nations

1.

HYENA, n. A beast held in reverence by some oriental nations from its habit of frequenting at night the burial-places of the dead. But the medical student does that.

- Ambrose Bierce

2.

Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.

- Edinborough, Arnold

3.

To be beneficent when we can is a duty; and besides this, there are many minds so sympathetically constituted that, without any other motive of vanity or self-interest, they find a pleasure in spreading joy around them, and can take delight in the satisfaction of others so far as it is their own work. But I maintain that in such a case an action of this kind, however proper, however amiable it may be, has nevertheless no true moral worth, but is on a level with other inclinations. ... For the maxim lacks the moral import, namely, that such actions be done from duty, not from inclination.

- Immanuel Kant

4.

France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.

- Twain, Mark

5.

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other alternatives.

- Abba Eban

6.

The world values the seer above all men, and has always done so. Nay, it values all men in proportion as they partake of the character of seers. The Elgin Marbles and a decision of John Marshall are valued for the same reason. What we feel in them is a painstaking submission to facts beyond the author's control, and to ideas imposed upon him by his vision. So with Beethoven's Symphonies, with Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations -- with any conceivable output of the human mind of which you approve. You love them because you say, These things were not made, they were seen.

- Chapman, John Jay

7.

The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.

- Ruskin, John

8.

The simplest explanation is that it doesn't make sense.

- Buechner, Professor William

9.

He had that curious love of green, which in individuals is always the sign of a subtle artistic temperament, and in nations is said to denote a laxity, if not a decadence of morals.

- Wilde, Oscar

10.

On a single winged word hath hung the destiny of nations.

- Phillips, Wendell

11.

The repose of nations cannot be secure without arms. Armies cannot be maintained without pay, nor can the pay be produced without taxes.

- Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

12.

Without a country, I am not a man.

- Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

13.

Compromise, if not the spice of life, is its solidity. It is what makes nations great and marriages happy.

- Phyllis McGinley

14.

The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.

- Kubrick, Stanley

15.

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.

- Hobsbawm, E. J.

16.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

- Ruskin, John

17.

The heroes of the world community are not those who withdraw when difficulties ensue, not those who can envision neither the prospect of success nor the consequence of failure -- but those who stand the heat of battle, the fight for world peace through the United Nations.

- Humphrey, Hubert H.

18.

FOOL, n. A person who pervades the domain of intellectual speculation and diffuses himself through the channels of moral activity. He is omnific, omniform, omnipercipient, omniscience, omnipotent. He it was who invented letters, printing, the railroad, the steamboat, the telegraph, the platitude and the circle of the sciences. He created patriotism and taught the nations war -- founded theology, philosophy, law, medicine and Chicago. He established monarchical and republican government. He is from everlasting to everlasting -- such as creation's dawn beheld he fooleth now. In the morning of time he sang upon primitive hills, and in the noonday of existence headed the procession of being. His grandmotherly hand was warmly tucked-in the set sun of civilization, and in the twilight he prepares Man's evening meal of milk-and-morality and turns down the covers of the universal grave. And after the rest of us shall have retired for the night of eternal oblivion he will sit up to write a history of human civilization.

- Ambrose Bierce

19.

Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

- Baldwin, James

20.

Our actions are like the terminations of verses, which we rhyme as we please.

- La Rochefoucauld, Francois De