Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

Custine, Marquis De

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

Bolt, Robert

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

Burke, Edmund

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

10.

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

Burton, Pierre

11.

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.

12.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

13.

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.

14.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

15.

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

Kennedy, John F.

16.

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

17.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

18.

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

19.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

20.

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

Weil, Simone

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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.

24.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

25.

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

26.

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

Sellar, W. C.

27.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

28.

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

29.

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.

30.

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

Bunche, Ralph

31.

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

32.

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

33.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

34.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

35.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

36.

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

Swayze, John

37.

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

Hope, Bob

38.

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

39.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

40.

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

41.

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

Moliere

42.

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

43.

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

Wilder, Billy

44.

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

45.

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

Churchill, Winston

46.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

47.

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

Wilder, Billy

48.

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