"Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life"
About this Quote
Rhodes turns nationalism into a rigged game of chance, then congratulates you for winning it. The line’s cruel efficiency is in its breezy moral laundering: empire isn’t framed as conquest, policy, or even ideology, but as “the lottery of life,” a metaphor that disguises structure as luck. If you’re an Englishman, you didn’t seize advantage; fate handed it to you. That single move converts privilege into destiny and makes any discomfort with power feel like bad manners.
The “consequently” is doing heavy lifting. It pretends there’s a logical chain from identity to entitlement, as if Englishness naturally yields first prize. Rhodes’ intent is disciplinary as much as celebratory: remember who you are, stay loyal to the project, don’t waver into sympathy or doubt. It’s pep talk rhetoric for administrators, settlers, and aspiring imperial talent - a reminder that they’re not merely participants but beneficiaries of a world-order designed in their favor.
Context matters because Rhodes wasn’t theorizing in the abstract. He made a career out of converting British supremacy into land, labor, and mineral wealth in southern Africa, helping entrench systems that would later feed apartheid’s architecture. In that light, “first prize” reads less like a harmless boast and more like an invoice paid by other people’s dispossession. The subtext is an instruction manual for innocence: accept the winnings, call it fortune, and let the moral costs remain offstage.
The “consequently” is doing heavy lifting. It pretends there’s a logical chain from identity to entitlement, as if Englishness naturally yields first prize. Rhodes’ intent is disciplinary as much as celebratory: remember who you are, stay loyal to the project, don’t waver into sympathy or doubt. It’s pep talk rhetoric for administrators, settlers, and aspiring imperial talent - a reminder that they’re not merely participants but beneficiaries of a world-order designed in their favor.
Context matters because Rhodes wasn’t theorizing in the abstract. He made a career out of converting British supremacy into land, labor, and mineral wealth in southern Africa, helping entrench systems that would later feed apartheid’s architecture. In that light, “first prize” reads less like a harmless boast and more like an invoice paid by other people’s dispossession. The subtext is an instruction manual for innocence: accept the winnings, call it fortune, and let the moral costs remain offstage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Wisdom |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: The Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes (Cecil Rhodes, 1902)
Evidence: “Do you know, Grey, I have just been thinking that you have never been sufficiently grateful for having been born an Englishman. Just think for a moment,” he went on, “what it is to have been born an Englishman in England. Think how many millions of men there are in this world to-day who have been born Chinese or Hindus or Kaffirs; but you were not born any of these, you were born an Englishman. And that is not all. You are just over forty (which was about Rhodes’s own age at that time), and you have a clean, healthy body. Now think of the odds there are against anyone having those three things, to be born an Englishman, to be over forty, and to have a clean, healthy body. Why, the chances are enormous against it, and yet you have all three. What enormous chances there are against you having drawn all these prizes in the lottery of life, and yet you never think of them.” (Part III, “The Closing Scene” (pp. 177–192 in the 1902 edition); quote appears in the passage beginning around p. 185 in this Part (exact page depends on printing)). This is an early, directly-attested version in print, presented as a recollection by Lord Grey and published in W. T. Stead’s edited volume “The Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes” (1902). It is not the short modern formulation (“Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life”), but it clearly contains the core idea and the distinctive phrase “prizes in the lottery of life.” In the text, Rhodes is speaking to Lord Grey (“Grey”) and the anecdote is narrated by Stead, who says it is ‘Lord Grey’s’ authority. This makes it a near-contemporary published source for an oral remark, but not a verbatim transcript from a recorded speech. I did not find a primary document authored by Rhodes (e.g., a letter, diary, or printed speech by Rhodes himself) containing the exact wording you supplied. The widely-circulated one-sentence version appears to be a later condensation/paraphrase of this... Other candidates (1) Timeless Quotes (Eli Jr, 2023) compilation95.0% ... Cecil Rhodes "Quality means doing it right when no one is looking." – Henry Ford "Radical truth and radical ... R... |
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Rhodes, Cecil. (2026, February 21). Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/remember-that-you-are-an-englishman-and-have-124433/
Chicago Style
Rhodes, Cecil. "Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life." FixQuotes. February 21, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/remember-that-you-are-an-englishman-and-have-124433/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life." FixQuotes, 21 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/remember-that-you-are-an-englishman-and-have-124433/. Accessed 9 Mar. 2026.
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