I,” he said, a faint note of derision in his voice, “am the least favored scion of our ruling house, House Mara Sent.” He was from Bronzes, then. Which might explain the eyes…she thought again of certain differences, and suppressed a shudder. “I am a Prince of the Blood,” he continued, sounding both embittered and proud, “third in line for the Dragon Throne, and grandnephew to the Emperor. Owing to a…political dispute, I am now also an exile. Presented with a choice between resigning my commission in the Navy and leaving to become governor of a mining planet and staying to face my uncle’s assassins….” He shrugged slightly, as if the choice were of no consequence.“A…political dispute?”“I gambled,” he said bluntly. “I lost.”“You seem…sanguine,” she remarked, surprise blunting the instinct to guard her tongue.”He shouldn’t have let me live.” That anyone could discuss their own murder with such cold calculation horrified her. He horrified her. She chewed her lip, digesting all that he’d told her: not merely a naval officer, but a prince—and a maverick one at that. She wondered what he could have done.“So you see,” he finished, “I’m no more free than you.” He laughed, then, but without humor. “We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Parsons to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

— P.J. Fox

Imperialism is a system of exploitation that occurs not only in the brutal form of those who come with guns to conquer territory. Imperialism often occurs in more subtle forms, a loan, food aid, blackmail. We are fighting this system that allows a handful of men on Earth to rule all of humanity.

— Thomas Sankara

Imperialism was born when the ruling class in capitalist production came up against national limitations to its economic expansion. The bourgeoisie turned to politics out of economic necessity; for if it did not want to give up the capitalist system whose inherent law is constant economic growth, it had to impose this law upon its home governments and to proclaim expansion to be an ultimate political goal of foreign policy.

— Hannah Arendt

In 1924 Mao took a Chinese friend, newly arrived from Europe, to see the notorious sign in the Shanghai park, 'Chinese and Dogs Not Allowed'.

— Paul Johnson

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this was softened in some later essays. The truth is that he disliked Auden's homosexuality, and could not get over his prejudice. But much of the interest of Orwell lies in the fact that he was born prejudiced, so to speak, against Jews and the colored peoples of the empire, and against the poor and uneducated, and against women and intellectuals—and managed, in a transparent and unique way, to educate himself out of this fog of bigotry (though he never did get over his aversion to 'pansies').

— Christopher Hitchens

In most poetic expressions of patriotism, it is impossible to distinguish what is one of the greatest human virtues from the worst human vice, collective egotism.

— W.H. Auden

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

In the end I began to understand. There is such a thing as absolute power over narrative. Those who secure this privilege for themselves can arrange stories about others pretty much where, and as, they like. Just as in corrupt, totalitarian regimes, those who exercise power over others can do anything.

— Chinua Achebe

In the old days, farmers would keep a little of their home-made opium for their families, to be used during illnesses, or at harvests and weddings; the rest they would sell to the local nobility, or to Kari merchants from Patna. Back then, a few clumps of poppy were enough to provide for a household's needs, leaving a little over, to be sold: no one was inclined to plant more because of all the work it took to grow poppies - fifteen ploughings of the land and every remaining clod to be built; purchases of manure and constant watering; and after all that, the frenzy of the harvest, each bulb having to be individually nicked, drained and scrapped. Such punishment was bearable when you had a patch or two of poppies - but what sane person would want to multiply these labors when there were better, more useful crops to grow, like wheat, DAL, vegetables? But those toothsome winter crops were steadily shrinking in acreage: now the factory's appetite for opium seemed never to be seated. Come the cold weather, the English sahibs would allow little else to be planted; their agents would go from home to home, forcing cash advances on the farmers, making them sign /Asama/ contracts. It was impossible to say no to them: if you refused they would leave their silver hidden in your house, or throw it through a window. It was no use telling the white magistrate that you hadn't accepted the money and your thumbprint was forged: he earned commissions on the opium ADN would never let you off. And, at the end of it, your earnings would come to no more than three-and-a-half Wicca rupees, just about enough to pay off your advance.

— Amitav Ghosh

In this becalmed zone the sea has a smooth surface, the palm-tree stirs gently in the breeze, the waves lap against the pebbles and raw materials are ceaselessly transported, justifying the presence of the settler; and all the while the native, bent double, near deader than alive, exists interminably in an unchanging dream. The settler makes history; his life is an epoch, an Odyssey... Over against him torpid creatures, wasted by fever, obsessed by ancestral customs, form an almost inorganic background for the innovating dynamism of colonial mercantilism.

— Frantz Fanon