Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Chou En Lai

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

Weil, Simone

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

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

Burton, Pierre

10.

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

Moliere

11.

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

12.

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

Kennedy, John F.

13.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

14.

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

Wilder, Billy

15.

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

Buechner, Professor William

16.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

17.

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

18.

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

19.

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.

20.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

21.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

22.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations--great or small--to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.

Stevenson, Adlai E.

24.

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

25.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

26.

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

27.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

28.

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

29.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

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

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.

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

33.

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

De Delloy

34.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

35.

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.

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

Custine, Marquis De

40.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

41.

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

42.

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

Bunche, Ralph

43.

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

Wilder, Billy

44.

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

Acheson, Dean

45.

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

Sellar, W. C.

46.

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

Burke, Edmund

47.

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

Truman, Harry S

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin