Fiercer and stronger

(And you won’t teach John Chinaman different by blowing his cities apart with artillery, or trampling his country underfoot. Well, if a footpad knocks you down, or a cannibal eats you, it don’t follow that he’s your superior, does it? Fiercer and stronger, perhaps, but infinitely lower in the scale of creation. That’s how the Chinese think of us — and damn the facts that stare ’em in the face.)

Flashman and the Dragon, pp.16-17, Fontana Paperback edition, 1986.

Tags: Flashman, Flashman quotes, Chinese.

Damned crowded place

My little anthropologist would say it was all the white man’s fault for intruding; no doubt, but by that logic Ur of the Chaldees would be a damned crowded place by now.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.171, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, Ur.

Drains and bottled beer

      You see, it’s the great illusion of our civilization that when the poor heathen saw our steamships and elections and drains and bottled beer, he’d realise what a benighted ass he’d been and come into the fold. But he don’t. Oh, he’ll take what he fancies, and can use (cheap booze and rifles), but not on that account will he think we’re better. He knows different.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.170, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, civilization.

A different mystery on the bestial floor

This twisted morality is almost impossible for white folk to understand; they look for excuses, and say the poor savage don’t know right from wrong. Jack Cremony had the best answer to that: if you think an Apache can’t tell right from wrong—wrong him and see what happens.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.169, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, wrong.

An Apache ponders

Why should the Americanos try to force their law on us? . . . It is because their spirit tells them to spread their law to all people, and they believe their spirit is better than ours.

Flashman and the Redskins, p.167, Pan Books edition, 1983.

Tags:Flashman, Flashman quotes, law.