#empire

How is the Empire? ↗

— King George V

#how

Perhaps the most dangerous by-product of the Age of Intellect is the unconscious growth of the idea that the human brain can solve the problems of the world. Even on the low level of practical affairs this is patently untrue. Any small human activity, the local bowls club or the ladies’ luncheon club, requires for its survival a measure of self-sacrifice and service on the part of the members. In a wider national sphere, the survival of the nation depends basically on the loyalty and self‑sacrifice of the citizens. The impression that the situation can be saved by mental cleverness, without unselfishness or human self-dedication, can only lead to collapse. ↗

— John Bagot Glubb

#history #intellectualism #sacrifice #service #age

There will come a time of fire and night, when enemies rise and empires fall, when the stars themselves begin to die. ↗

— Kevin J. Anderson

#kevin-j-anderson #saga-of-seven-suns #science-fiction #science

You're not like other Wasps." "Aren't I?" Aagen smiled, but it was a painful smile. "No doubt you've killed my kinsmen by the score." "A few," Salma allowed. "Well, next time you shed my kinden's blood, think on this: we are but men, no less nor more than other men, and we strive and feel joy and fail as men have always done. We live in the darkness that is the birthright of us all, that of hurt and ignorance, only sometimes... sometimes there comes the sun." He let the bowl fall from his fingers to the floor, watching it spin and settle, unbroken. ↗

— Adrian Tchaikovsky

#aagen-s-joy #birthright #darkness #grief-in-chains #here-comes-the-sun

I have zero respect for knowledge, that’s what computers are for. Imagination is the kicker because imagination can extrapolate, create and solve, Knowledge is just facts and shit. Mostly irrelevant.” Kego O'Grady in The Navigator By Steve Merrick ↗

— Steve Merrick

#sci-fi #science-fiction #steve-merrick #stevesevilempire #the-navigator

The necessity of every one paying in his own labor for what he consumes, affords the only legitimate and effectual check to excessive luxury, which has so often ruined individuals, states and empires; and which has now brought almost universal bankruptcy upon us. ↗

— Josiah Warren

#almost #bankruptcy #brought #check #consumes

In the last five or six thousand years, empires one after another have arisen, waxed powerful by wars of conquest, and fallen by internal revolution or attack from without. ↗

— John Boyd Orr

#another #arisen #attack #conquest #empires

Well, normally I’m against big things. I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things. Too many things can go wrong when they get big.” — Pete Seeger (on how he felt about attending his big 90th birthday bash last year) ↗

— Pete Seeger

#music #music

Britain will be honoured by historians more for the way she disposed of an empire than for the way in which she acquired it. ↗

— Lord Harlech

#britain #disposed #empire #historians #honoured

Ideas have unhinged the gates of empires. ↗

— Paul Harris

#gates #ideas