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

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

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

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

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

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

Cicero, Marcus T.

Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.

Burke, Edmund

Nations, like men, have their infancy.

Bolingbroke, Henry

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

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

Wilder, Billy

10.

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

11.

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

Weil, Simone

12.

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.

13.

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

Kennedy, John F.

14.

The French complain of everything, and always.

Bonaparte, Napoleon

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.

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

17.

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

Twain, Mark

18.

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

19.

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

Ruskin, John

20.

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

Hochhuth, Rolf

21.

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

Swayze, John

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

25.

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

26.

Without a country, I am not a man.

Al-Sabah, Nawaf Al-Nasir

27.

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

28.

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

Moliere

29.

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

30.

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

Wilder, Billy

31.

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

Sigourney, Lydia

32.

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

Churchill, Winston

33.

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.

34.

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

35.

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

Bradbury, Malcolm

36.

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

37.

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

Burton, Pierre

38.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

Disraeli, Benjamin

39.

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

Custine, Marquis De

40.

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

Capone, Al

41.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

42.

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

Sellar, W. C.

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

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

Disraeli, Benjamin

46.

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

Bolt, Robert

47.

The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.

Hope, Bob

48.

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

Lodge Jr., Henry Cabot

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.

A little inaccuracy sometimes saves tons of explanations.

Saki