260 Nation Quotes

I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

There is no doubt that our nation's security and defeating terrorism trump all other priorities.

I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult.

I know that my works are a credit to this nation and I dare say they will endure longer than the McCarran Act.

Storm clouds of terror and dictatorship are gathering over the whole country... They must not be allowed to bring eternal night.

Even if a king defeats his enemy in battle, that still doesn't settle anything. There are other, less numerous armies of philosophers and scientists, and their contests determine the true triumph or defeat of nations. One scholar is matched with another; one creative mind with another; and one judicious temperament with his counterpart. A victory won on that field counts for three won by force of arms.

A people who are still, as it were, but in the gristle, and not yet hardened into the bone of manhood.

There ought to be system of manners in every nation which a well-formed mind would be disposed to relish. To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

As far as we can look back into history, the downfall of any nation can be traced from the moment that nation became timid about spending its best blood.

A political society does not live to conduct foreign policy; it would be more correct to say that it conducts foreign policy in order to live.

First, we would not accept a treaty that would not have been ratified, nor a treaty that I thought made sense for the country.

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the state, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party, generally.

I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture, its breed of useful animals, and other branches of a husbandman's cares.

Our country's honor calls upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion; and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world.

Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.

Americans have been taught that their nation is civilized and humane. But, too often, U.S. actions have been uncivilized and inhumane.

Human rights is the soul of our foreign policy, because human rights is the very soul of our sense of nationhood.

Individual liberty is individual power, and as the power of a community is a mass compounded of individual powers, the nation which enjoys the most freedom must necessarily be in proportion to its numbers the most powerful nation.

Inequalities of wealth, unjustly established, have assuredly injured the nation in which they exist during their establishment; and, unjustly directed, they injure it yet more during their existence. But inequalities of wealth justly established, benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence.

This monster of a land, this mightiest of nations, this spawn of the future, turns out to be the macrocosm of microcosm me.

Nations it may be have fashioned their Governments, but the Governments have paid them back in the same coin.

Let us disperse from our aloofness and serve the weak who made us strong, and cleanse the country in which we live. Let us teach this miserable nation to smile and rejoice with heaven's bounty and glory of life and freedom.

There are two Mustafa Kemals. One the flesh-and-blood Mustafa Kemal who now stands before you and who will pass away. The other is you, all of you here who will go to the far corners of our land to spread the ideals which must be defended with your lives if necessary. I stand for the nation's dreams, and my life's work is to make them come true.

The nation has placed its faith in the precept that all laws should be inspired by actual needs here on earth as a basic fact of national life.

No matter how rich and prosperous, a nation without independence, cannot be subject to any behaviour before the humanity, at a higher level than serving.

The evils which sapped the nation's strength had all been wrought in the name of religion.

God has made Canada one of those nations which cannot be conquered and cannot be destroyed, except by itself.

We are Englishmen; that is one good fact.

Stay with us, please remain in this country and constitute a nation based on national unity.

Iran is a great problem, but not necessarily a great country. In fact, I think it is a very weak country.

America is a mistake, admittedly a gigantic mistake, but a mistake nevertheless.

Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.

Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!

I am already bound unto an husband, which is the kingdom of England.

In the great journal of things happening under the sun, we, the American People, find our account running, under date of the nineteenth century of the Christian era. - We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, than any of which the history of former times tells us. We, when mounting the stage of existence, found ourselves the legal inheritors of these fundamental blessings.

I will never allow anyone to divide this people once more into religious camps, each fighting the other. : You, my Brown Guard, will regard it as a matter of course that this German people should go only by the way which Providence ordained for it when it gave to Germans the common language. So we go forward with the profoundest faith in God into the future. Would that which we have achieved have been possible if Providence had not helped us?

A great people has been moved to defend a great nation. Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America. These acts shattered steel, but they cannot dent the steel of American resolve. America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America - with the daring of our rescue workers, with the caring for strangers and neighbors who came to give blood and help in any way they could.

This young century will be liberty's century. By promoting liberty abroad, we will build a safer world. By encouraging liberty at home, we will build a more hopeful America. Like generations before us, we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom. This is the everlasting dream of America.

The resolve of our great nation is being tested. But make no mistake: We will show the world that we will pass this test. God bless.

There is no pulse so sure of the state of a nation as its characteristic art product which has nothing to do with its material life. (New York: Liveright, 1970, p. 12)

A nation's strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.

I am not interested in a long life. I am not afraid of these things. I don't mind if my life goes in the service of this nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.

