Colonisers Quotes & Sayings

The problem is that after two centuries of conflict about just who was wanted in the Australian nation the term 'Australia' both includes and excludes. There are still people for whom 'Australian' means predominatly Anglo-Celtic white people whose parents were born here before 'New Australians' came as migrants after the Second World War. A common alternative to 'white people' (who from an Aboriginal perspective might be more genially called 'whitefellas') is 'Europeans'. This makes an incongruous appeal to history. Politically the colonisers were British, but they includes people of many nationalities. It's an odd usage, as when you see a sign in a national park telling you 'Europeans' brought the invasive weeds and pests. They brought the sign and the concept of a park too, and 'they', in a complex sense, are 'us'. — Nicholas Jose

Wild rivers are earth's renegades, defying gravity, dancing to their own tunes, resisting the authority of humans, always chipping away, and eventually always winning. — Richard Bangs

An inordinate love of ritual can be harmful to the soul, unless, of course, in times of great crisis, when ritual can protect the soul from fracture. — Jeff VanderMeer

I've seen some movies where people improvise and will say some bizarre phrase they had heard the other day, and unless it's coming directly from character and the moment they're experiencing and driving the movie forward, then it's always welcome. — Scot Armstrong

In fact all the Islamists, that is the reformists not the Salafis, now they all say that they want a civil state, a civil state with Islamic reference points. They are not talking about an Islamic state, or sharia in the way this was once understood in the fight against the colonisers, or just afterwards in the 70's, 80's and 90's. — Tariq Ramadan

It's not that simple. We're talking about going to Mars. Living on Mars! How can I give up becoming one of the colonisers of another planet? — Rita Carla Francesca Monticelli

Space is a harsh, inhospitable frontier and we are explorers, not colonisers. The skills of our engineers and the technology surrounding us make things appear simple when they are not, and perhaps we forget this sometimes. Better not to forget. — Luca Parmitano

The Jews will become socialist colonisers with strong fists and sharp teeth, a strong national group within the Soviet family of nations. — Mikhail Kalinin

I don't just try to score. The challenge is elevating my teammates to be able to win a championship. — Kobe Bryant

The Maoris, New Zealand's first Sapiens colonisers, reached the islands about 800 years ago. Within a couple of centuries, the majority of the local megafauna was extinct, along with 60 per cent of all bird species. — Yuval Noah Harari

Even though the album is an endangered species, can we try and make a coherent and good one, even if it's like making a horse and cart at a Nascar conference? — Chris Martin

The success in the determination of the high-resolution structures of ribosomal subunits and eventually the whole ribosome was the culmination of decades of effort. — Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

As long as the wetland looks pretty and also attracts ducks from time to time, it is regarded as a complete success. An attractive appearance is fine and is of considerable concern in urban developments.

It is the pretense that such wetlands also create rich habitats which is objectionable, when urban development is the primary cause of loss of diversity in a wide range of ecosystems around cities including wetlands.

The one ecologically positive thing that most created wetlands do a reasonable job of is water treatment, because the limited range of plants likely to survive the semi-toxic soils and waters of newly created wetlands are invariably colonisers that will also use up a wide range of nutrients. — Nick Romanowski

The right of a nation to determine its own form of government does not include the right to establish a slave society (that is, to legalize the enslavement of some men by others). There is no such thing as "the right to enslave." A nation can do it, just as a man can become a criminal- but neither can do it by right. — Ayn Rand

We could not be further from ballooning's established tropes: freedom, spiritual exaltation, human progress. Redon's eternally open eye is deeply unsettling. The eye in the sky; God's security camera. And that lumpish human head invites us to conclude that the colonisation of space doesn't purify the colonisers; all that has happened is that we have brought our sinfulness to a new location. — Julian Barnes