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Jan Smuts

34 quotes

“... the Jameson Raid was the real declaration of war.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts on the Second Boer War, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision
“The groans of the dying and the blanched set faces of the dead ... were enough to drive away all unwholesome feelings of exultation, and to remind one of the grim reality that war is. And even though these were the faces and the sufferings of our enemy, one had ... a deeper sense of the common humanity which knows no racial distinctions.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts in Memoirs of the Boer War, p. 151, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 15.
“History writes the word 'Reconciliation' over all her quarrels.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1905 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts to Alfred Milner (1905), as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision
“The war was fought throughout and ultimately won, not only by the usual military weapons in the narrower sense, but by the whole economic, industrial, and financial systems of the belligerent Powers. Food, shipping, metals and raw materials, credit, transport, industries and factories of all kinds played just as important a part as guns, rifles, aeroplanes, tanks, explosives and gas, warships and submarines.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The League of Nations - A Practical Suggestion, C: The League and World-Peace, Hodder and Stoughton, 1918
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1870 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From The League of Nations - A Practical Suggestion, 1918, pp. 37-38, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 1: The Sanguine Years 1870-1919, p. 502
“At the vital moment there seems to be a failure of leadership, and also a failure of the general human spirit among the peoples. I hope I am wrong, but I have a sense of impending calamity, a fear that the war was only the vanguard of calamity ... I cannot look at that draft treaty without a sense of grief and shame.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts to Mary Murray, wife of Gilbert Murray, on the Treaty of Versailles, 2 June 1919, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 106.
“I view it as a thoroughly bad peace – impolitic and impracticable in the case of Germany, absolutely ludicrous in the case of German Austria. Indeed I have not been able to read the comments of the Austrian delegates on our draft terms without deep emotion. I have fought this Peace from the inside with all my power, and have no doubt been able in the end to secure some small openings of hope for the future.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts to C. P. Scott on the Treaty of Versailles, 26 June 1919, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. xvi.
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement at the Imperial Conference (1921)
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1923 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When he unveiled the Mountain Club War Memorial at Maclear's Beacon on the summit of Table Mountain (1923), as cited by Alan Paton in his final essay, A Literary Remembrance, published posthumously in TIME, 25 April 198…
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Isaac Frederick Marcosson in An African Adventure, Chapter I – Smuts, p. 32, The Plimpton Press (1921)
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts on the rebuilding of South Africa after the Boer War, in The Theory of Holism, 1940, p. 133
“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!”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: When seeing off young South Africans in World War II, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 138.
“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 ...”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 360
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 358
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 395
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: At the conclusion of the North African Campaign in May 1943, as quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 380
“... I fail to believe that Hitler's war – the most terrible in history – was merely due to economic causes, and not to something deeper and more sinister in human outlook and beliefs. ... It was an ideology and not merely materialism. It was an ideological obsession, a madness, which can operate as disastrously in nations as in individuals. ...”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1945 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Addressing the Canada Club in Ottawa on 29 June 1945, after the United Nations Charter was finalized, as quoted by Louise W. Holborn (ed., 1948) in War and Peace Aims of the United Nations, p. 719
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In August 1946, as quoted by James Barber in South Africa in the Twentieth Century, p. 134
“Just as we preach a "black peril" so they will begin to speak of a "white peril" and of the hostility the white men have toward them.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In June 1947, addressing the head committee of the United Party in Transvaal, cited by Tom MacDonald (1948) in Jan Hofmeyr: Heir to Smuts, p. 219
“... 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!”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In November 1949, as quoted by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 520
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In December 1949 at the opening of the Voortrekker Monument, as paraphrased by Hermann B. Giliomee in The Afrikaners, p. 488. cf. Smuts Papers, vol. 7, pp. 332-333.
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On "a post-war new world order" envisaged by the Allies during World War II, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 144.
“I find our modern emphasis on 'rights' somewhat overdone and misleading ... It makes people forget that the other and more important side of rights is duty. And indeed the great historic codes of our human advance emphasised duties and not rights ... The Ten Commandments in the Old Testament and ... the Sermon on the Mount ... all are silent on rights, all lay stress on duties.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the rights embodied in the United Nations Charter of which he drafted the Preamble, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 144.
