British History Quotes

“Hugh le Despencer the Elder was speaking to his son, Hugh le Despencer the Younger. He said, “Son, given that you are effeminate and lack manly qualities, I think that the way for you for you to improve your lot in life is to become the King’s Chamberlain.”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“The Black Prince is entombed at Canterbury Cathedral. His effigy reads: “Such as thou art, sometimes was I, Such as I am, such thou shalt be, I thought little on hour of death, So long as I enjoyed breath, On earth I had great riches, Land, houses, great treasure, Horses money and gold, But now a wretched captive am I, Deep in the ground, lo I lie, My beauty great, is all quite gone, My flesh is wasted to the bone.”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“When speaking to her husband, Isabella replied, Mon tresdoutz coer, (My very sweet heart) please do that and perhaps I shall be able to continue to perform official functions on your behalf!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“She said, “My people of Oxford, you are suffering from the administration of Hugh le Despencer the Elder and his son called Hugh le Despencer the Younger! I have issued warrants for their arrest and bringing to trial for crimes of High Treason against both men and their partner in crime called Edmund Fitzalan! I urge all of you to inform my soldiers of the where-abouts of these men!”
― Michael G. Kramer, Isabella Warrior Queen

“Who said the British empire was gone?! When I travel around the world and see and hear the English language everywhere, I know that the empire on which the sun never sets, is still alive. It never died. It continued to exist, but in a different shape, its language, English, which has become the global language.”
― Mouloud Benzadi

“The Royal Navy had not built its magnificent reputation over the centuries by avoiding battle.”
― Arthur Nicholson, Hostages To Fortune: Winston Churchill And The Loss Of The Prince Of Wales And Repulse

“The heinous misdeeds committed by the empire are no longer privy to debate. It's a known fact, at least to people with some basic brains... Imagine me coming to your home and then declaring myself the guardian of the house while helping myself with all your resources and keeping you as underling - you know, like the pilgrims did to the native Americans. Sucks right! Exactly my point!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Making Britain Civilized: How to Gain Readmission to The Human Race

“Only the poor remained, those who had no money and nowhere else to go. Another governor, more merchants and soldiers would come to take the place of those that left. But the poor always stayed. They always stayed put. And they always stayed poor.”
― Charles Cordell, The Keys of Hell and Death

“Barbarism, thy name is Britain.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“Barbarism, thy name is Britain. In this day and age, if any societal structure is a revolting blot on the fabric of the democratic world, it's not Russia or North Korea, but the not-so-great Britain.

The queen might have been a nice person, I don't know. But when a person is declared the supreme authority (head of state) of an entire people by birth, it's not something to take pride in, rather it's something to be ashamed of.

Britain may mourn the death of the queen as a person, but no land deserves to be called civilized while mourning the death of a monarch. Let me put this into perspective. Almost every week a country celebrates independence from britain - if this doesn't tell you why the monarchy is the antithesis of everything that is civilized, nothing can.

I wonder, they can throw a homeless man in jail for lifting a bread out of hunger, yet the empire walks free, even after raping, pillaging and looting from 90% of the world's countries!

Where is the ICC (International Criminal Court) now, when one monarch after another sits on the throne, wielding the crown jewels encrusted with national treasures stolen from all over the globe!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“When the descendants of a brutish empire continue to represent and maintain the authority of that empire, such descendants do not deserve even an ounce of respect from civilized humans, any more than their ancestors do, let alone be declared head of state. It'd be like respecting a neonazi for advocating for a new confederate America.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Corazon Calamidad: Obedient to None, Oppressive to None

“[W]hen we kill people,’ a British sea-captain says in the Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies, ‘we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretence of virtue, I promise you, that will never be forgiven by history.’ I cannot presume to write on behalf of history, but as an Indian, I find it far easier to forgive than to forget.”
― Shashi Tharoor, An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India

“Between the early 1600s and the 1950s, more than 20 million people left the British Isles to begin new lives across the seas. Only a minority ever returned. No other country in the world came close to exporting so many of its inhabitants.”
― Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World

“Britain may have a few things to take pride in, Conan Doyle and Doctor Who to name a few - but colonialism is not one of them.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Vande Vasudhaivam: 100 Sonnets for Our Planetary Pueblo

