.. the nineteenth-century Empire undeniably pioneered free trade, free capital movements and, with the abolition of slavery, free labour. It invested immense sums in developing a global network of modern communications. It spread and enforced the rule of law over vast areas. Though it fought many small wars, the Empire maintained a global peace unmatched before or since. In the twentieth century too it more than justified its own existence, for the alternatives to British rule represented by the German and Japanese empires were clearly far worse. And without its Empire, it is inconceivable that Britain could have withstood them.
Niall FergusonRelated topics
abolition century developing far fight free law network peace rule small spread trade vast worse global labour BritainRelated quotes
As you all know, ever since the end of the war Britain has been working against time. We must find a way to stand on our own feet, and that very soon. Since the end of the war, too, our reserves have been small. This means that any alteration in world trade conditions, any failure to produce and sell enough goods must land us in serious trouble... I would like every one of you, whether employer or employed, to start right away to consider how in your particular job you can increase and cheapen production, how you can check absenteeism and get the kind of public opinion in factory, mine, railway, or other workplace which will bring the person who is slacking up to the mark.
Clement Attlee
Socialism means power, power, and more power. Thoughts and schemes are nothing without power. The path to power has already been mapped: the valuable elements of German labor in union with the best representatives of the Old Prussian state idea, both groups determined to build a strictly socialist state to democratize our nation in the Prussian manner; both forged into a unit by the same sense of duty, by the awareness of a great obligation, by the will to obey in order to rule, to die in order to win, by the strength to make immense sacrifices in order to accomplish what we were born for, what we are, what could not be without us.
Oswald Spengler
They determined, once for all, to make an end of the spirit of freedom and emancipation, and to drive back and repress for ever the upward tendency of mankind. To undo the labour of twenty generations; to kill in the nineteenth century, by strangulation... Luther, Descartes, and Voltaire, religious scrutiny, philosophical scrutiny, universal scrutiny; to crush throughout all Europe this immense vegetation of free thought, here a tender blade, there a sturdy oak; ...to resuscitate all they could of the Inquisition, and to stifle all they could of intelligence; to stultify youth, in other words to brutalize the future;... to say to nations: "Eat and think no more;"
Victor Hugo
It must be admitted that so long as things were peaceful the methods of the British ruling class served them well enough. Their own people manifestly tolerated them. However unjustly England might be organized, it was at any rate not torn by class warfare or haunted by secret police. The Empire was peaceful as no area of comparable size has ever been. Throughout its vast extend, nearly a quarter of the earth, there were fewer armed men than would be found necessary by a minor Balkan state. As people live under, and looking at them merely from a liberal, negative standpoint, the British ruling class had their points.
George Orwell
Let me repeat that the absurd thing about the anti-Islam neo-conservatives is that they are invariably supporters of unrestricted migration, the means by which Islam has quite peacefully established itself as a permanent, growing major social, religious and political force in our country. If Sharia law comes to Britain, as Mr Jacubs fears, it will not be because of violent actions such as the Woolwich outrage, which I think we can safely assume were condemned and disowned by most British Muslims. It will be as the result of the entirely peaceful establishment of a sizeable Muslim population in this country.
Peter Hitchens