I date the end of the old republic and the birth of the empire to the invention, in the late thirties, of air conditioning. Before air conditioning, Washington was deserted from mid-June to September.... But after air conditioning and the Second World War arrived, more or less at the same time, Congress sits and sits while the presidentsor at least their staffsnever stop making mischief.
Gore Vidal
Trade's proud empire hastes to swift decay.
Samuel Johnson
We plan, we toil, we suffer - in the hope of what? A camel-load of idol's eyes? The title deeds of Radio City? The empire of Asia? A trip to the moon? No, no, no, no. Simply to wake just in time to smell coffee and bacon and eggs.
J.B. Priestly
Providence has given to the French the empire of the land, to the English that of the sea, to the Germans that of--the air!
Thomas Carlyle
To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a wilderness, they call it peace.
Tacitus
The time is almost upon us when a pack-train must wind its way up a graveled highway and turn its bellmare in the pasture of a summer hotel. When that day comes, the pack-train will be dead, the diamond hitch will be merely rope, and Kit Carson and Jim Bridger will be names in a history lesson. And thenceforth the march of empire will be a matter of gasoline and four wheel brakes.
Aldo Leopold
It was luxuries like air conditioning that brought down the Roman Empire. With air conditioning their windows were shut, they couldn't hear the barbarians coming
Garrison Keillor
To steal from a brother or sister is evil. To not steal from the institutions that are the pillars of the Pig Empire is equally immoral.
Abbie Hoffman
America has never been an empire. We may be the only great power in history that had the chance, and refused preferring greatness to power and justice to glory.
George Walker Bush
Insanity is not a distinct and separate empire; our ordinary life borders upon it, and we cross the frontier in some part of our nature.
Henri Taine
The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy
Woodrow Wilson
If (the) empire of superstition and hypocrisy should be overthrown, happy indeed will it be for the world; but if all religion and morality should be overthrown with it, what advantages will be gained? The doctrine of human equality is founded entire
John Adams
Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Gambling houses are temples where the most sordid and turbulent passions contend; there no spectator can be indifferent. A card or a small square of ivory interests more than the loss of an empire, or the ruin of an unoffending group of infants, and their nearest relatives.
Johann Georg von Zimmermann
The foundations of our Empire are now based more firmly than ever! The birth of a Crown Prince shows that the prosperity of the Imperial Household is increasing many times.
Baron Sadao Araki