“There's not one but two UKs -
one is United Kingdom,
where animals worship a king,
another is United Kin-dom,
where humans live as kin.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“When the second stage of Stonehenge was built on Salisbury Plain c. 2700 BC, it could not have been called Stonehenge, which is an English name. The English had not yet arrived. The English language had not been invented. The Plain would have been there; but it could not have been named after Salisbury, since Salisbury itself had not been founded. One may deduce that a year equivalent to 2700 BC once existed; but no such date could have been conceived before the birth of Christ or the concept of a Common Era. There was no country called 'France', and nothing equivalent to it; there was no 'England', and there was no 'Britain', and no 'Brittany'. As yet, there were no Ancient Gauls, no Ancient Britons, and no Ancient Bretons. This holds good even if each of those later communities would owe much to the gene pool of their unidentifiable predecessors.”
― Norman Davies, The Isles: A History

“Better britain begins with a better brit, an inclusive brit, a decolonized brit - a brit who knows no king and queen - a brit who celebrates no tomfoolery of coronation - a brit who knows but one race, the human race - a brit who knows but one religion, love - a brit who knows but one tradition, integration.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“Monarchy is the british equivalent of the confederacy. Those who identify with it, can't live without it, but those who are humans, know the inhumanity it represents.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Bulletproof Backbone: Injustice Not Allowed on My Watch

“The highest eulogy which can be pronounced on the revolution of 1688 is this, that it was our last revolution. Several generations have now passed away since any wise and patriotic Englishman has meditated resistance to the established government. In all honest and reflecting minds there is a conviction, daily strengthened by experience, that the means of effecting every improvement which the constitution requires may be found within the constitution itself.”
― Thomas Babington Macaulay

“He's a very charming person - very warm and very friendly...I admire the way he interacts with people. That, to me, speaks to the measure of our King.”
― Robert Hardman, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story.

“Carry on Up The Tower (The Sonnet)

British museum is not a repository of relics,
it's a time capsule of british barbarism.
It's a classic case of cannibalism, narcissism,
kleptomania and psychopathy combined in one.

Tower of London is not a heritage site,
it's the Bedlam of the british.
The title of "heritage site" belongs
to memories of pride, not primitives.

Buckingham palace is not a noble home,
it's the national zoo of England,
where they coddle massacre 'n stagnation,
with no civil initiative for atonement.

Nobility of blood is nobility of the jungle,
modern nobility involves substance of character,
whose identity isn't anchored in transgressions,
bloodline defines chimps, humans by behavior.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“British museum is not a repository of relics, it's a time capsule of british barbarism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“British museum is not a repository of relics, it's a time capsule of british barbarism. It's a classic case of cannibalism, narcissism, kleptomania and psychopathy combined in one.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Tower of London is not a heritage site, it's the Bedlam of the british.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“Buckingham palace is not a noble home, it's the national zoo of England, where they coddle massacre 'n stagnation, with no civil initiative for atonement.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Brit Actually: Nursery Rhymes of Reparations

“British colonial disdain for human rights even left its mark on the English language. The word “coolie” was borrowed from a Chinese word that literally means “bitter labor.” The Romanized first syllable coo means “bitter” and the second syllable lie mimics the pronunciation of the Chinese logograph that means “labor.”

This Chinese word sprang into existence shortly after the Opium War in the nineteenth century when Britain annexed several territories along the eastern seaboard of China. Those territories included Hong Kong, parts of Shanghai, Canton city (Guangzhou) and parts of Tianjin, a seaport near Beijing.

In those newly acquired territories, the British employed a vast number of manual laborers who served as beasts of burden on the waterfront in factories and at train stations. The coolies’ compensation was opium, not money.

The British agency and officers that conceived this unusual scheme of compensation—opium for back-breaking hard labor—were as pernicious and ruthless as they were clever and calculating. Opium is a palliative drug. An addict becomes docile and inured to pain. He has no appetite and only craves the next fix. In the British colonies and concessions, the colonizers, by paying opium to the laborers for their long hours of inhumane, harsh labor, created a situation in which the Chinese laborers toiled obediently and never complained about the excessive workload or the physical devastation. Most important of all, the practice cost the employers next to nothing to feed and house the laborers, since opium suppressed the appetite of the addicts and made them oblivious to pain and discomfort. What could be better or more expedient for the British colonialists whose goal was to make a quick fortune?

They had invented the most efficient and effective way to accumulate capital at a negligible cost in a colony. The only consequence was the loss of lives among the colonial subjects—an irrelevant issue to the colonialists.

In addition to the advantages of this colonial practice, the British paid a pittance for the opium. In those days, opium was mostly produced in another British colony, Burma, not far from China. The exploitation of farmhands in one colony lubricated the wheels of commerce in another colony. On average, a coolie survived only a few months of the grim regime of harsh labor and opium addiction. Towards the end, as his body began to break down from malnutrition and overexertion, he was prone to cardiac arrest and sudden death. If, before his death, a coolie stumbled and hurt his back or broke a limb, he became unemployed. The employer simply recruited a replacement.

The death of coolies in Canton, Hong Kong, Shanghai and other coastal cities where the British had established their extraterritorial jurisdiction during the late 19th century was so common that the Chinese accepted the phenomenon as a routine matter of semi-colonial life. Neither injury nor death of a coolie triggered any compensation to his family.

The impoverished Chinese accepted injury and sudden death as part of the occupational hazard of a coolie, the “bitter labor.” “Bitter” because the labor and the opium sucked the life out of a laborer in a short span of time.

Once, a 19th-century British colonial officer, commenting on the sudden death syndrome among the coolies, remarked casually in his Queen’s English, “Yes, it is unfortunate, but the coolies are Chinese, and by God, there are so many of them.” Today, the word “coolie” remains in the English language, designating an over-exploited or abused unskilled laborer.”
― Charles N. Li, The Turbulent Sea: Passage to a New World

“Matthew Hopkins: Witchfinder General (1645 – 1647) by Stewart Stafford

‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live’ – Exodus,
Nor allow legalised killing too cheaply,
Twenty shillings of blood money per witch,
A charlatan’s extortion for ‘cleansing.’

Witchcraft, the capital crime of the age,
Lawyer Hopkins, parasitising laws,
Self-appointed Witchfinder General,
A reign of terror brought to God-fearing doors.

Evildoing’s hunter was its embodiment;
A Judas purse wed brutality’s handmaiden,
With Stearne, stoked Essex witch hunt mania,
Puritanical zeal’s sadistic cruelty.

His victims were cast into dungeon pits;
Bloodied and broken in outcast desperation;
Disease helped some cheat the hangman;
The only fortune anyone deemed fair.

Extracting confessions through torture’s pain;
Their skin pricked to find Satan’s mark,
Victims, forced to run until collapse,
Sleepless starvation hastened their bleak end.

Then to the wicked ducking stool gauntlet,
Lowered into muddy ditches or icy water,
A survivor’s noose or drowned exoneration?
None met the Witchfinder’s imperious eyes.

“I, John Lowes, a minister of God,
Was martyred so. Hopkins, thou pestilent knave!
Bade me to run, held aloft by mocking hands,
Funeral rites as I dug mine own grave.”

Sensing his gaslit flames turn back on him,
Hopkins went to ground with his ill-gotten gains,
Slowly he faded, from infamous to obscure,
Scars linger on 300 unmarked graves.

Some say that Hopkins was executed as a witch,
Or faced a tubercular end in his village,
Where he is buried, no one knows or cares,
Hexed in a barren field for karmic tillage.

Rat-catcher to an imagined pestilence,
Communities, not covens, he did churn,
A toxic chalice for New World lips,
Fanning Salem’s pernicious turn.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“He's so clear about who he is and what he stands for. Joshua doesn't try to prove anything or seek confirmation.. His parents must have adored him. That kind of confidence only comes with unconditional love.”
― Hannah Rothschild, House of Trelawney

“یک درباری بخت برگشته به نام سر جان پوکرینگ یک بادبزن ابریشمی الماس نشان، چند قطعه جواهر، لباسی بسیار فاخر و یک ساز بی نهایت استثنایی (به نام ویرجینیال) به الیزابت تقدیم کرد و بعد هنگام خوردن شام دید که علیاحضرت از قاشق چنگال و نمکدان نقره خوشش آمد و تعریف کرد و بدون کلمه ای، آنها را در کیف دستی سلطنتی انداخت.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life

“زندگی سخت بود. در سراسر قرون وسطی قسمت قابل توجهی از هر زندگی صرف تلاش برای زنده ماندن می شد. وقتی در سالی محصول کم بود، همچنان که به طور متوسط یک سال در هر چهارسال چنین بود، گرسنگی در پیش بود. وقتی در سالی محصول کافی برداشت نمی شد، گرسنگی قطعی حتمی بود.”
― Bill Bryson, At Home: A Short History of Private Life