Haile Selassie

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.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

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.

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’.

Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse?

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.

Life, as I see it, is not a location, but a journey. Life flows.

The most closely organized groups and movements in the world are those which have been the least friendly to the people’s progress and liberty.

She isn’t the sunrise, she’s the f**king sun.

Buy what thou hast no Need of and ere long thou shalt sell thy Necessaries.

A timid person is frightened before a danger, a coward during the time, and a courageous person afterward.

I have some wonderful friends from the Mideast that are as red, white and blue as anybody you know, that have been harassed, and I think it’s a terrible, terrible thing.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

If you want to change the world, start with the next person who comes to you in need.

I don’t read history. That’s in the past. I’m thinking of the future.

“He who angers you, conquers you.” – Elizabeth Kenny

If a girl have beef with me, she gon’ have beef with me forever.

Tomorrow is often the busiest day of the week.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It is the funniest joke in the world.

When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.