Motivational Quotes

Nations

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.

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

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

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

Wilder, Billy

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

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

De Delloy

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

Swayze, John

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

10.

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

Weil, Simone

11.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

12.

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

13.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

14.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

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.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

17.

It is true that men themselves made this world of nations... but this world without doubt has issued from a mind often diverse, at times quite contrary, and always superior to the particular ends that men had proposed to themselves.

Vico, Giambattista

18.

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.

19.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

20.

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.

21.

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

Acheson, Dean

22.

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

23.

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

24.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

25.

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

Moliere

26.

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

27.

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

Twain, Mark

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.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

30.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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.

35.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

36.

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

Ruskin, John

37.

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

Twain, Mark

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

41.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

42.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

43.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

44.

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

45.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

47.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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

Buechner, Professor William