Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

- Churchill, Winston

Best Quotes about Nations

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

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

Wilder, Billy

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

De Delloy

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

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

Gaulle, Charles De

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

10.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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

Weil, Simone

14.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

Nations, like stars, are entitled to eclipse. All is well, provided the light returns and the eclipse does not become endless night. Dawn and resurrection are synonymous. The reappearance of the light is the same as the survival of the soul.

Hugo, Victor

20.

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

Bunche, Ralph

21.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

25.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

26.

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

Acheson, Dean

27.

Do not on any account attempt to write on both sides of the paper at once.

Sellar, W. C.

28.

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

29.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

30.

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

Chou En Lai

31.

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

32.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

33.

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

34.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

35.

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

Custine, Marquis De

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

Hope, Bob

38.

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

Buechner, Professor William

39.

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

Truman, Harry S

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

43.

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

Kennedy, John F.

44.

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

Ruskin, John

45.

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.

46.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

47.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

48.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

49.

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

Moliere

50.

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