“If a nation does not want a monarchy, change the nation’s mind. If a nation does not need a monarchy, change the nation’s needs.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“(Holism is) the tendency in nature to form wholes that are greater than the sum of the parts through creative evolution ...”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) said by 1950 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was the human spirit itself that failed at Paris. It is no use passing judgments and making scapegoats of this or that individual statesman or group of statesmen. Idealists make a great mistake in not facing the real facts sincerely and resolutely. They believe in the power of the spirit, in the goodness which is at the heart of things, in the triumph which is in store for the great moral ideals of the race. But this faith only too often leads to an optimism which is sadly and fatally at variance with actual results. It is the realist and not the idealist who is generally justified by events. We forget that the human spirit, the spirit of goodness and truth in the world, is still only an infant crying in the night, and that the struggle with darkness is as yet mostly an unequal struggle…. Paris proved this terrible truth once more. It was not Wilson who failed there, but humanity itself. It was not the statesmen that failed, so much as the spirit of the peoples behind them.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1921 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts in a letter dated 8 January 1921, published in the New York Evening Post, 2 March 1921
“The free creativeness of mind is possible because, [...] the world ultimately exists, not of material stuff, but of patterns, of organization, the evolution of which involves no absolute creation of an alien world of material from nothing. The purely structural character of reality thus helps to render possible and intelligible the free creativeness of life and mind, ... The energy which is being dissipated by the decay of physical structure is being partly taken up and organized into life structures ... Life and mind thus appear as products of the cosmic decline, ... Our origin is thus accidental, our position is exceptional and our fate is sealed, with the inevitable running down of the solar system. Life and mind, [...] are thus reduced to a very casual and inferior status in the cosmic order [...] – a transient and embarrassed phantom in an alien, if not hostile universe. [...] The human spirit is not a pathetic, wandering phantom of the universe, [...] but meets with spiritual hospitality and response everywhere. Our deepest thoughts and emotions are but responses to stimuli which come to us not from an alien, but from an essentially friendly and kindred universe.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1919 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts expounding a confrontation of opposites in his presidential address to the British Association in September 1931, as cited by W. K. Hancock in SMUTS 2: The Fields of Force 1919-1950, p. 232-234
“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.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts in a letter to Sir Herbert Samuel, written from the House of Assembly, Cape Town, dated 25 March 1935
“The House, which was free to have decided otherwise, takes a stand for the defence of freedom and the destruction of Hitlerism and all that it implies. … The interests of South Africa, however, are our primary concern. … It was for the interests of South Africa that Parliament freely decided to sever our relations with Germany. We pledge our moral support for a common cause. … The Union has no quarrel with the German people as such. Its aim is to assist in the destruction of a system which is seeking to impose on the world a domination of violence and force in international affairs – a system which, as the facts of the past two years have proved, knows no respect for good faith between nations, which does not hesitate to dishonour its plighted word, if convenient to do so, and which threatens the liberty of every state throughout the world.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts expounding the war proclamation of Wednesday, 6 September 1939, as quoted in South Africa at War: How she will help, Staffordshire Sentinel of 7 September 1939, p. 1
“While these things were going on in South Africa – one of the greatest dramas in the recent history of the world – the same conditions were reproducing themselves in the greater world outside. From the Boer War onwards a new spirit seemed to have permeated the nations of Europe. The nineteenth century had been called the century of nationality, but the early years of the twentieth century were years of intense nationalism, morbid nationalism. Nations lost their heads in efforts at self aggrandisement, and this had become so intense and so selfish that a clash became inevitable. Again you see a problem in holism. Where there should have been a united family of nations we saw the elements drifting apart, we saw disunity and disruption, and we saw in the end the greatest crash in the history of the world. When the Great War ended there was the same problem in holism. I think the League of Nations is a genuine effort in reconstructing the broken front of European civilisation, of once more reforming unity out of division and discord.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Smuts in The Theory of Holism, 1940, pp. 133-134
“Myself, when young, loved nature rather than sport, and took to Botany as a hobby. Gradually I began to realise that the Family of Grasses was the most important of all, and did my best to become acquainted with that perhaps most difficult of all plant families. ... it is one of the largest of all families in botany, and the flowers are mostly very small and insignificant, and often call for the use of lenses to distinguish them properly. No wonder that other easier, more gaudy and attractive families are preferred by botanical beginners. But once you take a little trouble ... their attraction and their glory grow on you, until at last you surrender completely to their charm.”
Jan Smuts (1870–1950) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword (dated 15 May 1950) to The Grasses & Pastures of South Africa, D. Meredith (ed.), 1954