Quotes by Wilbur Smith

“Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.”

“A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did wha...”

“They have been taught nothing but destruction and learned nothing except that a man's desires can be achieved simply by killing anybody who stands in his way.”

“They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy-just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.”

“More than weapons, we need a leader.”

“It's not the dying but the manner of it.”

“Patriotism is a myth conceived by those old rogues to draw us into the infernal game. Let them fight as they will, but we want no part of it.”

“At the age of 12 I won the school prize for Best English Essay. The prize was a copy of Somerset Maugham's 'Introduction To Modern English And American Literature.' To this day I keep it on the she...”

“The mistake the apartheid government made was they gave the black people nothing, so they had nothing to lose. But now a lot of the former freedom-fighters are big-time capitalists. They've been gi...”

“My mother-in-law speaks not a word of English. I speak not a word of Tajiki. So I smile at her ingratiatingly and she fixes me with a beady eye.”

“I'm not a good father and they're not children any more; the eldest is in his fifties. My relationship with their mothers broke down and, because of what the law was, they went with their mothers a...”

“I'm not a prophet; I can only use historical reality to come to a view of the future, and my view is that Africa will return to being African and not European. The advent of colonialism was foreign...”

“If I have to die, then it's best to do so before I see everything I love, the land, the animals, the people, all of it destroyed.”

“A man follows the path laid out for him. He does his duty to God and his King. He does what he must do, not what pleases him. God's truth, boy, what kind of world would this be if every man did wha...”

“Something always dies when the lion feeds — and yet there is meat for those that follow him.”

“When a traveller gets a thorn in his foot, Mbejane went on softly, and he is wise, he plucks it out — and he is a fool, he leaves it and says, 'I will keep this thorn to prick me so that I will alw...”

“Beware of your most implacable enemy — yourself.”

“They do say that socialism is the ideal philosophy — just as long as you have capitalists to pay for it.”

“Should five slaves dictate to a king? If five baboons bark, must the black-maned lion tremble?”

“Robin Hood was also a terrorist ― but he had some style and a little class.”