Motivational Quotes

Nations

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

- Twain, Mark

Best Quotes about 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.

A people always ends by resembling its shadow.

Kipling, Rudyard

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

Ruskin, John

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

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

Burton, Pierre

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

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

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

Churchill, Winston

10.

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

11.

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

Edinborough, Arnold

12.

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.

13.

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

14.

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

15.

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

Gaulle, Charles De

16.

The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.

Churchill, Winston

17.

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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 simplest explanation is that it doesn't make sense.

Buechner, Professor William

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Hope, Bob

23.

There's always something fishy about the French.

Coward, Noel

24.

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

Twain, Mark

25.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

26.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

27.

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

Moliere

28.

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

Bunche, Ralph

29.

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

Sellar, W. C.

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

34.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

35.

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

Wilder, Billy

36.

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

37.

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

Hubbard, Elbert

38.

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

Schopenhauer, Arthur

39.

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

40.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

41.

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

Chou En Lai

42.

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

Truman, Harry S

43.

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

44.

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

Kennedy, John F.

45.

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

Jerrold, Douglas William

46.

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

Swayze, John

47.

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

48.

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

Weil, Simone

49.

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

50.

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