To evoke another great phrase of the American revolutionary heritage — widely though inconclusively attributed to Thomas Jefferson — the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Such a phrase is merely trite, however, unless we...

In his entire output, I can find only one piece of genuine unfairness: a thuggish attack on the poetry of WH Auden, whom he regarded as a dupe of the Communist Party. But even this...

We can be prisoners together. I am en route to a wretched planet called Tarsonis to assume governorship and as you have no other, more pressing engagement, you are coming with me.

A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.

The year the Europeans seized Jomo Kenyatta (1952), Chepusepa and I were sharing our homestead with Arimo, a Teso, who was a headman of the local road crew. One day, Arimo’s son found an ostrich’s...

We ought not to speak only about the economics of globalization, but about the psychology of globalization. It’s like the psychology of a battered woman being faced with her husband again and being asked to...

As the seemingly well-intentioned French journalist spoke about Africa’s scarcity and its limited resources, Nine smiled to himself almost condescendingly. He considered such statements an absolute joke. Africa did not, nor did it ever have,...

Our effectiveness depends on our capacity to be audacious and astute, clear and appealing. I would hope that we can create a language more fearless and beautiful than that used by conformist writers to greet...

What is history? Any thoughts, Webster?”History is the lies of the victors,’ I replied, a little too quickly.’Yes, I was rather afraid you’d say that. Well, as long as you remember that it is also...

For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life trying to impress the ‘natives,’ and so in every crisis he has got to do what the ‘natives’ expect of him…...

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined, that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the play...

The concept of humanity is an especially useful ideological instrument of imperialist expansion, and in its ethical-humanitarian form it is a specific vehicle of economic imperialism. Here one is reminded of a somewhat modified expression...

The arrogance and brutality of empire are not repealed when they temporarily get deployed in a just cause.

Is everything forbidden us except to fold our arms? Poverty is not written in the stars; under development is not one of God’s mysterious designs.

We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.