#empire

It seems that the most important thing about Reagan was his anti-Communism and his reputation as a hawk who saw the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire.' ↗

— Mikhail Gorbachev

#empire #evil #evil empire #hawk #his

Empires dissolve and peoples disappear, song passes not away. ↗

— William Watson

#disappear #dissolve #empires #passes #song

But its exclusive character and irreconcileable hostility to the religious cults and ceremonies with which the whole social life of the city-state and the empire were inseparably connected at every turn, brought the Christians into inevitable conflict with the government and with public opinion. To the man in the street, the Christian was an anti-social atheist who would take no part in the public feasts and the games, which played such a large part in city life. To the authorities he was a passive rebel, who would neither take his share of municipal offices nor pay loyal homage to the Emperor. Hence the rise of persecution, and the driving of the Christians into an underground existence, as a proscribed sect. The Church grew under the shadow of the executioner's rods and axes, and every Christian lived in the peril of physical torture and death. The thought of martyrdom coloured the whole outlook of early Christianity. But it was not only a fear, it was also an ideal and a hope. For the martyr was the complete Christian, he was the champion and hero of the new society and its conflict with the old, and even the Christians who failed in the moment of the trial - the lapsi - looked on the martyrs as their saviours and protectors ↗

— Christopher Henry Dawson

#martyrdom #roman-empire #death

It is truth, in the old saying, that is 'the daughter of time,' and the lapse of half a century has not left us many of our illusions. Churchill tried and failed to preserve one empire. He failed to preserve his own empire, but succeeded in aggrandizing two much larger ones. He seems to have used crisis after crisis as an excuse to extend his own power. His petulant refusal to relinquish the leadership was the despair of postwar British Conservatives; in my opinion this refusal had to do with his yearning to accomplish something that 'history' had so far denied him—the winning of a democratic election. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#britain #british-empire #cold-war #conservative-party-uk #crisis

Religiously the Empire was pluralistic and marked by a search for a faith which would be satisfying intellectually and ethically and would give assurance of immortality. ↗

— Kenneth Scott Latourette

#empire #ethically #faith #give #immortality

With the NDAA, his failure to close Guantanamo Bay and the ramping use of drones, President Obama looks suspiciously like President Bush, a man on a quest for American Empire. ↗

— Justin Sane

#american empire #bay #bush #close #empire

Powerful indeed is the empire of habit. ↗

— Publilius Syrus

#habit #indeed #powerful

That is the great mistake about the affections. It is not the rise and fall of empires, the birth and death of kings, or the marching of armies that move them most. When they answer from their depths, it is to the domestic joys and tragedies of life. ↗

— Amelia Barr

#affections #answer #armies #birth #death

In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#dreams

Without the Empire we should be tossed like a cork in the cross current of world politics. It is at once our sword and our shield. ↗

— William Morris Hughes

#cross #current #empire #like #once