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Quotes / The Empire

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"Always remember: kingdoms are good, empires are bad. Kings are often okay, but emperors are evil without exception."

"The Imperium! How mighty its aspect! How far-reaching its boundaries! As one world dies ten more are brought into the fold. Fear us, for we count the lives of planets, not men!"
Cardinal Morius Blate, Ecclesiarch Primus, Warhammer 40,000

"A million worlds. Trillions of lives. Trillions more ways to die."

"And so Abaddon the Despoiler, Supreme Overlord of Chaos, passed through the midst of his servants, not caring whether they lived or died, whether they served him through devotion, so long as they served him first through fear."

"There was once a fine palace, and it sat like a crown of light upon the top of the world.

The Artisan Masters of the many rival Masonic guilds had raised the palace up, block by gilded block, to a statement of unity, regal and unequivocal. After the deary, lightless Age of Strife, the warring tribes and creeds of Terra had been alloyed under one rule and the palace was intended to symbolize that staggering achievement. All the petty dynasts and ethnarchs, all the clan nations and gene septs, all the despots and pan-continental tyrants had been overthrown or annexed. Some, the smartest and most prescient embraced to the bosom of the new rule. Better fealty than the wrath of the warriors in thunder armour.

Better submission than the enmity of the world's new master."
Dark King, Lighting Tower, Warhammer 40,000

"The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering. A world of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons, a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting, three hundred million people all with the same face."

"For insuring the future safety with prospers, the republic organizes afresh. Become the empire of the first choice! This is for the sake of a more safe the society."

"Rule through fear of force rather than force itself."
Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

"Long live the Empire!"
Numerous people, In A Mirror, Darkly

"Others have conquered and ruled; we alone conquer for conquest's sake, and dominate for no other purpose than Domination itself; the name we half-consciously chose for our state is no accident. We, and we alone, have spoken aloud the great secret: that the root function of all human society is the production and reproduction of power - and that power is the ability to compel others to do your will, against theirs. It is end, not means. The purpose of power is power."

"We should share this prosperity with the rest of the world. In our hands is the most successful empire in history. It's time we expanded it."
Fire Lord Sozin, Avatar: The Last Airbender

"It's unthinkable! To act against the Empire?!"

"British policies make the world England, sir."

"Federations, Imperiums. Why do you people feel such a need to align yourselves with monolithic organisations?"
Torat, Star Trek: Voyager, "Counterpoint"

"Just from a PR standpoint, has anyone ever heard of a friendly 'Empire,' a peaceful 'Empire'?"

"Justice being taken away, then, what are kingdoms but great robberies? For what are robberies themselves, but little kingdoms? The band itself is made up of men; it is ruled by the authority of a prince, it is knit together by the pact of the confederacy; the booty is divided by the law agreed on. If, by the admittance of abandoned men, this evil increases to such a degree that it holds places, fixes abodes, takes possession of cities, and subdues peoples, it assumes the more plainly the name of a kingdom, because the reality is now manifestly conferred on it, not by the removal of covetousness, but by the addition of impunity. Indeed, that was an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized. For when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, “What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor."
St. Agustine, The City of God

"I have brought peace, freedom, justice, and security to my new Empire!"

"You can't make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing dozens of eggs beneath your steel boot and then publicly disemboweling the chickens that laid them as a warning to others."
General Tarquin, The Order of the Stick

"And may I ask you, Europeans, what country you have ever raised to better conditions? Wherever you have found weaker races, you have exterminated them by the roots, as it were. You have settled on their lands and they are gone forever. What is the history of your America, your Australia and New Zealand, your Pacific Islands and South Africa? Where are those aboriginal races there today? They are all exterminated, you have killed them outright, as if they were wild beasts. It is only where you have not the power to do so, and there only, that other nations are still alive."
Swami Vivekananda


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