Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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.

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.

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

Burke, Edmund

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

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

Sellar, W. C.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Weil, Simone

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Sigourney, Lydia

10.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

11.

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

12.

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

13.

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.

14.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

16.

Milton, John

17.

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

Hope, Bob

18.

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

Chou En Lai

19.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

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.

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

22.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

23.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

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.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

26.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

27.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

30.

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

31.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

32.

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

Churchill, Winston

33.

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

Custine, Marquis De

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

37.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

38.

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

Moliere

39.

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

40.

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

Truman, Harry S

41.

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

42.

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

Acheson, Dean

43.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

44.

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

Swayze, John

45.

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

46.

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

Kennedy, John F.

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.

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

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.

Warner, Charles Dudley

50.

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

Wilder, Billy