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I've never seen America as an imperialist or colonialist or meddling country.

For me, I do not wish to build an empire.

You know, the Brits had a way of - running an empire. And I don't think America is comfortable with an empire.

I never set out really to build a financial empire or to be a wealthy man.

In general, Americans are not very good at nation-building and not very good colonialists.

It is a cliche these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire - different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless.

If you look at the history of the U.S., we were an empire long before we were a nation.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

I don't want a trillion-dollar empire to run.

For most of our history, no one dared to tell Americans, 'you don't build that.'