Conquests and Cultures Quotes

“Freedom must be distinguished from democracy, with which it is often confused.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“When the British invaders confronted the Iroquois on the east coast of North America, the British were able to draw upon technology, science, and other cultural developments from China, India, and Egypt, not to mention various other peoples from continental Europe. But the Iroquois could not draw upon the cultural developments of the Aztecs or Incas, who remained unknown to them, though located only a fraction of the distance away as China is from Britain. While the immediate confrontation was between the British settlers and the Iroquois, the cultural resources mobilized on one side represented many more cultures from many more societies around the world. It was by no means a question of the genetic or even cultural superiority of the British by themselves, as compared to the Iroquois, for the British were by no means by themselves. They had the advantage of centuries of cultural diffusion from numerous sources, scattered over thousands of miles.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Epithets like "fascist" and "imperialist stooge" became common currency, along with unbridled expressions of tribal chauvinism.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Much as the withdrawal of Roman rule from Britain led to widespread retrogressions, so in many parts of Africa the departure of the European rulers was followed by technological breakdowns, failing economies, and political chaos.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“The ending of the slave trade was one of many European policies
imposed upon Africa by the conquerors.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“opportunity alone is not sufficient for economic or other accomplishments.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“It would be hard to find anywhere in history a record of any other country going to such efforts, for so long, in a cause from which it could gain so little and lose so much.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Among the precepts that Andrew Jackson's mother taught him were never to sue anybody for slander or for assault and battery: "Always settle them cases yourself.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Japan, newly emerging on the world scene in the late nineteenth century, sought its science and engineering in Scotland.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“By the late eighteenth century, the lowlands of Scotland had developed the most extensive system of education
in”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“it collides head-on with more widely accepted visions in which the fates of minority groups are determined by “society” around them, which society is therefore both causally and morally responsible for the misfortunes peculiar to the less fortunate of these groups—though apparently not responsible for the good fortune of the more successful minority groups. This trilogy also collides head-on with prevailing”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“it collides head-on with more widely accepted visions in which the fates of minority groups are determined by “society” around them, which society is therefore both causally and morally responsible for the misfortunes peculiar to the less fortunate of these groups—though apparently not responsible for the good fortune of the more successful minority groups.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Racism” as a blanket explanation of intergroup differences is not simply an over-rated explanation. It is itself a positive hindrance to a focus on the acquisition of the human capital or cultural capital needed to rise economically and socially. If there is any central theme that emerges from the histories examined in these three volumes, it is that the cultural capital of a people is crucial to their economic and social advancement, whether that people is a racial minority, a nationstate, or a whole civilization. In some cases, the factors inhibiting the development of this human capital have been geographical or historical. But they need not include self-inflicted ideologies or ideologies congenial to sympathetic outsiders, whose sympathies may prove to be more of a handicap than the hostility of others.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“There has been so much racism in the full sense of open animosity toward particular groups, combined with dogmatic beliefs that there is a fixed ceiling to their intellectual or other development, that the term is weakened, rather than strengthened, when it is applied sweepingly to people who have neither animosity nor a claim that some invisible ceiling dooms a whole race to be hewers of wood and drawers of water.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“What was said of Romania's institutions of higher education between the two World Wars—that they were "numerically swollen, academically rather lax, and politically overheated," as well as "veritable incubators of surplus bureaucrats, politicians, and demagogues"56—could be said of such institutions in other nations in Eastern and Southeastern Europe during that era and in various nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in later times.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Quibbles about the fact that some other European explorers touched the hemisphere earlier, or that the Indians knew it was here all along, trivialize this turning point in the history of the world.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Thousands of people were killed in the Baltic republics. Byelorussians during the 1980s discovered mass graves of people killed during Stalin's purges of the 1930s. During the Second World War, there were mass deportations of whole peoples to the hinterlands—the Volga Germans and the Tatars—for actual or suspected disloyalty, and millions were killed in an artificially produced famine in the Ukraine during the 1930s. Systematic campaigns of destruction of elites in newly conquered territories in Eastern Europe began during the Second World War, when the Soviets massacred more than 14,000 Polish officers in the Katyn forest and elsewhere.260 Those arrested and deported from Poland ran into the hundreds of thousands, perhaps more than a million. Even in the small Baltic nations, the people deported ran into the hundreds of thousands—again, concentrating on elites with the potential for resistance.