'We shall not relax our efforts until by our civilisation and the efforts of our people we reach the shores of the Mediterranean....You can never stand still. If you are not going forward you will be retreating.'
'Have a great idea, one great object, and follow it and never give in until you achieve it. You will win in the end though you may have to wait long for it.'
'Never think a thing impossible. If you make up your mind to do a thing, you will generally succeed. I do that each morning. I know when I ride, often silently apart from my companions, I am thinking of what I am going to do during the day. I am really saying my prayers. The early Christians were very clever; they knew if you concentrated your mind when at its clearest in the early morning, on a definite object, you were most likely to attain it.'
'There is nothing one notices more in life than the similarity of all religions. Whether one inquires into the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians....or goes back to the religion of the Romans....in all, the same idea is to be found - to raise humanity higher. The idea is not new; it is as old as the beginning of civilisation....'
Sitting at the camp fire one night in the Matopo Hills in 1896 Lady Grey, who had come out from Bulawayo to visit our camp asked, 'In what is your strongest belief, Mr Rhodes?' 'In power', he replied. 'There is the power of religion, the power of the sword, the power of philosophy, the power that drives one. What is it? If I am to believe in myself, and I do, I must have in my being the power to enable me to carry through my object. But what is the end of power? So often, desert sand or ruins. But there is a force, a power and a vitality that drives one on, and one cannot evade it if one would.'
'The world is nearly all parcelled out, and what there is left of it is being divided up, conquered and colonised. To think of the stars that you see overhead at night, these vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets if I could; I often think of that. It makes me sad to see them so clear and yet so far away.'
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