Tafari Makonnen, Haile Selassie’s original name, was born on July 23, 1892 and died on August 27, 1975. From 1930 to 1974, he ruled Ethiopia as Emperor. Haile Selassie is widely regarded as a pivotal character in modern Ethiopian history, as well as a key figure in Rastafari, a religious movement in Jamaica that emerged shortly after he became Emperor in the 1930s.
30 Haile Selassie Quotes
Here are Haile Selassie Quotes I have chosen and thoroughly researched.
- “That generation is fortunate indeed which learns from other than its own bitter experience.”
2. “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.”
3. “Leadership does not mean domination. The world is always well supplied with people who wish to rule and dominate others. The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.”
4. “We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”
5. “History teaches us that unity is strength, and cautions us to submerge and overcome our differences in the quest for common goals, to strive, with all our combined strength, for the path to true African brotherhood and unity.”
6. “Education is a means of sharpening the mind of man both spiritually and intellectually. It is a two-edged sword that can be used either for the progress of mankind or for its destruction. That is why it has been Our constant desire and endeavor to develop our education for the benefit of mankind.”
7. “An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans.”
8. “We must become bigger than we have been: more courageous, greater in spirit, larger in outlook. We must become members of a new race, overcoming petty prejudice, owing our ultimate allegiance not to nations but to our fellow men within the human community.”
9. “For it is true that Our Lord the Creator sends us into the world as equals, but it is also true that when one is born one is neither rich nor poor. One is naked. It is later on that one becomes rich or poor, according to one’s drive.”
10. “It is much easier to show compassions to animals. They are never wicked.”
11. “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.”
12. “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.”
13. “We have said that whoever doesn’t work because he doesn’t want to is poor. We have said wealth has to be gained through hard work. We have said those who don’t work starve.”
14. “The nations of Africa, as is true of every continent of the world, from time to time dispute among themselves. These quarrels must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”
15. “We all wish to live. We all seek a world in which men are freed of the burdens of ignorance, poverty, hunger and disease. And we shall all be hard-pressed to escape the deadly rain of nuclear fall-out should catastrophe overtake us.”
Also Read – Kofi Annan Quotes
More Haile Selassie Quotes
16. “Young people will be young people. You can’t change the uncouth manners of the young.”
17. “We have before us the examples of the U.S.A. and the U.S.S.R. We must remember how long these required to achieve their union. When a solid foundation is laid, if the mason is able and his materials good, a strong house can be built.”
18. “This world was not created piecemeal. Africa was born no later and no earlier than any other geographical area on this globe. Africans, no more and no less than other men, possess all human attributes, talents and deficiencies, virtues and faults.”
19. “It is for the head of the state to show the young which path to tread and to punish them when they revolt against authority. It is up to us.”
20. “Provision must be made for the extension of speedy and effective assistance when any African State is threatened with military aggression. We cannot rely solely on international morality.”
21. “Besides, one should consider the interests of a nation before subverting it with words. Democracy is necessary in some cases and We believe some African peoples might adopt it. But in other cases it is harmful, a mistake.”
22. “Any who may wish to profit himself alone from the knowledge given him, rather than serve others through the knowledge he has gained from learning, is betraying knowledge and rendering it worthless.”
23. “It’s hard to feel indulgent to human beings.”
24. “A king must never regret the use of force. Painful necessities are still necessities and a king must not stop when he is faced with them. Not even when they hurt him. We have never been afraid to be harsh: It is the king knows what’s best for the people, the people themselves don’t know it.”
25. “Mahatma Gandhi will always be remembered as long as free men and those who love freedom and justice live.”
26. “As regards punishment, for instance. We must apply what Our conscience dictates, nothing more. And We never suffer when We inflict punishment be- cause We believe in that punishment, We trust Our judgment completely. So it must be and so it is.”
27. “Ethiopia has existed for 3,000 years. In fact, it exists ever since man first appeared on earth. My dynasty has ruled ever since the Queen of Sheba met King Solomon and a son was born of their union.”
28. “He [Mussolini] is dead and what purpose is served by passing judgment on the dead? Death changes everything, sweeps everything away. Even mistakes. We dislike mentioning hatred or scorn in connection with a man who is no longer able to answer us.”
29. “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.”
30. “Thousands of years ago, civilizations flourished in Africa which suffer not at all by comparison with those of other continents. In those centuries, Africans were politically free and economically independent. Their social patterns were their own and their cultures truly indigenous.”
31. “Peace demands the united efforts of us all. Who can foresee what spark might ignite the fuse?”
32. “It is no less important that we know whence we came. An awareness of our past is essential to the establishment of our personality and our identity as Africans”. —Speech, “Towards African Unity”
33. “I have lived too long to cherish many illusions about the essential high-mindedness of men when brought into stark confrontation with the issue of control over their security, and their property interests.”
34. “Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.”
35. “Men on other parts of this earth occupied themselves with their own concerns and, in their conceit, proclaimed that the world began and ended at their horizons. All unknown to them, Africa developed in its own pattern, growing in its own life and, in the nineteenth century, finally re-emerged into the world’s consciousness”.
36. “We have finished the job, what shall we do with the tools?”
37. “The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement”. — Interview in The Voice of Ethiopia (5 April 1948).
38. “Do not worship me, I am not God. I’m only a man. I worship Jesus Christ.”
39. “The commentators of 1963 speak, in discussing Africa, of the Monrovia States, the Brazzaville Group, the Casablanca Powers, of these and many more. Let us put an end to these terms. What we require is a single African organisation through which Africa’s single voice may be heard, within which Africa’s problems may be studied and resolved.”
40. “The Charter of the United Nations expresses the noblest aspirations of man: abjuration of force in the settlement of disputes between states; the assurance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion; the safeguarding of international peace and security.”
41. “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.”
Additional Read: Haile Selassie, last emperor of Ethiopia and architect of modern Africa
Haile Selassie tried to modernize Ethiopia by implementing a number of political and social changes, including the adoption of the country’s first written constitution in 1931 and the abolition of slavery. During the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, Haile commanded the unsuccessful resistance to defend Ethiopia and spent most of the period of the Italian occupation in exile in England. After the East African campaign, he returned to Ethiopia in 1941.
Ethiopia became a founding member of the United Nations as a result of Haile Selassie’s internationalist views. He was the first chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, the forerunner of the African Union, which was formed in 1963. In 1974, he was ousted in a military coup by the Derg, a Marxist–Leninist junta. On August 27, 1975, Haile Selassie was assassinated.
My favorite Haile Selassie Quotes are “Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph.” and “It is much easier to show compassions to animals. They are never wicked.”
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