Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

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

Weil, Simone

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

Kubrick, Stanley

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Sigourney, Lydia

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

Twain, Mark

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

Bolt, Robert

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

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

10.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

11.

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

12.

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

Chou En Lai

13.

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

Wilder, Billy

14.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

15.

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

16.

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

Churchill, Winston

17.

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

Kennedy, John F.

18.

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

19.

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

20.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

21.

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

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.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

24.

This organization is created to prevent you from going to hell. It isn't created to take you to heaven.

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

25.

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

26.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

27.

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

Swayze, John

28.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

29.

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

Moliere

30.

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

31.

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

Bunche, Ralph

32.

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

33.

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.

34.

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

Capone, Al

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Buechner, Professor William

38.

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

Burton, Pierre

39.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

40.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

41.

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

42.

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

Burke, Edmund

43.

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

Twain, Mark

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.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

46.

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

47.

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

48.

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

Acheson, Dean

49.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

50.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston