Quotes from Jan Smuts

Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

Perhaps it is God's will to lead the people of South Africa through defeat and humiliation to a better future and a brighter day.

History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.

When I look at history, I am a pessimist...but when I look at prehistory, I am an optimist.

Having no human companion I felt a spirit of comradeship for the objects of nature around me. In my childish way I communed with these as with my own soul; they became the sharers of my confidence.

History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.

Nazism ... destroys the very soul of our civilization ... I have not taken the same grave view of Bolshevism, for it never was clear to me that Bolshevism, in spite of its brutalities and cruelties, really threatened the essentials of our ethical civilization. And after all it was a revolution of a semi-barbarous people against a rotten government and an effete church. Nazi-ism in highly cultured Germany is a very different affair.

Some of you will not come back. Some of you will come back maimed. Those of you who do come back will come back changed men. That is war!

The idea that the Natives must all be removed and confined in their own kraals is in my opinion the greatest nonsense I have ever heard.

The intimate rapport with nature is one of the most precious things in life. Nature is indeed very close to us; sometimes closer than hands and feet, of which in truth she is but the extension. The emotional appeal of nature is tremendous, sometimes almost more than one can bear.

...evolution is the gradual development and stratification of progressive series of wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the highest level of spiritual creation.

Democracy, with its promise of international peace, has been no better guarantee against war than the old dynastic rule of kings.

A man is not defeated by his opponents but by himself

What was everybody's business in the end proved to be nobody's business. Each one looked to the other to take the lead, and the aggressorsgot away with it.

When in doubt, do the courageous thing.