Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

- Burke, Edmund

Best Quotes about Nations

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

De Delloy

Nations do not think, they only feel. They get their feelings at second hand through their temperaments, not their brains. A nation can be brought -- by force of circumstances, not argument -- to reconcile itself to any kind of government or religion that can be devised; in time it will fit itself to the required conditions; later it will prefer them and will fiercely fight for them.

Twain, Mark

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

Hope, Bob

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

Twain, Mark

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife.

Cuellar, Javier Perez De

10.

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

11.

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

Chou En Lai

12.

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

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.

Weil, Simone

17.

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

18.

The United Nations is our one great hope for a peaceful and free world.

Bunche, Ralph

19.

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

20.

A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.

Burton, Pierre

21.

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

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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.

24.

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

Kennedy, John F.

25.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

26.

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

Swayze, John

27.

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

Churchill, Winston

28.

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

29.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

31.

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

32.

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

33.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

35.

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

36.

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

Acheson, Dean

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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

Moliere

39.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

40.

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

Buechner, Professor William

41.

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

42.

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

Wilder, Billy

43.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

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

Plato

46.

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.

47.

The policy of Russia is changeless. Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy, world domination, is a fixed star. [About Russia]

Marx, Karl

48.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

49.

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

50.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.