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

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

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

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

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

Sellar, W. C.

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

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

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

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

10.

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

11.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

12.

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

Wilder, Billy

13.

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

Wilder, Billy

14.

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

15.

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

Weil, Simone

16.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

17.

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

Churchill, Winston

18.

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

Burke, Edmund

19.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

20.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

21.

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.

22.

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.

23.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

24.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

26.

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

27.

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

Plato

28.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

29.

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

30.

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

Ruskin, John

31.

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

Buechner, Professor William

32.

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

Burton, Pierre

33.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

34.

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

Swayze, John

35.

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

Chou En Lai

36.

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

De Delloy

37.

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

38.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

39.

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

Kennedy, John F.

40.

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

41.

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

42.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

43.

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

Twain, Mark

44.

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.

45.

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

46.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

47.

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

48.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

49.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

50.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon