Motivational Quotes

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

Best Quotes about Nations

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

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

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

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Twain, Mark

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

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

Hope, Bob

10.

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

11.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

12.

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.

13.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

14.

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

Wilder, Billy

15.

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

16.

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.

17.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

18.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

19.

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

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

21.

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

De Delloy

22.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

23.

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

Moliere

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

27.

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

28.

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

Chou En Lai

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

32.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

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.

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

Plato

35.

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

Truman, Harry S

36.

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

Churchill, Winston

37.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

38.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

39.

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

Weil, Simone

40.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

41.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

42.

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

43.

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

Bolt, Robert

44.

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

45.

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

Burke, Edmund

46.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

47.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

48.

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.

49.

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

50.

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