Great Britain has lost an Empire and not yet found a role. The attempt to playa separate power roleöthat is, a role apart from Europe, based on a special relationship with the United States, on being the head of the Commonwealthöis about to be played out. Her Majesty's Government is now attempting, wisely in my opinion, to re-enter Europe.

-Acheson, Dean Gooderham
  Speech at West Point military academy, 5 Dec.  According to the NewYork Times, 23 Nov1969, Prime Minister Harold Wilson later countered,'Mr  Acheson is a distinguished figure who has lost a State Department and not yet found himself a role'.

The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  New Atlantis (published posthumously,1627).

The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Of Solomon's House, the centre of Bacon's scientific utopia. New Atlantis (published1627).

A great empire and little mindsgo ill together.

-Burke, Edmund
  On Conciliation with  America.

The loss of India would mark and consummate the downfall of the British Empire. That great organism would pass at a stroke out of life into history.From such a catastrophe there could be no recovery.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Speech to the Indian Empire Society, London,12 Dec.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: 'This was their finest hour.'

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Speech,18  Jun. Quoted in  A  J P  Taylor English History 1914^45, p.491.

Commanders and senior officers should die with troops. The honour of the British Empire and the British Army is at stake.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Telegram to Wavell, the commander in chief of armed forces in Singapore,10 Feb, after being told that a  Japanese victory was inevitable. Recalled in The Second World War, vol.4 (1951).

I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire.

-Churchill, Lord Randolph Henry Spencer
  Speech at the Mansion House, London,10 Nov.

It is scarcely hyperbole to say that tomorrow the whole Moghul Empire is in our power.

-Clive, Robert, 1st Baron of Plassey
  Letter, 24  Jun, following victory at Plassey the previous day.

Hobo-trekkers that forever search An empire wilderness of freight and rails.

-Crane, (Harold) Hart
  The Bridge,'The River'.

   The trouble with Freud is that he never had to play the old Glasgow Empire on a Saturday night after Rangers and Celtic had both lost.

-Dodd, Ken(neth)
  Television interview, discussing Freud's theory of catharsis through laughter, whereby jokes produce a feeling of elation.

London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained.

-Doyle, SirArthur Conan
  A Study in Scarlet, ch.1.

All empire is no more than power in trust.

-Dryden,John
Absalom and  Achitophel, pt.1, l.411.

How beautiful the Republic wasöunder the Empire.

-Durranc, Edouard
Quoted in Edgar Holt  The Tiger: The Life of Georges Clemenceau 1841^1929 (1976).

These somewhat troublesome days when the great Mother Empire stands splendidly isolated in Europe.

-Foster, Sir George
  Speech in the House of Commons,16  Jan. The Times reported the speech under the heading of 'Splendid Isolation', 22  Jan.

The British Empire has advanced to a new conception of autonomyand freedom, to the idea of a system of British nations, each freely ordering its own individual life, but bound together in unity byallegiance to one Crown, and co-operating in all that concerns the common weal.

-GeorgeVI
  Opening, as Duke ofYork, the first  Australian Parliament to assemble in Canberra, 9 May.

Do you know out of what the German Empire arose? Out of dreams, songs, fantasies and black-red-gold ribbons† Bismarck merely shook the tree that fantasies had planted.

-Herzl,Theodor
Quoted in Carl E Schorske Fin-de-Sie' c le Vienna (1961), p.165.

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.

-Hughes,William Morris
  Speech, Melbourne.

   While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire.

-Jeffers, (John) Robinson
  Tamar and Other Poems,'Shine, Perishing Republic'.

He resolved to lead Britain and her fading empire in one last great struggle†to arm the nation, not only with weapons but also with the mace of honor, creating in every English breast a soul beneath the ribs of death. 544

-Manchester,William Raymond
  Of  Winston Churchill. The Last Lion.