The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable.
--
As quoted in Asadollah Alam (1991), The Shah and I: The Confidential Diary of Iran's Royal Court, 1968-77, page 262Muhammad Reza Pahlavi
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Propaganda is not French, it is not civilized to want other people to believe what you believe because the essence of being civilised is to possess yourself as you are, and if you possess yourself as you are you of course cannot possess any one else, it is not your business.
Gertrude Stein
From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation. The feelings of human nature revolt against the supposition of a state so situated as that it may not in any emergency provide against dangers which perhaps threaten immediate ruin. While those bodies are in existence to whom the people have delegated the powers of legislation, they alone possess and may exercise those powers; but when they are dissolved by the lopping off one or more of their branches, the power reverts to the people, who may exercise it to unlimited extent, either assembling together in person, sending deputies, or in any other way they may think proper.
Thomas Jefferson
There is not a negro from the coast of Africa who does not, in this respect, possess a degree of magnanimity which the soul of his sordid master is too often scarce capable of conceiving. Fortune never exerted more cruelly her empire over mankind, than when she subjected those nations of heroes to the refuse of the jails of Europe, to wretches who possess the virtues neither of the countries which they come from, nor of those which they go to, and whose levity, brutality, and baseness, so justly expose them to the contempt of the vanquished.
Adam Smith
We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Samuel Langhorne (Mark Twain) Clemens
We are always anxious to be distinguished for a talent which we do not possess than to be praised for the fifteen which we do possess.
Mark Twain
Pahlavi, Muhammad Reza
Pahlavi, Reza Shah
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