I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will triumph in that Days Transaction, even although We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

To put it in rude, plain, unpalatable words - true patriotism, real patriotism: loyalty not to a Family and a Fiction, but a loyalty to the Nation itself! ...'Remember this, take this to heart, live by it, die for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn, obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.' [Czar Nicholas II]

What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet. No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason. Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

If we look to the answer as to why for so many years we achieved so much, prospered as no other people on earth, it was because here in this land we unleashed the energy and individual genius of man to a greater extent than has ever been done before. Freedom and the dignity of the individual have been more available and assured here than in any other place on earth. The price for this freedom at times has been high, but we have never been unwilling to pay the price.

The lesson of all this was, of course, that because we're a great nation, our challenges seem complex. It will always be this way. But as long as we remember our first principles and believe in ourselves, the future will always be ours. And something else we learned: Once you begin a great movement, there's no telling where it will end. We meant to change a nation, and instead, we changed a world.

'The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts.' [9]

Britain's continuing membership of the Community would mean the end of Britain as a completely self-governing nation and the end of our democratically elected Parliament as the supreme law making body in the United Kingdom.

It's all over. We can begin to forget Armenia now. Andranik is dead. The nation is lost. I'm no Armenian. I'm an American. Well, the truth is I am both and neither. I love Armenia and I love America and I belong to both, but I am only this: an inhabitant of the earth, and so are you, whoever you are. I tried to forget Armenia but I couldn't do it.

Nations will march towards the apex of their greatness at the same pace as their education. Nations will soar if their education soars; they will regress if it regresses. Nations will fall and sink in darkness if education is corrupted or completely abandoned

Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against 'freedom of print', it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory. The nation ceases to be mindful of itself, it is deprived of its spiritual unity, and despite a supposedly common language, compatriots suddenly cease to understand one another

Israel is not an aviary.

A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.

I have heard something said about allegiance to the South. I know no South, no North, no East, no West, to which I owe any allegiance... The Union, sir, is my country.

Humankind consists of two sexes, woman and man. Is it possible that a mass is improved by the improvement of only one part and the other ignored? Is it possible that if half of a mass is tied to earth with chains and the other half can soar into skies?

California's like an artificial limb the rest of the country doesn't really need. You can quote me.

I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance. We believe not only in universal toleration but we accept all religions as true. I am proud to belong to a nation which has sheltered the persecuted and the refugees of all religions and all nations of the earth. I am proud to tell you that we have gathered in our bosom the purest remnant of the Israelites who came to Southern India and took refuge with us in very year in which their holy temple was shattered to pieces by Roman tyranny. I am proud to belong to the religion which has sheltered and is still fostering the remnant of the grand Zoroastrian nation.

To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land, And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes.

The official designs of the Government, especially its designs in connection with postage stamps and coinage, may be described, I think, as the silent ambassadors of national taste.

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator. ** Speech at Royal Albert Hall, London (18 March 1931)

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward.

Throughout American history, there have been moments that call on us to meet the challenges of an uncertain world, and pay whatever price is required to secure our freedom. They are the soul-trying times our forbearers spoke of, when the ease of complacency and self-interest must give way to the more difficult task of rendering judgment on what is best for the nation and for posterity, and then acting on that judgment - making the hard choices and sacrifices necessary to uphold our most deeply held values and ideals. This was true for those who went to Lexington and Concord. It was true for those who lie buried at Gettysburg. It was true for those who built democracy's arsenal to vanquish fascism, and who then built a series of alliances and a world order that would ultimately defeat communism. And this has been true for those of us who looked on the rubble and ashes of 9/11, and made a solemn pledge that such an atrocity would never again happen on United States soil; that we would do whatever it took to hunt down those responsible, and use every tool at our disposal - diplomatic, economic, and military - to root out both the agents of terrorism and the conditions that helped breed it.

I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation

Right here let me make as vigorous a plea as I know how in favor of saying nothing that we do not mean, and of acting without hesitation up to whatever we say. A good many of you are probably acquainted with the old proverb, 'Speak softly and carry a big stick - you will go far.' If a man continually blusters, if he lacks civility, a big stick will not save him from trouble, and neither will speaking softly avail, if back of the softness there does not lie strength, power. In private life there are few beings more obnoxious than the man who is always loudly boasting, and if the boaster is not prepared to back up his words, his position becomes absolutely contemptible. So it is with the nation. It is both foolish and undignified to indulge in undue self-glorification, and, above all, in loose-tongued denunciation of other peoples. Whenever on any point we come in contact with a foreign power, I hope that we shall always strive to speak courteously and respectfully of that foreign power.

One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations.

A song for our banner! The watchword recall Which gave the Republic her station: 'United we stand, divided we fall!' It made and preserves us a nation!

The union of lakes, the union of lands, The union of States none can sever, The union of hearts, the union of hands, And the flag of our Union forever!

