Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

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

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

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

Moliere

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

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

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

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

11.

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

Bunche, Ralph

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 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.

14.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

15.

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

16.

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

Twain, Mark

17.

If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

18.

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

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.

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.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

22.

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.

23.

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

24.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

25.

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

26.

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

Plato

27.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

28.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

29.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

30.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

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

Bolt, Robert

32.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

33.

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

34.

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

35.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

36.

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

37.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

38.

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

Capone, Al

39.

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

40.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

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

Burton, Pierre

42.

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

43.

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

Churchill, Winston

44.

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

Custine, Marquis De

45.

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

Burke, Edmund

46.

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

Hope, Bob

47.

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

48.

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

49.

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

Weil, Simone

50.

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