Cecil John Rhodes Quotes

To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far.

Of course, every time you have sex, it will not be identical: moods, spaces, times, touches, intentions all drift and mingle, forming new pathways, reflecting and drawing from past journeys, and ending somewhere that may look similar. But isn’t.

among his very few belongings I found a small, green leather-bound booklet given “to Timothy Donald Fuller with the Compliments of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a memento on becoming a citizen of Rhodesia at Umtali on 17th October, 1974.” Inside the pamphlet were a few of the sorts of things meant to inspire Rhodesian citizens onward and upward to greater things. A statue of Cecil John Rhodes, looking gouty; that was page 1.

There are others too. You just can’t run away from Cecil John Rhodes. Not even impepho works for this fucker. It’s hard. We come back home to him, sit in all our classes with him, witness his vices reincarnate in the powers that bring us to still-Grahamstown for our degree. We are there when the protests erupt. Not front and centre, but there. So is he. And when the protests die down he is stronger, a demon that terrorises even in our sleep. Rhodes and a system that molests and cons us into believing we are helpless, that we cannot overcome. But we also try to remember that in protests there is revelation, an exposure of truth, a coming out.

one man who could probably be credited with getting these groups up and running is named Cecil John Rhodes, an alleged 33rd degree

Many of my countrymen, knowing of my close relations with Rhodes, have asked me about the man, and before I could answer, they would begin to describe him to me as a monstrous land grabber, a greedy capitalist, and so on; accusing him of wickedly and cruelly conquering inoffensive natives and of destroying the noble Free Republic of South Africa. Perhaps the easiest and most rational way of replying to such accusations would be to begin to decry Lincoln as the ruthless destroyer of the noble South, or to arraign Marshall for limiting liberty by law, or to blame Monroe for scheming the subjection of South America. If the causing of pain is itself a sin and an evil, then no one should ever have been born. Nations, like human beings, always experience pain at birth. It is a law as immutable as gravity. The conquest of South Africa caused much pain to conquerors and conquered, but from that event came a beautiful new life, a wonderful nation, a flower of civilization where once grew only rank weeds of savagery and ignorance, and the chief credit for that noble result should be given to the prophetic genius and wise efforts of Cecil John Rhodes.