Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Burton, Pierre

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.

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

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

Edinborough, Arnold

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

Buechner, Professor William

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

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

Twain, Mark

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

Plato

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

Bolt, Robert

10.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

11.

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

12.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

18.

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

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 only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

21.

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

Churchill, Winston

22.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

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

Sellar, W. C.

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

26.

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

Kennedy, John F.

27.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

28.

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

29.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

30.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

31.

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

De Delloy

32.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

33.

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

34.

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

Capone, Al

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.

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

37.

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

Truman, Harry S

38.

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

39.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

40.

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

Ruskin, John

41.

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

42.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

43.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

44.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

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.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

47.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

48.

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

Chou En Lai

49.

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