Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Plato

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

Custine, Marquis De

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.

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

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

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

Kubrick, Stanley

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

Wilder, Billy

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

Moliere

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

10.

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

11.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

12.

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

Truman, Harry S

13.

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

Capone, Al

14.

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

15.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

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.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

18.

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

19.

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

Bunche, Ralph

20.

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.

21.

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

Swayze, John

22.

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

Wilder, Billy

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

27.

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.

28.

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.

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Sellar, W. C.

32.

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

Bolt, Robert

33.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

34.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

35.

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

36.

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

Churchill, Winston

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

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

Ruskin, John

39.

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

40.

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

Burke, Edmund

41.

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

Weil, Simone

42.

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

43.

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

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.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

47.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

48.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

49.

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

50.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William