people have written the story of my life representing as truth what in fact derives from ignorance, error or envy; but they cannot shake the truth from its place, even if they attempt to make others believe it.

Haile Selassie

Leadership does not mean domination.

Haile Selassie

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.

Haile Selassie

Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.

Haile Selassie

The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.

Haile Selassie

Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse?

Haile Selassie

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

Haile Selassie

Misguided people sometimes create misguided ideas. Some of my ancestors were Oromo. How can I colonize myself?

Haile Selassie

We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.

Haile Selassie

I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.

Haile Selassie

Conflicts between nations will continue to arise. The real issue is whether they are to be resolved by force, or by resort to peaceful methods and procedures, administered by impartial institutions.

Haile Selassie