George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston

The obstacle has been Mackenzie King, the Canadian, who is both obstinate, tiresome and stupid.

Not even a public figure. A man of no experience. And of the utmost insignificance. The utmost insignificance.

[Japan is] a restless and aggressive Power, full of energy, somewhat like the Germans in mentality, seeking in every direction to push out and find an outlet for her ambitions.

The British people realise that they are fighting for the hegemony of the Empire. If necessary we shall continue the war single-handed.

From all parts of the earth we see this great march of the armies, white, yellow, brown, no longer any distinction of colour, all marching to the common centre, all inspired by the same cause, all bent on doing service on the same …

But it does matter to us and to the entire world a great deal that men have been found in this as in earlier and perhaps more virile ages to run great risks for a great idea, to count life itself as dust in the balance compared with …

Never let it be forgotten that the result of the Mutiny was not merely an England victorious, but an India pacified, united, and started once more upon a wondrous career of advance and expansion.

No one believes more firmly than we do that the safety and welfare of India depend on the permanence of British administration.

If I were asked to sum up what were the lessons which Eastern government had given to me, I should say they were these. In the first place, remember always that you are not in India or in any foreign dependency, any more than the Americans …

If I had done nothing else in India I have written my name here, and the letters are a living joy.

Since I came to India we have spent upon repairs at Agra alone a sum of between £40,000 and £50,000. Every rupee has been an offering of reverence to the past and a gift of recovered beauty to the future.

As a pilgrim at the shrine of beauty I have visited them, but as a priest in the temple of duty have I charged myself with their reverent custody and their studious repair.

I have never wavered in a strict and inflexible justice between the two races. It is the sole justification and the only stable foundation for our rule.

Powerful empires existed and flourished here while Englishmen were still wandering painted in the woods, and when the British Colonies were wilderness and jungle; and India has left a deeper mark upon the history, the philosophy, and the …

We are ordained to walk here in the same track together for many a long day to come. You cannot do without us. We should be impotent without you. Let the Englishman and the Indian accept the consecration of a union that is so mysterious as …

[The Indian Empire is] the miracle of the world.

As long as we rule India we are the greatest Power in the world. If we lose it, we shall drop straight away to a third-rate Power.

[The Indian Empire is] the biggest thing that the English are doing anywhere in the world.

Placed at a maritime coign of vantage upon the flank of Asia, precisely analogous to that occupied by Great Britain on the flank of Europe, exercising a powerful influence over the adjoining continent, but not necessarily involved in its …

Such is the street life of Peking, a phantasmagoria of excruciating incident, too bewildering to grasp, too aggressive to acquiesce in, too absorbing to escape.

It is only when you get to see and realise what India is—that she is the strength and the greatness of England—it is only then that you feel that every nerve a man may strain, every energy he may put forward, cannot be devoted to a nobler …

Rightly or wrongly, it appears to me that the continued existence of this country is bound up in the maintenance—aye I will go further and say even in the extension of the British Empire.

I have just been up in the interior of Siam to some amazing ruins, the finest in the world. It is a place called Angkor, and there a race that has since perished came some 1,700 years ago from India, founded a mighty empire and built …

Oh! it has been an amazing tour; all new; Korea, Peking, Tonking, Annam, Cochin China, Cambogia; visits to fading oriental courts; audiences with dragon-robed emperors and kings; long hard rides all the day; vile, sleepless, comfortless …