66 Quotes About Conquest

The question as to whether flesh-and-blood people of indigenous ancestry today would have been better off had the Europeans not invaded can scarcely be asked, much less answered, because most flesh-and-blood contemporary American Indians would not exist if the Europeans had not invaded, since they are of European as well as indigenous ancestry. Nature is remarkably uncooperative with our moral categories. There is no way to unscramble an egg.

This time they're making sure they can hold what they take: conquest is always easier than subjugation.

This world is for those who are born to conquer it, Not for those who dream that are able to conquer it, even if they're right.

... Whoever becomes master of a city accustomed to live in freedom and does no destroy it, may reckon on being destroyed by it. For if it should rebel, it can always screen itself under the name of liberty and its ancient laws, which no length of time, nor any benefit conferred will ever cause it to forget; and do what you will, and take what care you may, unless the inhabitants be scattered and dispersed, this name, and the old order of things, will never cease to be remembered...

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, faithful comrade of Hernán Cortes in the conquest of Mexico, wrote that they had arrived in America “to serve God and His Majesty and also to get riches.

In the long run, the fall of one civilization is very much like the fall of another. Only the land remains.

There’s just one thing I want to know.” Julian nodded. “Anything.” “When you peed and had sex outside, it wasn’t at the same time, was it? Because that’d be really nasty.

When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your land by order of his Majesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian.

In the initial stages, when contact between the two peoples might be limited to scouting out the possibilities of invasion, or trading with them for their furs or other produce, there is less need or cause to demean the inhabitants as savages or to regard them as beasts. However, the descriptions are radically different once dispossession becomes the aim or when the natives violently resist the intrusion of explorers.