Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Swayze, John

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Chou En Lai

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 don't even know what street Canada is on.

Capone, Al

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

Edinborough, Arnold

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

Acheson, Dean

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

Wilder, Billy

10.

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

Wilder, Billy

11.

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

12.

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

13.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

14.

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

Burton, Pierre

15.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

16.

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.

17.

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

Bolt, Robert

18.

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

19.

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

20.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

21.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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.

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

Custine, Marquis De

24.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

25.

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

Moliere

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

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

28.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

29.

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

Truman, Harry S

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

33.

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

34.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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.

38.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

39.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

40.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

41.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

42.

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

43.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

44.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

45.

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.

46.

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

47.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Burke, Edmund