Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

- Sellar, W. C.

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

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

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

Buechner, Professor William

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

Twain, Mark

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

Hubbard, Elbert

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

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

Bolt, Robert

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

10.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

11.

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

12.

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

13.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

14.

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

Burton, Pierre

15.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

16.

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.

17.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

18.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

19.

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

20.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

21.

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

Twain, Mark

22.

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.

23.

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

Moliere

24.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

25.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

26.

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.

27.

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

Acheson, Dean

28.

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

Ruskin, John

29.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

30.

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

Hope, Bob

31.

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

Wilder, Billy

32.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

33.

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

Burke, Edmund

34.

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

35.

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.

36.

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

Custine, Marquis De

37.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

38.

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

39.

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

Capone, Al

40.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

41.

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

Churchill, Winston

42.

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

43.

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

44.

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

45.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

46.

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

Sellar, W. C.

47.

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

Plato

48.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

49.

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

50.

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