Haile Selassie

Peace is a day-to-day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an ‘is,’ it is a ‘becoming’.

History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.

The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.

The commentators of 1963 speak, in discussing Africa, of the Monrovia States, the Brazzaville Group, the Casablanca Powers, of these and many more. Let us put an end to these terms. What we require is a single African organisation through which Africa’s single voice may be heard, within which Africa’s problems may be studied and resolved.

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.

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.

Anyone can do something when they want to do it. Really successful people do things when they don’t want to do it.

Many people are busy trying to find better ways of doing things that should not have to be done at all. There is no progress in merely finding a better way to do a useless thing.

I know the look of an apple that is roasting and sizzling on the hearth on a winter’s evening, and I know the comfort that comes of eating it hot, along with some sugar and a drench of cream… I know how the nuts taken in conjunction with winter apples, cider, and doughnuts, make old people’s tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

We are here for experience, and experience is a preparation to know the Truth when we meet it.

Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people.

It takes an enemy and a friend, working together, to hurt you to the heart. The one to slander you, and the other to get the news to you.

Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

If you foul up, tell the President and correct it fast. Delay only compounds mistakes.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.