Haile Selassie

“ Higher Education Ranks Must Be Filled Today, Our eyes and Our hopes are on all you graduates. We hope that the seeds of learning which you have received will, in the service which you render, ripen into an abundant harvest. We assumed the obligation to foster and expand education in Our nation both as a solemn duty, because the nation can flourish and grow only as the ranks of the teachers and students are expanded and filled: as a matter of free will, because man would prefer to speak of his nation in terms of its educated men and women rather than by recounting the size of its population. ”

“ Let us speak frankly; he who acts deliberately and with calculation to the injury of the United Nations, to weaken it or to endanger its existence as an effective and energetic international institution, is the enemy of all of us. He robs the world of the last, best hope for peace, robs the small nations of that bulwark which the United Nations provides against oppression and he deprives them of the forum where their voice may be raised against injustice and oppression. ”

“ Today, Africa has emerged from this dark passage. Our Armageddon is past. Africa has been reborn as a free continent and Africans have been reborn as free men. The blood that was shed and the sufferings that were endured are today Africa's advocates for freedom and unity. Those men who refused to accept the judgement passed upon them by the colonizers, who held unswervingly through the darkest hours to a vision of an Africa emancipated from political, economic, and spiritual domination will be remembered and revered wherever Africans meet. Many of them never set foot on this continent. ”

“ Let us bring the combined pressure of African influence to bear on those other nations of the world to whom our friendship and goodwill are meaningful, who claim adherence to the same principles of freedom and independence for all men that we uphold, who affirm their support for our struggle against oppression. Let us more effectively marshal our individual and collective forces to use our influence, to exploit our position in various international organs, to enlist their support in Africa's fight for freedom and development. ”

“ It is not only the small and the weak who must scrupulously observe their obligations to the United Nations and to each other. Unless the smaller nations are accorded their proper voice in the settlement of the world's problems, unless the equality which Africa and Asia have struggled to attain is reflected in expanded membership in the institutions which make up the United Nations, confidence will come just that much harder. Unless the rights of the least of men are as assiduously protected as those of the greatest, the seeds of confidence will fall on barren soil. ”

“ The Church is not merely a building. The Church is the faithful fulfilment of the Christian life and its requirements. Thus, as the name applies to the buildings so is our heart The Church in which God dwells.
After our blameless Creator was sent to this world by His Father, then the hearts of all believers become The Temple of God. The love of God cannot be fathomed by a series of questions and answers, and man's soul cannot experience deeper enrichment as a result. We believe that men at all times be bound by His love and grace. ”

“ After the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbour, the unlimited resources in men and in machinery, the unquenchable democratic faith of the Great United States of America were ranged against the Axis Powers. From then there was no faltering. Unity continued to build up the vast resource and potential of the Allies — the United Nations — who have now achieved this Victory in Germany; who will achieve that even greater Victory of peace within the world and realize the aims of those essential freedoms outlined in the Atlantic Charter. ”

“ We Christians living by the faith of Christ, the Head and Pillar on whom the Church is founded, cannot escape the responsibility to work for the peace of the world, and to ensure equality for all human beings created by God, lest we fail in our duty by being mere passive witnesses to the gruesome spectacle of human beings, created in the image of God, being deprived by virtue of their color or their poverty, of the benefits and blessings that are the birthright of every man and all men, and suffering in agony, cast forth from the pale of full human existence. ”

“ We should be aware, too, that in relinquishing the role which we may play, if we will, in insisting upon the devotion to principle which is the antithesis of pure power politics, we play the game of those whom we seek to influence. When no one upholds the cause of right and justice for their own sake, when the small, still voice of conscience speaks no longer, immorality and lack of principle have triumphed, and in this history all of mankind is the loser. ”

“ And in order that these programmes be coherent and intelligible, they must be founded upon painstakingly articulated principles and policies which we, as African nations, must apply, not only in charting the future of the Organization of African Unity, but in directing our own activities as independent African states.
What do we seek for Africa? We seek to consolidate and guarantee our own precious liberty as independent nations. We seek freedom for our still dependent brothers. We seek Africa's economic growth and development, the betterment of the way of life of Africans and all men. ”

“ Since no creature created in Your image and to Your pattern gives up hope that everything he begs of You will be done for him until the day You sever his soul from his body, we beseech You that Ethiopia should not remain with her freedom extinct and prostrate under an alien ruler, so that the mouth of her people be silenced for fear of a foreign governor, but rather, that You will save them by Your deeds of kindness lest they remain with their hearts oppressed through being deprived of their own Ethiopian ruler who was leading them towards civilization under a light yoke and with gladness. ”