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“The pattern, as well as magnitude, of foreign economic activity in Russia provides clues to the sources of Russian economic backwardness. The foreigners specialized in providing what the Russians most lacked—technical and scientific skills, efficient and honest management and, to a secondary extent, capital. Russian managers were notorious for their inefficiency and corruption. A French observer in 1904 referred to "the extraordinary waste—to be polite—that reigns among Russian administrators."210 Even after trained Russians began to emerge over the years into increasingly responsible positions, foreign firms were careful not to use Russian accountants.211 This business corruption mirrored a pervasive corruption in the czarist government,212 which was by no means stamped out under the Communists213 or in the post-Soviet era.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“The numbers of people enslaved within Africa itself exceeded the numbers exported. History has largely forgotten them.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Even during its earlier good years, when observers spoke of the Ivory Coast's economic "miracle," it was not a completely free-market economy. Even then, its ventures into the kinds of state regulation engaged in more widely by other African nations had not had good results. For example, the availability of "soft" foreign aid loans for centralized government planning of rice production led the Ivory Coast into policies that produced a glut of heavily subsidized rice that taxed the storage capacity of the government, cost the national budget far more than originally planned, and led to consumer prices far above those at which rice was available on the world market.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“As President of Tanzania, Julius Nyerere became known internationally for his lofty goals and humanitarian statements that caused him to be called "the conscience of Africa." At home, he tried to impose his vision of an egalitarian, socialist society by authoritarian methods. By government edict, a majority of Tanzania's population was grouped into villages, whether they wanted to be or not.231 As with so many other communal agricultural schemes in various nations and eras, those in Tanzania led to people's doing as little work as possible on the communal crop and as much as possible on their own individual plots.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“As world prices fell during the Great Depression, the poll tax imposed on Africans remained the same in money terms, which is to say, it increased in real terms. To ensure the payment of this tax, the colonial official pressured African farmers into growing larger export crops, even at the expense of food. Thus Africans had to depend on government famine relief when local food crops were disappointing.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“As Churchill predicted, the full might and fury of the Nazis were turned on Britain. The dreaded massive bombing of the Luftwaffe, which had terrorized other nations into surrender, failed to break the British. Hitler was stopped for the first time. Britain, though lacking the military forces to launch a major counter-attack, nevertheless stalled the Nazi timetable of conquest, thus buying time, not only for itself but also for an almost completely disarmed United States to begin preparing itself militarily for the ordeal ahead. Many nations, forces, and events contributed to the final victory over Germany and Japan. But what made it all possible was that Britain withstood the fire and blast of war and refused to surrender, even when the situation looked hopeless. It was indeed their finest hour. Freedom survives in the world today because of it.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Not all former British colonies established or preserved British governmental structures or principles, or the freedom based on them. But the line of demarcation between those that did and those that did not largely coincided with the line between free people and those living under various forms of despotism.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“The fervor for establishing public schools in Massachusetts found no counterpart in Virginia, where illiteracy was much higher and education was largely restricted to those wealthy enough to afford to have their own children educated at home by tutors. In Virginia, the printing press was deliberately restricted by the powers that be, to keep reading matter from the masses, while the aristocracy often had impressive libraries in their homes.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“Given this background, it can hardly be surprising that hard drinking and the ruthless fighting called "rough and tumble," (which included biting off ears or noses and gouging out eyes) became hallmarks of the Southern backcountry way of life. Nor did it take much to get fighting started among these people, for "even in their poverty they carried themselves with a fierce and stubborn pride that warned others to treat them with respect."372 Vigilante movements were another facet of their violent pattern, and the name "lynch law" has been traced to one of their number named William Lynch, whose followers often flogged and sometimes killed their victims.373 These patterns continued long after Lynch's death in 1820, with most victims being white until the Reconstruction era in the South after the Civil War, when blacks became the main targets.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“From the flourishing trade center of Zanzibar, whose leading trade items were ivory and African slaves, the Arabs began to conquer parts of coastal East Africa.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“The tsetse fly infests more than half the mainland,"' making cattle and draft animals impracticable in the infected regions.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“A Yoruba governor, defeated through vote fraud, was later found by a court to have won in fact by a million votes.”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History

“were now not only affluent themselves but were also able to help family members-hut only so long as they stayed in office.'-”
― Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures: An International History