89 Colonialism Quotes
Following is our list of colonialism quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about colonial times.
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Famous Colonialism Quotes
Colonialism is an idea born in the West that drives Western countries - like France, Italy, Belgium, Great Britain - to occupy countries outside of Europe. — Ahmed Ben Bella
Colonialism is the massive fog that has clouded our imaginations regarding who we could be, excised our memories of who we once were, and numbed our understanding of our current existence. — Waziyatawin
The native must realize that colonialism never gives anything away for nothing. — Frantz Fanon
The worst thing that colonialism did was to cloud our view of our past. — Barack Obama
The liquidation of colonialism is a trend of the times which no force can hold back. — Kim Jong Il
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values. — Frantz Fanon
Colonial atrocities have prepared the soil; it is for socialists to sow the seeds of revolution. — Ho Chi Minh
The final hour of colonialism has struck, and millions of inhabitants of Africa, Asia and Latin America rise to meet a new life and demand their unrestricted right to self-determination. — Che Guevara
I cannot make it better known than it already is that I strongly favor colonization. — Abraham Lincoln
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosević
The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization. — Slobodan Milosevic
A State in the grip of neo-colonialism is not master of its own destiny. It is this factor which makes neo-colonialism such a serious threat to world peace. — Kwame Nkrumah
Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well. — Frantz Fanon
Some people try deliberately to exploit the colonial hangover for their own purpose, to serve an external force. To us, Communism is as bad as imperialism. — Jomo Kenyatta
If you do not condemn colonialism, if you do not side with the colonial people, what kind of revolution are you waging? — Ho Chi Minh
Short Colonialism Quotes
- The die is now cast; the colonies must either submit or triumph.... we must not retreat. — George III
- Western interests: imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, racism, and other negative -isms. — Malcolm X
- The white men in our colonies are too frequently the savages — Alfred Russel Wallace
- The history of the United States is a history of settler colonialism. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
- I'll bet living in a nudist colony takes all the fun out of Halloween. — Charles S. Swartz
- No single organism could be understood without observing and comprehending the entire colony. — John Steinbeck
- Canada entered World War I as a colony and came out a nation. — Bruce Hutchison
- Each colony became accustomed to planting new settlements and to claiming new boundaries. — Albert Bushnell Hart
- Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves. — Albert Bushnell Hart
- Film is like a colony and there are very few colonists. — Orson Welles
Anti Colonialism Quotes
I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good! — Slavoj Zizek
College campuses have become fascist colonies of anti-American hate speech, hypersensitivity, speech codes, banded words and prohibited scientific inquiry. — Ann Coulter
Obama has little or nothing to do with the civil-rights movement. His roots are in Kenya, and he is shaped far more by anti-colonialism than by anything that Martin Luther King said or did. — Dinesh D'Souza
The partition of India in 1947 legitimized the forces of masculinist nationalism and enabled hatred for the "other" to irreparably mutilate a shared anti-colonial legacy and cultural heritage so systematically that the wounds inflicted by the partition are yet to heal. — Nyla Ali Khan
Kennedy saw the insurgency as a anti-colonial, essentially nationalist movement, feeding on social discontent. So you don't shoot people. — Roger Hilsman
My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anti-colonial movement. — Tom Morello
The colonial power tended to be France or Britain, and the Soviets were proclaimed as anti-imperialists. So, if you align yourself with the Soviets, it fits nicely with that kind of rhetorical division, but in reality it does not get you anywhere. — Nigel Gibson
I am what you might call abstractly anti-capitalist. For instance, I am suspicious of the old leftists who focus all their hatred on the United States. What about Chinese neo-colonialism? Why are the left silent about that? When I say this, it annoys them, of course. Good! — Slavoj Žižek
What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior. — Newt Gingrich
Colonial Times Quotes
We must find new lands from which we can easily obtain raw materials and at the same time exploit the cheap slave labor that is available from the natives of the colonies. The colonies would also provide a dumping ground for the surplus goods produced in our factories. — Cecil Rhodes
We lost the American colonies because we lacked the statesmanship to know the right time and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep. — Elizabeth II
NGOs are dangerous. They do what the missionaries used to do in Colonial times. They are Trojan Horses. The worse the situation, the more the NGOs. — Arundhati Roy
I was never one who was squeamish about nudity. I don't believe in being promiscuous about it, but several times I thought of going to a nudist colony. — Bettie Page
Moss is inconceivably strong. Moss eats stone; scarcely anything, in return, eats moss. Moss dines upon boulders, slowly but devastatingly, in a meal that lasts for centuries. Given enough time, a colony of moss can turn a cliff into gravel, and turn that gravel into topsoil. — Elizabeth Gilbert
