Jan Christiaan Smuts Quotes

The international horizon is seriously overcast by what has happened in Berlin. I noted your wise remarks in the House of Commons, and only hope that the panic which seems to have taken hold of France and Italy does not spread to the smaller fry in Europe. There seems to me to be a serious danger that with all the inflammable material about, we may be precipitated into a crisis before we know where we are. Much depends upon the attitude of the British Government. If they will keep out of the whirlpool, and remain in a detached position as the peace-makers in Europe, I think their prestige is still great enough to save the situation. We have been far too complacent hitherto, and much of the evil drift in Europe has been due to this complacency. If we resolutely back peace, and a peaceful settlement in Europe, I think we can succeed. The clumsiness of Germany is unspeakable. But even so, she has received very great provocation in all the delays of the last years. And in any case, the peace of Europe must be our predominant consideration, whatever the mistakes of others.

... Chaim Weizmann, the scientist, the great Zionist, the indomitable leader who, after his people had been all but wiped out in the greatest purge of history, assembled the remnants, led them back to the ancient homeland in face of the heaviest opposition, and welded them once more into a sovereign state among the nations. Surely his achievement bears comparison with that of Moses!

Let us not be fanatical about our past and romanticize it. Only on the basis of taking from the past what is beautiful can fruitful co-operation and brotherhood between the two white communities be built. And only on this basis can a solution be found for the greatest problem which we have inherited from our ancestors, the problem of our native relations. [...] This is the most difficult and the final test of our civilization.

The Mountain is not merely something eternally sublime. It has a great historical and spiritual meaning for us ... From it came the Law, from it came the Gospel in the Sermon on the Mount. We may truly say that the highest religion is the Religion of the Mountain.

Whatever shall we do in future? The nation that does not arm continuously is lost – as France has been lost, as Britain will be lost but for the Grace of God. In this mechanistic age where bravery and improvised organization at the last moment will not help. The only alternative is a League of the Nations or of some nations strong enough to withstand aggression ...

It is the cleanest, neatest, most sudden and spectacular victory of the war, and in size is quite comparable to the German defeat before Stalingrad.

The grand success of the British Empire depends not on its having followed any constitutional precedent of the past but on having met a new situation in history with a creation in law; and as a matter of fact the new constitutional system grew empirically and organically out of the practical necessities of the colonial situation.

If there was to be equal manhood suffrage the whites would be swamped all over South Africa by the blacks and the whole position for which whites have striven for 200 years or more would be given up.

We did so, and I think not without some success. Gradually we have seen emerging out of these discordant elements the lineaments of a new South Africa. We have not yet the whole, we have not yet a really unified South Africa, we have not yet attained to the unity which is our ideal. There is still too much of the old division and separation in our national elements, but still the effort has been made, and you see today in South Africa the biggest problem facing us being solved along holistic lines.

In all the previous cases of wholes, we have nowhere been able to argue from the parts of the whole. Compared to its parts, the whole constituted by them is something quite different, something creatively new, as we have seen. Creative evolution synthesises from the parts a new entity not only different from them, but quite transcending them. That is the essence of a whole. It is always transcendent to its parts, and its character cannot be inferred from the characters of its parts.

(Holism is) the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution ...

You cannot defeat Russia. Napoleon learned this to his cost and so will the rest of the world. I do not know whether Bolshevism is advancing or subsiding. There comes a time when the fiercest fires die down. But the best way to revive or rally all Russia to the Soviet Government is to invade the country and to annex large slices of it.

I don't suppose any first-class work in science is done now outside of the war work ... Of course ... science has fallen into discredit. It has brought no solution to our human problems, and has added greatly to our engines of destruction in this war. Not that science is to blame for this misuse, but people judge by results, and by that standard science has a heavy account to liquidate. Science so far has had far too much to do with the things of sense and of matter, and the things of the spirit have been by-passed.

... the Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war.

We do not want new orders. What the world wants is an old order of 2,000 years ago – the order of the man of Galilee.