Motivational Quotes

Nations

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

- Bradbury, Malcolm

Best Quotes about Nations

The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.

Huxley, Aldous

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.

Hochhuth, Rolf

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language -- religion -- government -- blood -- identity in these makes men of one country.

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor

States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.

Plato

Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.

Custine, Marquis De

The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.

Jerrold, Douglas William

10.

Never explain yourself. Your friend don't need it and your enemies won't believe it.

11.

Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

12.

The United Nations was not set up to be a reformatory. It was assumed that you would be good before you got in and not that being in would make you good.

Dulles, John Foster

13.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

14.

The less you know about a subject, the longer it takes you to explain it.

15.

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

Buechner, Professor William

16.

This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

17.

The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

19.

Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.

Disraeli, Benjamin

20.

If nations always moved from one set of furnished rooms to another -- and always into a better set -- things might be easier, but the trouble is that there is no one to prepare the new rooms. The future is worse than the ocean -- there is nothing there. It will be what men and circumstances make it.

Herzen, Alexander

21.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

22.

In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.

Goldman, Emma

23.

China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.

Chou En Lai

24.

The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]

Hope, Bob

25.

A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.

Briand, Aristide

26.

France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cannot tear the toilet paper.

Wilder, Billy

27.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

28.

How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six varieties of cheese?

Gaulle, Charles De

29.

We prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war in the age of mass extermination.

Kennedy, John F.

30.

France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.

Wilder, Billy

31.

The wealth and prosperity of the country are only the comeliness of the body, the fullness of the flesh and fat; but the spirit is independent of them; it requires only muscle, bone and nerve for the true exercise of its functions. We cannot lose our liberty, because we cannot cease to think.

Davy, Sir Humphrey

32.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

33.

The UN is not just a product of do-gooders. It is harshly real. The day will come when men will see the U.N. and what it means clearly. Everything will be all right -- you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction, and see it as a drawing they made themselves.

Hammarskjold, Dag

34.

Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.

Twain, Mark

35.

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Vico, Giambattista

36.

We have actively sought and are actively seeking to make the United Nations an effective instrument of international cooperation.

Acheson, Dean

37.

God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.

Lawrence, D. H.

38.

States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them.

Machiavelli, Niccolo

39.

National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.

Schopenhauer, Arthur

40.

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.

Bradbury, Malcolm

41.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

42.

The soil of their native land is dear to all the hearts of mankind.

Cicero, Marcus T.

43.

A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.

Carter, Jimmy

44.

Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.

Moliere

45.

Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. [About Russia]

Churchill, Winston

46.

A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.

Burke, Edmund

47.

It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

48.

If there be no nobility of descent in a nation, all the more indispensable is it that there should be nobility of ascent -- a character in them that bear rule, so fine and high and pure, that as men come within the circle of its influence, they involuntarily pay homage to that which is the one pre-eminent distinction, the Royalty of Virtue.

Potter, Henry Codman

49.

The more I saw of foreign countries the more I loved my own.

De Delloy

50.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

Shaw, George Bernard