Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Wilder, Billy

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

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

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

Edinborough, Arnold

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

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 only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

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

Twain, Mark

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

10.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

11.

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.

12.

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

De Delloy

13.

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

Swayze, John

14.

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

Plato

15.

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

16.

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

17.

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.

18.

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

Wilder, Billy

19.

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

20.

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

21.

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

Moliere

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

25.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

26.

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

Churchill, Winston

27.

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

28.

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

Weil, Simone

29.

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

30.

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.

31.

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

Custine, Marquis De

32.

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

33.

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

Capone, Al

34.

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

Ruskin, John

35.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

36.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

37.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

38.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

39.

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

Buechner, Professor William

40.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

41.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

43.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

44.

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

45.

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

46.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

47.

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

48.

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

49.

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

Kennedy, John F.

50.

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