Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

Best Quotes about Nations

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

Edinborough, Arnold

Twain, Mark

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

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

Bunche, Ralph

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

Weil, Simone

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

Ruskin, John

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

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

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.

10.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

11.

Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.

Hochhuth, Rolf

12.

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

13.

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

Wilder, Billy

14.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

15.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

16.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

17.

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

Truman, Harry S

18.

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

19.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

20.

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

21.

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

Wilder, Billy

22.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

23.

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

24.

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

Kennedy, John F.

25.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Twain, Mark

29.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

30.

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.

31.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki

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.

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

Kubrick, Stanley

34.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

35.

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

Swayze, John

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.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

38.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

39.

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.

40.

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

41.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

42.

England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.

Burleigh, Lord

43.

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

44.

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

Capone, Al

45.

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

Bolt, Robert

46.

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

47.

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

Burton, Pierre

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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.