Haile Selassie

Africa shares with Asia a common background of colonialism, of exploitation, of discrimination, of oppression. At Bandung, African and Asian States dedicated themselves to the liberation of their two continents from foreign domination and affirmed the right of all nations to develop in their own way, free of any external interference.

Provision must be made for the extension of speedy and effective assistance when any African State is threatened with military aggression. We cannot rely solely on international morality.

If a strong government finds that it can, with impunity, destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.

This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults.

The preservation of peace and the guaranteeing of man’s basic freedoms and rights require courage and eternal vigilance: courage to speak and act – and if necessary, to suffer and die – for truth and justice; eternal vigilance, that the least transgression of international morality shall not go undetected and unremedied.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

I attribute whatever I may have been able to accomplish in life far more to my wife than to anything else and to everything else put together. But I cannot flatter myself that I found her because I was a ‘good picker’, I believe profoundly that we are guided, led, in such momentous matters.

Would you believe me if I said you were three shades short of all my favorite hues and that I’ve been trying for years to pick words from my garden throat in attempts to explain to you all the things I can’t explain. Or what if I said I have nothing to say other than I love you in the simplest of ways.

Efficiency is intelligent laziness.

For them that think death’s honesty won’t fall upon them naturally life sometimes must get lonely.

When I went to our American history books to learn how our forefathers harrowed the land, I discovered that the historians knew nothing about harrows. Yet our country has depended more on harrows than on guns or speeches. I thought that a history which excluded harrows, and all the rest of daily life, was bunk. And I think so yet.

I beg you take courage; the brave soul can mend even disaster.

If you keep saying things are going to be bad, you have a chance of being a prophet.

To kill a relative of whom you are tired is something. But to inherit his property afterwards, that is genuine pleasure.

It’s time to start living the life you’ve imagined.

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of witnesses.

Sometimes you have to make the right decision, and sometimes you have to make the decision right.

We want to reproduce all those instruments which were prepared and used in America once upon a time.

Imitate, assimilate and innovate.

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars. You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.