Selected nation quotes

1. 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.

2. 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.

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

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

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

6. A good newspaper, I suppose, is a nation talking to itself.

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

8. We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

9. 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.

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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.

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

16. I aim to be a competitive nation.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

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

22. The only negative thing in Pakistan is not having a democracy.

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

24. America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense human rights invented America.

25. 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.

26. 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.

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

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

29. Hitlers come and go, but Germany and the German people remain.

30. 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.

31. That which in England we call the middle class is in America virtually the nation.

32. 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.

33. 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.

34. 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.

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

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

37. We are Englishmen; that is one good fact.

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

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

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

41. Everyone always dies for his country. If you have lived in it, well and wisely and actively, you die for it too.

42. The decline in literature indicates a decline in the nation. The two keep pace in their downward tendency.

43. Our Federal Union, next to our liberty most dear.

44. This is a letter of hate. It is for you my countrymen, I mean those men of my country who have defiled it. The men with manic fingers leading the sightless, feeble, betrayed body of my country to its death.

45. A nation is not a complex of wheels, nor a wild horse race, but a stride upward concerted by real men.

46. It is not the form of things that must be attended to but their spirit. The real is what matters, not the apparent. In politics, reality is that which is unseen. Politics is the art of combining a nation's diverse or opposing factors to the benefit of its domestic well-being, and of saving the country from the open enmity or covetous friendship of other nations.

47. When a nation is invited to join in a union with another, the ignorant, bedazzled statesman might rush into it, young people enamored of beautiful ideas and lacking good sense might celebrate it, and venal or demented politicians might welcome it as a mercy and glorify it with servile words, but he who feels in his heart the anguish of the patria, he who watches and foresees, must investigate and must say what elements constitute the character of the nation that invites and the nation that is invited, and whether they are predisposed toward a common labor by common antecedents and habits, and whether or not it is probable that the fearsome elements of the inviting nation will, in the union it aspires to, be developed to the endangerment of the invited one.

48. Fortunately, there is a sane equilibrium in the character of nations, as there is in that of men. The force of passion is balanced by the force of interest. An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life. A nation that neglects either of these forces perishes. They must be steered together, like a pair of carriage horses.

49. The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task.

50. We want the happiness of the Philippines, but we want to obtain it through noble and just means. If I have to commit villainy to make her happy, I would refuse to do so, because I am sure that what is built on sand sooner or later would tumble down.

51. The glory of saving a country is not for him who has contributed to its ruin.

52. And now gentlemen, you must have a national hero!

53. The day of small nations has passed away; the day of Empires has come.

54. We have spilt an ocean of blood for brotherhood and unity of our peoples and we shall not allow anyone to touch or destroy it from within.

55. None of our republics would be anything if we weren't all together; but we have to create our own history - history of United Yugoslavia, also in the future.

56. I will give everything from myself to make sure that Yugoslavia is great, not just geographically but great in spirit, and that it hold firmly to its neutrality and sovereignty that has been established through great sacrifice in the last battle (referring to World War II).

57. Unite for the public safety, if you would remain an independent nation.

58. The life of a citizen is the property of his country.

59. Experience proves that armies are not always sufficient to save a nation; while a nation defended by its people is ever invincible.

60. Tomorrow, the entire ANC leadership and I will be back at our desks. We are rolling up our sleeves to begin tackling the problems our country faces. We ask you all to join us - go back to your jobs in the morning. Let's get South Africa working. For we must, together and without delay, begin to build a better life for all South Africans. This means creating jobs building houses, providing education and bringing peace and security for all.

61. Perhaps it was history that ordained that it be here, at the Cape of Good Hope that we should lay the foundation stone of our new nation. For it was here at this Cape, over three centuries ago, that there began the fateful convergence of the peoples of Africa, Europe and Asia on these shores.

62. The task at hand on will not be easy. But you have mandated us to change South Africa from a country in which the majority lived with little hope, to one in which they can live and work with dignity, with a sense of self-esteem and confidence in the future. The cornerstone of building a better life of opportunity, freedom and prosperity is the Reconstruction and Development Programme. This needs unity of purpose. It needs in action. It requires us all to work together to bring an end to division, an end to suspicion and build a nation united in our diversity.

63. We succeeded to take our last steps to freedom in conditions of relative peace. We commit ourselves to the construction of a complete, just and lasting peace. We have triumphed in the effort to implant hope in the breasts of the millions of our people. We enter into a covenant that we shall build the society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity - a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.

64. We fought with you because we are free, and we don't put up with transgressions. We want to reclaim our nation. As you spoil our security, we will do so to you.

65. No choice we can make as a nation lies between our history and our geography. We can hardly change either of them. They are immutable. The only choice we can make as a nation is the choice about our future.

66. The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

67. The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs.

68. 'We need to marshal and direct our energy toward building this nation into a peaceful, prosperous and proud bequest to our children.'

69. 'I know it's difficult to forget the past but I urge everyone here today to try and move the country forward.'

70. We've allowed this sin [homosexuality] to run rampant in our nation, and because it has run rampant in our nation, our nation is in the condition it's in today.

71. Don't join too many gangs. Join few if any. Join the United States and join the family - But not much in between, unless a college.

72. Such things had occasionally been said by some political enthusiast in the olden time, but, for the first time in the history of the world, the representatives of a nation, the representatives of a real, living, breathing, hoping people, declared that all men are created equal. With one blow, with one stroke of the pen, they struck down all the cruel, heartless barriers that aristocracy, that priestcraft, that king-craft had raised between man and man. They struck down with one immortal blow that infamous spirit of caste that makes a God almost a beast, and a beast almost a god. With one word, with one blow, they wiped away and utterly destroyed, all that had been done by centuries of war - centuries of hypocrisy - centuries of injustice.

73. For all we have and are, For all our children's fate, Stand up and take the war. The Hun is at the gate!

74. Today the management and the communication in the armed forces are founded. We managed to form the army in a very short period of time, and our army is equal to others of developed countries. We are obliged to serve as soldiers. As for my personal patriotic ideology...patriotism should not be talked about, but it should be seen through our activities. The army is the future of our country...and how the borders of our country should be protected. We need to teach this to our children not only in the army, as military necessity, but also in schools and institutions.

75. Without free, self-respecting, and autonomous citizens there can be no free and independent nations. Without internal peace, that is, peace among citizens and between the citizens and the state, there can be no guarantee of external peace.

76. Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth.

77. The ocean is not wide enough to hold all the sympathy that is streaming from the Old World to the New.

78. If Germany, my beloved fatherland, of whom you know I am proud, will not accept me, then must I, in the name of God, again make France or England richer by one capable German; - and to the shame of the German nation.

79. Nations, like men, have their infancy.

80. The first Filipino.