We know God is Haile Selassie, Him Mighty God. Now Him save the poor earth right now, and Him save the people. If it weren't for Haile Selassie, would anyone know Rastafari? No one would know Rastafari. So Haile Selassie save the eart', and true dat dem overthrow 'im. In a sense, all a de people around him was really weird. But just how it go — few people overthrow 'im, but 'im save the whole of the people 'pon the face of the earth.
--
Bob Marley (1978), as quoted in an interview by Jeff CathrowHaile I Selassie
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[Haile Selassie] was 80 years old and a very weak man. We tried our best to save him but we could not keep him.
Mengistu Haile Mariam
The Emperor of Ethiopia has been deposed by a military coup ... Poor Haile Selassie; over the past few years he'd lost control and the inevitable was bound to happen. I remember his attendance at the monarchy celebrations, how he snatched his hand away when I tried to help him from his car, telling me he could manage well enough on his own, thank you very much. Likewise during the recent drought when thousands of his people were dying he refused all HIM's offers of help, denying that anyone was suffering or even that there was a drought. He saw himself as a mighty ruler, but now the truth has caught up with him. At the Shavand Palace today I could think of nothing but Haile Selassie's fate. Inevitably one is inclined to draw parallels ... They are not reassuring ...
Haile I Selassie
When the facts of history are written Haile Selassie of Abyssinia will go down as a great coward who ran away from his country to save his skin and left the millions of his countrymen to struggle through a terrible war that he brought upon them because of his political ignorance and his racial disloyalty... When the war started in Abyssinia all Negro nationalists looked with hope to Haile Selassie. They spoke for him, they prayed for him, they sung for him, they did everything to hold up his hands, as Aaron did for Moses; but whilst the Negro peoples of the world were praying for the success of Abyssinia this little Emperor was undermining the fabric of his own kingdom by playing the fool with white men, having them advising him[,] having them telling him what to do, how to surrender, how to call off the successful thrusts of his Rases against the Italian invaders. Yes, they were telling him how to prepare his flight, and like an imbecilic child he followed every advice and then ultimately ran away from his country to England, leaving his people to be massacred by the Italians, and leaving the serious white world to laugh at every Negro and repeat the charge and snare - "he is incompetent," "we told you so." Indeed Haile Selassie has proved the incompetence of the Negro for political authority, but thank God there are Negroes who realise that Haile Selassie did not represent the truest qualities of the Negro race. How could he, when he wanted to play white? How could he, when he surrounded himself with white influence? How could he, when in a modern world, and in a progressive civilization, he preferred a slave State of black men than a free democratic country where the black citizens could rise to the same opportunities as white citizens in their democracies?
Haile I Selassie
Haile Selassie had surely made many mistakes during his very long tenure, first and foremost his being in a constant limbo between reform and conservatism, without ever having made a definitive decision. But the revolution which toppled him in the name of freedom and progress has revealed itself to be a hundred times worse than his regime; it has caused irreperable damage; has [forced Ethiopia into] a civil war which Haile Selassie had always tried to prevent; it has accelerated rather than halted the disintigration of the country... Whatever the final judgement on Haile Selassie, his image deserves respect and consideration. It's impossible not to feel a sense of great admiration and recognition towards a man who on 30 June 1936, at the Genevan tribune of the League of Nations, denounced the crimes of Fascism to the world and warned that Ethiopia would have been but the first victim of that deathly ideology. For this message, unfortunately unheeded, we are all a bit indebted.
Haile I Selassie
Like twentieth-century Iran, the remnant of the Persian Empire, Ethiopia under Haile Selassie attempted to preserve the absolutist state throught an accommodation with modernizing forces in his own terms without completely subduing traditionalists. This was not a strategy of Haile Selassie's own choosing. Instead, he was overtaken by events and forced to deal with contradictions that were from the very beginning too formidable to be managed in the long term.
Haile I Selassie
Selassie, Haile I, of Ethiopia
Selden, John
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