Quote

A cynic had defined aid as simply the system by which poor white people in rich countries gave money to rich black people in poor countries to put into Swiss bank accounts.

Wilbur Smith

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Wilbur Smith
Age: 91
Born: 1933
Born: January 9
Mathematician
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Broken Hill
Wilbur Addison Smith
Money
Countries
Country
Gave
People
Simply
Cynic
System
Swiss
Rich
Bank
Poor
Aids
White
Defined
Black
Accounts

More quotes by Wilbur Smith

Image
I wanted to be a great white hunter, a prospector for gold, or a slave trader. But then, when I was eight, my parents sent me to a boarding school in South Africa. It was the equivalent of a British public school with cold showers, beatings and rotten food. But what it also had was a library full of books.
Wilbur Smith
Image
History is a river that never ends. Today is history, and I am here at the fountainhead.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I have never had too much trouble for creative ideas to spring up in my mind.
Wilbur Smith
Image
When I vacate this sack of old bones I won't care what you do with it. Bury or burn it but don't make much fuss.
Wilbur Smith
Image
You know that feeling when you finish a final exam and you think, 'I never want to do that again'? Well I have the same feeling when I finish a novel. Each time I say, 'I think I may retire now' and then after six months the ideas start to churn again. I could never stop.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I shot my first lion at the age of 14 when a pride threatened my father's livestock while he was away on holiday.
Wilbur Smith
Image
The best cure for racism is to have somebody shoot at you. Man, it does not matter then what color the arse is that comes to save yours-black or white, you're ready to give it a big fat kiss.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Failure makes success so much sweeter, and allows you to thumb your nose at the crowds.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I go on a hunting safari at least once a year to Botswana, which is fantastic because we have a huge area of wilderness entirely to ourselves. My island covers roughly 55 acres, which again I have to myself, with nearly half a kilometre of private beach with my own jetties and boats.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I read all of Rider Haggard's books. For me he had the romance of Africa with a little bit of mysticism. I'm delighted to be looked on as his heir and be categorised as an adventure novelist because that's exactly what I am.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I don't want children. Why should I let some strange little monster into my life to destroy what to me is a perfect set-up?
Wilbur Smith
Image
I put my soul into every book I write.
Wilbur Smith
Image
I think one of the most poignant things is unrequited love and loneliness.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Authors can only soft sell the environment. Create a wonderful story around the environment involving the characters that leaves a lasting impression on the reader's mind.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Cape Town's beaches are superb and while the water on the Atlantic side is damn cold, it's very pleasant on the other side. Bring your golf clubs if you play - Cape Town has some fabulous golf courses.
Wilbur Smith
Image
What I like about writing is the sense of godlike power it gives you.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Let it simply be said that we know more about the details of the hours immediately before and the actual death of Jesus, in and near Jerusalem, than we know about the death of any other one man in all the ancient world.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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 to the country itself, but it will return to what it was before the Europeans arrived.
Wilbur Smith
Image
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 and were imbued with their mothers' morality in life and they were not my people any more.
Wilbur Smith
Image
Herbert, my father, was born in Britain but went out to Africa in his teens to join his father and built up an 18,000-acre ranch in what was then Northern Rhodesia, providing work for the locals. He was my hero when I was a boy.
Wilbur Smith