Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

Wilder, Billy

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

Plato

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

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

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

Kennedy, John F.

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

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

Kubrick, Stanley

10.

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

11.

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

12.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

13.

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

Chou En Lai

14.

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

De Delloy

15.

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

16.

The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]

Hope, Bob

17.

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

Swayze, John

18.

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.

19.

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

20.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

21.

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

22.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

23.

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

Churchill, Winston

24.

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

Burke, Edmund

25.

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.

26.

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

Bunche, Ralph

27.

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

28.

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

Burton, Pierre

29.

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

30.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

31.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

32.

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

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.

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

35.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

36.

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

37.

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

Capone, Al

38.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

39.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

40.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

41.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

42.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

43.

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

Bolt, Robert

44.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

45.

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

46.

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

Wilder, Billy

47.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

48.

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

Truman, Harry S

49.

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.