Democrats should 'stay home on Election Day ... for the sake of the nation.'

Nobody's wrong but England - and England's always wrong, Too late - or else too early - too soft - or else too strong. And when for once the wide world begins to praise her name Her own sons crowd and hurry to shout her back to shame.

May God Almighty give our work His blessing, strengthen our purpose, and endow us with wisdom and the trust of our people, for we are fighting not for ourselves but for Germany.

We have experienced a miracle, something unique, something the like of which there has hardly been in the history of the world. God first allowed our people to be victorious for four and a half years, then He abased us, laid upon us a period of shamelessness, but now after a struggle of fourteen years he has permitted us to bring that period to a close. It is a miracle which has been wrought upon the German people.... It shows us that the Almighty has not deserted our people, that He received it into favour at the moment when it rediscovered itself. And that our people shall never again lose itself, that must be our vow so long as we shall live and so long as the Lord gives us the strength to carry on the fight.

So far as the Evangelical Confessions are concerned we are determined to put an end to existing divisions, which are concerned only with the forms of organization, and to create a single Evangelical Church for the whole Reich. : And we know that were the great German reformer [Martin Luther] with us to-day he would rejoice to be freed from the necessity of his own time and, like Ulrich von Hutten, his last prayer would be not for the Churches of the separate States: it would be of Germany that he would think and of the Evangelical Church of Germany.

We are determined, as leaders of the nation, to fulfill as a national government the task which has been given to us, swearing fidelity only to God, our conscience, and our Volk. : This the national government will regard its first and foremost duty to restore the unity of spirit and purpose of our Volk. It will preserve and defend the foundations upon which the power of our nation rests. It will take Christianity, as the basis of our collective morality, and the family as the nucleus of our Volk and state, under its firm protection....May God Almighty take our work into his grace, give true form to our will, bless our insight, and endow us with the trust of our Volk.

So we have come together on this day to prove symbolically that we are more than a collection of individuals striving one against another, that none of us is too proud, none of us too high, none is too rich, and none too poor, to stand together before the face of the Lord and of the world in this indissoluble, sworn community. And this united nation, we have need of it.

The contrary of a civilized nation is a creative nation.

In recent times it has been fashionable to talk of the levelling of nations, of the disappearance of different races in the melting-pot of contemporary civilization. I do not agree with this opinion, but its discussion remains another question. Here it is merely fitting to say that the disappearance of nations would have impoverished us no less than if all men had become alike, with one personality and one face. Nations are the wealth of mankind, its collective personalities; the very least of them wears its own special colours and bears within itself a special facet of divine intention.

First pledge our Queen this solemn night, Then drink to England, every guest; That man's the best Cosmopolite Who loves his native country best.

God bless the narrow sea which keeps her off, And keeps our Britain, whole within herself, A nation yet, the rulers and the ruled - Some sense of duty, something of a faith, Some reverence for the laws ourselves have made. Some patient force to change them when we will, Some civic manhood firm against the crowd.

Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation; Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

In Brazil we have had Emerson (Fittipaldi), (Jose) Carlos Pace, and now it's me. After me there will be another one. This is unrefusable.

To the Fuhrer. This is the truth which bound me to thee: I looked for thee and found my Fatherland. I was a leaf floating in limitless space. Now thou art my homeland and my tree. How far would I be carried by the wind, wert thou not the strength that flows up from the roots. I believe in thee, for thou art the nation. I believe in Germany. For thou art Germany's son.

Let me be absolutely clear: Iran is a grave threat.

There is no help but in defense but I can assure you... the Imperial Government will not succeed in subduing the Mexicans, and its armies will not have a single day of peace... we must stop them, not only for our country but for the respect of the sovereignty of the nations.

So to be patriots as not to forget we are gentlemen.

Kaltenbrunner had discovered a world where he needed only to obey in order to become part of the historical progression of mankind. He had thus clarified his ideological commitment to the abstract, mythical German nation.

The Cuban people refuse to be forced into consumerism, and for that we are the most democratic nation on the planet!

And so, in my State of the- my State of the Union- or state- my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation- I asked Americans to give 4,000 years- 4,000 hours over the next- the rest of your life- of service to America. That's what I asked- 4,000 hours.

Now comes our time of testing. Our measure is taken, not only by what we have and use, but what we build and leave behind. And nothing this generation could ever build will matter more than the means to defend our nation and extend our peace.

Members of Congress: however we feel about the decisions and debates of the past, our nation has only one option: We must keep our word, defeat our enemies, and stand behind the American military in its vital mission.

If I were to characterize George Washington's feelings toward his country, I should be less inclined than most people to stress what is called Washington's love of his country. What impresses me as far more important is what I should call Washington's respect for his country.