Francisco Luis Gomes (1829 – 1869)
Indo-Portuguese statesman and writer from Goa.
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Cholera and the Thug were born in the same country and in the same year. India is their native land.
Ethics is the science of duties, and it's principles, perceived by reason, and revealed to us by conscience.
Goan contemporaries of Francisco Luís Gomes, like the late Dr. Panduranga S.S. Pissurlencar of our own days were archivists of documents and had little critical work to their credit. Francisco Luís Gomes towered far above these scholars, displaying in his "Marquis the Pombal" in a sufficiently high degree all the qualities that are demanded of a competent historian - zest for truth, objectivity, critical acumen, accuracy and thoroughness.
"The Brahmins are a dynasty and a caste. Brahma is the sun and its rays Brahmins. The Brahmans left the mouth of God as the purest of their verbs, and the Sudras were born from the feet, as the vilest dust. It is not for the sudra or touch the outcast Brahmins, is not given as the roots touch the flowers, or the sole of the foot touching the mouth. The hands that touch the outcast Brahmin in print in him the indelible stamp of hell, the purity of the Brahmin is like the dew drop on the sheet, which only disappears forever when you touch him."
We do not have monarchies by divine right, we do not lack influential and wealthy clergy, we do not want rich families between the crown and the people. What we are looking for is equal rights for the people, and uniform distribution of goods. It is time for democratizing the right to property.
The thinkers or the wise live beyond their death. Theirs is an eternal youth, like trees forever blossoming. I wish to pay my respects to the thinker in him, as well as to the brilliance and immortality in the eternal youth of knowledge.
The most powerful instruments of civilization are two - the Christian religion, and education.
Being a good administrator and a bad politician, Pombal was not always a happy legislator.
To men of liberal principles and to mankind it is perfectly indifferent whether India is called English or Brahmanical; what they cannot consent to is that the domination be exploitation instead of paternal tutelage.
What use is equality in theory and in law, if it does not penetrate into our customs?
Gambling is the contraction of all vices into one.
It is necessary that the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity, eternal in their duration, be universal in their application, that being realized in institutions, law and customs, they spread over the surface of the globe and filter down to it's lowest strata. Only then shall the regeneration of man be accomplished.
I was born in the East Indies, once the cradle of poetry, philosophy and history and now their tomb. I belong to that race which composed the Mahabharata and invented chess. But this nation which made codes of it's poems and formulated politics in a game is no longer alive! It survives imprisoned in it's own country. I asked for India liberty and light; as for myself, more happy than my countrymen, i am free - civis sum.
Portugal converted a portion of India to the Catholic religion with the arms of her soldiers, with the blood of her martyrs, with the miracles of her saints, and with the fires of her Inquisition. Those who were vanquished in this struggle became Christians and Portuguese. England might imitate the example, except as regards force.
It is said that the law of Christ governs European civilization. That is a lie. It shines on it's surface, but does not penetrate to it's entrails.
Law is justice outside its moral source.
All impartial men who are moved by justice and not by racialism want India to be ruled by Indians.
The revolt was the sepoy; the revolution would have been the people; the revolt was revenge; the revolution would have been the Idea; the revolt was the cruel Vishnu; the revolution would have been the mild Shiva.
The biography of a minister is bound to be a work of moral and political importance.
His glory and greatness suffer from the wrongs he did his fellow men and from the methods he employed.
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