Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

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

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

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

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.

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

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

10.

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.

11.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

12.

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

Moliere

13.

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

Burke, Edmund

14.

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.

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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

Capone, Al

18.

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

Twain, Mark

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Custine, Marquis De

22.

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

23.

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

Bunche, Ralph

24.

Vico, Giambattista

25.

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

Burton, Pierre

26.

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

27.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

28.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Bolt, Robert

32.

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

33.

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

Sellar, W. C.

34.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

35.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

36.

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

De Delloy

37.

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

38.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

39.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

40.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

41.

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

Twain, Mark

42.

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

43.

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

Wilder, Billy

44.

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.

45.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

Kennedy, John F.

47.

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

48.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

49.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

50.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De