Every virile people has established colonial power. All great nations in the fullness of their strength have desired to set their mark upon barbarian lands and those who fail to participate in this great rivalry will play a pitiable role in time to come. — Heinrich von Treitschke
It is the duty of Israeli leaders to explain to public opinion, clearly and courageously, a certain number of facts that are forgotten with time. The first of these is that there is no Zionism, colonialization, or Jewish State without the eviction of the Arabs and the expropriation of their lands. — Ariel Sharon
The more time I spent on the site the more I came to think of Wales as some kind of Queen Ant, letting the vast colony go about its work, at the centre of a system where the knowledge of the community is infinitely larger than the sum of experience of all its individuals. — Jimmy Wales
It was on this day that the Bahamas declared independence. Before that they were a British colony. The British Empire lost Canada and the Bahamas, to name just a couple. Britain's been dumped more times than Taylor Swift. But did they go writing whining songs about it? No. — Craig Ferguson
The present illegitimacy ratio is not only unprecedented in the past two centuries; it is unprecedented, so far as we know, in American history going back to colonial times, and in English history from Tudor times. — Gertrude Himmelfarb
People Writing About Colonialism
More Colonialism Quotes
It is far easier for the proverbial camel to pass through the needle's eye, hump and all, than for an erstwhile colonial administration to give sound and honest counsel of a political nature to its liberated territory. — Kwame Nkrumah
We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice. — Indira Gandhi
The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be. — Frantz Fanon
I am opposed to globalism, I am opposed to colonialism, I am opposed to any sort of complusion of one nation over another. (...) I also deeply believe in human rights. — David Duke
The result of neo-colonialism is that foreign capital is used for the exploitation rather than for the development of the less developed parts of the world. Investment under neo-colonialism increases rather than decreases the gap between the rich and poor countries of the world. — Kwame Nkrumah
Africa is a paradox which illustrates and highlights neo-colonialism . Her earth is rich, yet the products that come from above and below the soil continue to enrich, not Africans predominantly, but groups and individuals who operate to Africa’s impoverishment. — Kwame Nkrumah
You must not deprive the colonies of their right to make laws for themselves. Parliament should only make laws necessary for the empire as a whole. — Thomas Hutchinson
Once vigorous measures appear to be the only means left of bringing the Americans to a due submission to the mother country, the colonies will submit. — George III
That these united colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British crown; and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. — Richard Henry Lee
You can cuss out colonialism, imperialism, and all other kinds of ism, but it's hard for you to cuss that dollarism. When they drop those dollars on you, your soul goes. — Malcolm X
The essence of neo-colonialism is that the State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of international sovereignty. In reality its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from outside. — Kwame Nkrumah
It is essential to our interest and the security of our colonies that the several nations or tribes of Indians... who live under our protection, should not be molested or disturbed. — George III
The peoples of Yugoslavia do not want Fascism. They do not want a totalitarian regime, they do not want to become slaves of the German and Italian financial oligarchy as they never wanted to become reconciled to the semi-colonial dependence imposed on them by the so-called Western democracies after the first imperialist war. — Josip Broz Tito
In order to save the 40,000,000 inhabitants of the United Kingdom from a bloody civil war, we colonial statesmen must acquire new lands to settle the surplus population, to provide new markets. [...] The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. — Cecil Rhodes
The people are divided into more than 200 ethnic groups, of which the largest is the Bantu. There are several hundred languages, but the widespread use of French bridges that gap to a degree. King Leopold of Belgium used it as his personal property from which to steal its natural resources to line his pockets. Belgian colonial rule made the British and French versions look positively benign and was ruthlessly brutal from start to finish, with few attempts to build any sort of infrastructure to help the inhabitants. When the Belgians left in 1960 they left behind little chance of the country holding together. The civil wars began immediately. — Tim Marshall
I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined, that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the play thing of one small corner of the world — Sukarno
India must remain neutral. The West colonized India, funded Pakistan, tried to stop Goa’s reclamation and Bangladesh’s independence, and sanctioned India for going nuclear to defend itself vs China. Everyone’s trading partner, but no one’s trained poodle. Colonialism is over. — Balaji Srinivasan
It is only the ending of capitalism, colonialism, imperialism and neocolonialism and the attainment of world communism that can provide the conditions under which the RACE question can finally be abolished and eliminated. — Kwame Nkrumah
19 years in a maximum security penal colony. The number of years does not matter. I perfectly understand that, like many political prisoners, I am sitting on a life sentence. Where life is measured by the term of my life or the term of life of this regime. The sentencing figure is not for me. It is for you. You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your country of Russia without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves, and scoundrels who have seized power. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist. — Alexei Navalny
Groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIL have garnered what support they have partially because of the humiliation caused by colonialism and then the failure of pan-Arab nationalism — and to an extent the Arab nation state. — Tim Marshall
What we designate modernity was not something natural or automatic. It involved a set of difficult-to-attain attributes – mass production, mass culture, mass politics – that the greatest powers mastered. Those states, in turn, forced other countries to attain modernity as well, or suffer the consequences, including defeat in war and possible colonial conquest. — Stephen Kotkin
The American order reveals a method that was largely the outcome of material necessity, as exemplified by the Colonial style and the grid. — Stephen Gardiner
The Church in the colonies is the white people's Church, the foreigner's Church. She does not call the native to God's ways but to the ways of the white man, of the master, of the oppressor. — Frantz Fanon
Make no mistake; the American Revolution was not fought to obtain freedom, but to preserve the liberties that Americans already had as colonials. Independence was no conscious goal, secretly nurtured in cellar or jungle by bearded conspirators, but a reluctant last resort, to preserve "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." — Samuel Eliot Morison
By size, population, and natural resources, Nigeria is West Africa's most powerful country. It is the continent's most populous nation and is formed from the territory of several ancient kingdoms that the British brought together. Its people have been mismanaged for decades. In colonial times the British preferred to stay in the southwestern area along the coast. Their 'civilizing' mission rarely extended to the highlands of the center, nor up to the Muslim populations in the north, and this half of the country remains less developed than the south. The Islamist group Boko Haram, which wants to establish a caliphate in the Muslim areas, has used the sense of injustice engendered by underdevelopment to gain ground in the North. When the Nigerian military come looking for them, they're operating on home ground and much of the local population will not cooperate with the military either for fear of reprisal or due to a shared resentment of the south. The territory taken by Boko Haram does not yet endanger the existence of the state of Nigeria; but they do pose a daily threat to the people in the north and they damage Nigeria's reputation abroad as a place to do business. — Tim Marshall
The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism. — Leon Trotsky
In the Steven F. Austin Colony, which was the first colony, Texans first established a provisional government in 1835 with the intention of writing a declaration of independence soon after. — Michael McCaul
When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants. — Sakya Pandita
It is necessary to expose the false propaganda of the imperialists and thoroughly dispel the illusion that the imperialists will give up their positions in the colonies and dependent countries with good will. — Kim Il-sung
Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions — Frantz Fanon
When many work together for a goal, Great things may be accomplished. It is said a lion cub was killed By a single colony of ants. — Saskya Pandita
It's a historical phenomenon that in 250 years, a nation could move from a colony into the most prosperous nation of the world and the leader of the world. It is indeed an achievement, a tribute to the talent of the American nation, the American people and an optimal political and economic system. — Vladimir Putin
I won't be a party to a conspiracy to mobilize the Arabs against the Persians. Only the forces of colonialism benefit from such a conspiracy. I won't be a party to a conspiracy that splits Islam into two - Shiite Islam and Sunni Islam - mobilizing Sunni Islam against Shiite Islam. — Muammar al-Gaddafi
It was astonishing that for some considerable distance around the mould growth the staphococcal colonies were undergoing lysis. What had formerly been a well-grown colony was now a faint shadow of its former self...I was sufficiently interested to pursue the subject. — Alexander Fleming
There were four million people in the American Colonies and we had Jefferson and Franklin. Now we have over 200 million and the two top guys are Clinton and Dole. What can you draw from this? Darwin was wrong. — Mort Sahl
... As long as you continue to tar social democracy with all the crimes of communism, I feel equally entitled to tar the free market with the crimes of slavery, segregation, colonialism and genocide; piss me off and I'll add fascism and the Nazis. — Greg Erwin
...the evil system of colonialism and imperialism arose and throve with the enslavement of Negroes and the trade in Negroes, and it will surely come to its end with the complete emancipation of the Black people. — Mao Zedong
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