Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

Methinks I see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rousing herself like a strong man after sleep, and shaking her invincible locks. Methinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at the full midday beam.

Milton, John

A Country is not a mere territory; the particular territory is only its foundation. The Country is the idea which rises upon that foundation; it is the sentiment of love, the sense of fellowship which binds together all the sons of that territory.

Mazzini, Giuseppe

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

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.

Thoreau, Henry David

There is no waste of time in life like that of making explanations.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Kennedy, John F.

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.

10.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

11.

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

12.

As long as learning is connected with earning, as long as certain jobs can only be reached through exams, so long must we take this examination system seriously. If another ladder to employment was contrived, much so-called education would disappear, and no one would be a penny the stupider.

Forster, Edward M.

13.

Never explain -- your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you anyway.

Hubbard, Elbert

14.

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.

15.

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

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Wilder, Billy

17.

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

18.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

19.

There was never a nation that became great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.

Warner, Charles Dudley

20.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

21.

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

Chou En Lai

22.

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

Plato

23.

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

24.

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

Burke, Edmund

25.

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

26.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

27.

The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well ordered homes of the people.

Sigourney, Lydia

28.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

29.

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

Twain, Mark

30.

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

31.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

32.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

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

Hope, Bob

34.

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.

35.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

36.

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

37.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

38.

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

39.

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

40.

I don't even know what street Canada is on.

Capone, Al

41.

The United Nations cannot do anything, and never could; it is not an animate entity or agent. It is a place, a stage, a forum and a shrine... a place to which powerful people can repair when they are fearful about the course on which their own rhetoric seems to be propelling them.

O'Brien, Conor Cruise

42.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

43.

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

44.

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!

Bolt, Robert

45.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

46.

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

De Delloy

47.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

48.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

49.

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

50.

Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been tolerant.

Swayze, John