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Quotes about travel, Africa and the Middle East ... and more

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Travel

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.
Mark Twain

We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.
Jawaharlal Nehru

If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.
James Albert Michener, American writer

The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.
Richard Burton, British geographer and explorer

When preparing to travel, lay out all your clothes and all your money. Then take half the clothes and twice the money.
Susan Heller

Walking ten thousand miles of the world is better than reading ten thousand scrolls.
Chinese Proverb

No road is long with good company.
Turkish proverb

Home is where the heart is, and my heart is wherever I am at the moment.
Liang Shun Yin (Lily Leung), Hong Kong actress

Awise traveller never despises his own country.
William Hazlitt (1778–1830), English writer and philosopher

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.
St. Augustine (354–430)

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.
Aldous Huxley (1894–1963), English writer and philosopher

Once a year go someplace you’ve never been before.
Dalai Lama

I am a passionate traveler, and from the time I was a child, travel formed me as much as my formal education.
David Rockefeller

Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigour.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Roman philosopher and politician

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
André Gide

The best education I have ever received was through travel.
Lisa Ling (American journalist and TV presenter)

I travel light. I think the most important thing is to be in a good mood and enjoy life, wherever you are.
Diane von Fürstenberg, Belgian-American fashion designer     

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.
Gustave Flaubert

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe.
Anatole France

If you wish to travel far and fast, travel light. Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiveness, selfishness and fears.
Cesare Pavese, Italian author

Nullaque mortales praeter sua litora norant.
Mortal men knew nothing beyond their shores.
Publius Ovidius Naso, Roman poet, on the Golden Age of mankind 

Africa and the Middle East

I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself.
Nelson Mandela

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
Nelson Mandela

No nation has the right to make decisions for another nation; no people for another people.
Julius Nyerere, first president of Tanganyika, later Tanzania

He who wears his morality but as his best garment were better naked.
Khalil Gibran, The Prophet

Only when government is grounded in the rule of law – fairly and consistently applied – can society rest on a solid foundation. Leaders must ensure that the rules are respected – that they protect the rights and property of individual citizens. Leaders must also hold themselves to the same rules, the same restraints – never above them.
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General

In Africa today, we recognise that trade and investment, and not aid, are pillars of development.
Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda

Climate change is the pre-eminent geopolitical and economic issue of the 21st century. It rewrites the global equation for development, peace and prosperity.
Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General

The darkest thing about Africa has always been our ignorance of it.
George Kimble, American geographer

The economic systems employed around the world have failed to adequately address poverty and inequality and must change.
Trevor Manuel, South African politician

How people treat their vulnerable says a great deal about their values and culture.
Maya Fisher-French, South African journalist

We are facing a global threat, not just against Arabs or Muslims, but against the entire civilized world.
Queen Rania of Jordan

He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality.
Anwar el-Sadat, President of Egypt (1970–1981)

When I want to understand what is happening today or try to decide what will happen tomorrow, I look back.
Omar Khayyam, Persian poet (1048–1131)

You know, people are too many.
Oginga Odinga, first vice-president of Kenya (1964–1966)

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and building good governance.
Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary-General

Ask me what are my virtues, not about the color of my skin.
Arab proverb

Be sure to have a controversial opinion, and men will talk about you.
Arab proverb

Arrogance is a weed that grows mostly on a dunghill.
Arab proverb

Eat whatever you like, but dress as others do.
Arab proverb

Believe what you see and lay aside what you hear.
Arab proverb

He who has approved of wrongdoing is as guilty as he who has committed it.
Arab proverb

Never tell your friends what your enemy may not hear.
Arab proverb

Don't think you are eloquent just because a fool applauds you.
Arab proverb

The ruin of a nation begins in the homes of its people.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

Evil enters like a needle and spreads like an oak tree.
Ethiopian proverb

An intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend.
Senegalese proverb

Without retaliation, evils would one day become extinct from the world.
Nigerian proverb

One falsehood spoils a thousand truths.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

Money is sharper than a sword.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

There is no medicine to cure hatred.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

No matter how long the winter, spring is sure to follow.
Guinean proverb

He who is bitten by a snake fears a lizard.
Ugandan proverb

A snake at your feet, a stick at your hand.
Ethiopian proverb

When you are rich, you are hated; when you are poor, you are despised.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

Wood already touched by fire is not hard to set alight.
Ashanti proverb (Ghana)

He who plants thorns must never expect to gather roses.
Arab proverb

A sensible enemy is better than a narrow minded friend.
Algerian proverb

He who asks questions, cannot avoid the answers.
Cameroonian proverb

The dog's bark is not might, but fright.
Liberian proverb

The fool speaks, the wise man listens.
Ethiopian proverb

A tree is known by its fruit.
Zulu proverb

A man who has one finger pointing at another has three pointing towards himself.
Nigerian proverb

Never celebrate someone's leaving, until you know who will succeed him.
Arab proverb

 

... and more

Pure, purest humaneness is the substance of religion.
Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, first president of Czechoslovakia (1850–1937)

In its substance, democracy is optimistic and facilitates life which, notwithstanding all its human sufferings, deserves to be lived.
Edvard Beneš, second President of Czechoslovakia (1884–1948)

Happy are the people whose annals are boring to read.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)

Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines.
There is a measure in things and in the end, there are certain limits.
Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Roman poet

Difference engenders hatred.
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle), The Red and the Black (1830)

Speech [was] given to man to hide his thoughts.
Gabriel Malagrida, Italian missionary (1689–1761)

Foolishness and wild fury will over and over again sweep away what centuries of cognition and effort have created.
Lion Feuchtwanger, The Jewess of Toledo

Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.
George Orwell, 1984

Treachery and violence are spears pointed at both ends; they wound those who resort to them worse than their enemies.
Emily Jane Brontë, English novelist

All armed prophets have succeeded and all unarmed ones have failed.
Niccolò Machiavelli  

To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
André Gide, French author

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)     

Quidquid agis, prudenter agas et respice finem.
Whatever you do, do it cautiously, with the outcome in mind.
Gesta Romanorum

He who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.
Niccolò Machiavelli

Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind.
William Wordsworth

People do not lack strength; they lack will.
Victor Hugo
     
I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded.
Simone Weil, French philosopher (1909–1943)

The less men think, the more they talk.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)          

The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolò Machiavelli   

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think. Words are loaded pistols.
Jean-Paul Sartre

If you can keep your head when all about you
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you …,
you´ll be a Man, my son!
Rudyard Kipling (1895)

I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other!
So, because you are lukewarm – neither hot nor cold – I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Book of Revelation, 3:15-16

De omnibus dubitandum.
All is to be doubted.
René Descartes, originally attributed to Aristotle

Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.
John Adams, second president of the U.S.

Depressing view. The lie made into the rule of the world.
Franz Kafka (1915)

We must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart it will only get worse.
Donald J. Trump

“Just imagine the silence, if people talked only what they knew”
Karel Čapek, Czech writer

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.
André Gide, French author

The bond which unites several diverse peoples to a political whole to be firm and lasting, none must have a reason for fearing that it would lose by unification any of its dearest blessings.
František Palacký, Czech historian (1798–1876)

Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
Whatever it is, I fear the Danaans, even bearing gifts.
Publius Vergilius Maro, Roman poet

Nos, nos, dico aperte, consules desumus.
It is we – I say it openly – we consuls, for whom [the republic] lacks.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, Roman statesman

Liberty is the right to do what the law permits.
Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755)

Man can hardly even recognize the devils of his own creation.
Albert Schweitzer

Doubt all but never doubt yourself.
André Gide, French author