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When I was on the Congo and accused a tribe of cannibalism, it replied : "We are not cannibals, but our neighbors are." The neighboring tribe said : "It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet" ; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of the practice. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How, then, in recruiting its troops, was the Congo to distinguish the black cannibals from those who were not cannibals?

— Henry Morton Stanley

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "When I was on the Congo and accused a tribe of cannibalism, it replied : "We are not cannibals, but our neighbors are." The neighboring tribe said : "It is not we, it is the next tribe that you will meet" ; and that tribe referred us on to the next, and so on continually. They seemed to be ashamed of their cannibalism. They concealed it. Yet there was no doubt as to the existence of the practice. It was very seldom that I could discover the guilty. How, then, in recruiting its troops, was the Congo to distinguish the black cannibals from those who were not cannibals?" in the context of "Brief of Henry I. Kowalsky, of the New York bar, attorney and counsellor to Leopold II." to mean that wisdom is timeless.

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Source: Wikiquote: "Henry Morton Stanley" (Quotes) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Henry Morton Stanley

About Henry Morton Stanley

Sir Henry Morton Stanley (28 January 1841 – 10 May 1904), a Welsh-born reporter for the New York Herald, went to Africa in search of missionary and explorer David Livingstone. He was later a British Member of Parliament. He is mainly known for his search for the source of the Nile, work he undertook as an agent of King Leopold II of Belgium, which enabled the occupation of the Congo Basin region.