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.

We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

Let him who looks for a monument to Washington look around the United States. Your freedom, your independence, your national power, your prosperity, and your prodigious growth are a monument to him.

I am ever mindful of the legacy of my grandfather, the founder of this Kingdom, who had said to me that he perceived his life as a link in a continuous chain of those who served our nation and that he expected me to be a new and strong link in the same chain.

I wish to say to you that the life of an enlightened people and a vibrant nation cannot be measured by the life of an individual. A successful person is one who manages to lay down a new stone, a brick that would help firm up his nation's existence.

Nations around the world look to us for the leadership not merely by strength of arms but by strength of our convictions.

Oh troika, winged troika, tell me who invented you? Surely, nowhere but among a nimble nation could you have been born in a country which has taken itself in earnest and has evenly spread far and wide over half of the globe, so that once you start counting the milestones you may count on till a speckled haze dances before your eyes... Rus, are you not similar in your headlong motion to one of those nimble troikas that none can overtake? The flying road turns into smoke under you, bridges thunder and pass, all fall back and is left behind!... And what does this awesome motion mean? What is the passing strange steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes?... Rus, whither are you speeding to? Answer me. No answer. The middle bell trills out in a dream its liquid soliloquy; the roaring air is torn to pieces and becomes wind; all things on earth fly by and other nations and states gaze askance as they step aside and give her the right of way.

I am ashamed of my nation.

In the usual progress of things, the necessities of a nation in every stage of its existence will be found at least equal to its resources.

A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one.

When America ceases to remember his greatness, America will no longer be great.

There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.

In the end, the state of the Union comes down to the character of the people. I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

Individualities may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

Great countries are those that produce great people.

On the education of the people of this country the fate of the country depends.

Without publicity there can be no public support, and without public support every nation must decay.

I was over in Australia, and everyone's like: 'Are you proud to be an American?' And I was like, 'Um, I don't know, I didn't have a lot to do with it. You know, my parents fucked there, that's about all.'

My friends, as we enter a new decade, it should be clear to all of us that there is an unfinished agenda, that we have miles to go before we reach the promised land. The men who rule this country today never learned the lessons of Dr. King, they never learned that non-violence is the only way to peace and justice. Our nation continues to wage war upon its neighbors, and upon itself.

We need to help students and parents cherish and preserve the ethnic and cultural diversity that nourishes and strengthens this community - and this nation.

All my life I have had a certain idea of France.

Guarded with ships, and all our sea our own.

The people are as capable of achieving their industrial freedom as they were to secure their political liberty, and both are necessary to a free nation.

These are the gentry who are today wrapped up in the American flag, who shout their claim from the housetops that they are the only patriots, and who have their magnifying glasses in hand, scanning the country for evidence of disloyalty, eager to apply the brand of treason to the men who dare to even whisper their opposition to Junker rule in the United Sates. No wonder Sam Johnson declared that 'patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.' He must have had this Wall Street gentry in mind, or at least their prototypes, for in every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the people.

The sea is fulfilled, and the Empire undid itself. / Lord, Portugal remains to be accomplished!

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

Names and individuals are unimportant when Germany's final fate is at stake.

It is to be hoped that the leaders of this movement will place the nation above the party.

Allow me to say how manly and humanly great of you I think this is. Your courageous and firm intervention have met with nothing but recognition throughout the entire world. I congratulate you for all you have given anew to the German nation by crushing the intended second revolution.

I will never apologize for the United States - I don't care what the facts are... I'm not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.

It's the quality of the ordinary, the straight, the square, that accounts for the great stability and success of our nation. It's a quality to be proud of. But it's a quality that many people seem to have neglected.

The founding of our Nation was more than a political event; it was an act of faith, a promise to Americans and to the entire world. The Declaration of Independence declared that people can govern themselves, that they can live in freedom with equal rights, that they can respect the rights of others. In the two centuries that have passed since 1776, millions upon millions of Americans have worked and taken up arms when necessary to make that dream a reality. We can be extremely proud of what they have accomplished. Today, we are the world's oldest republic. We are at peace. Our Nation and our way of life endure. We are free.

The Constitution is the bedrock of all our freedoms; guard and cherish it; keep honor and order in your own house; and the republic will endure.

There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.

It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.

National honor is the national property of the highest value.

If America wants concessions, she must fight for them. We must purchase our power with our blood.

If we look to the history of other nations, ancient or modern, we find no example of a growth so rapid, so gigantic, of a people so prosperous and happy.

Our country may be likened to a new house. We lack many things, but we possess the most precious of all -- liberty!

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

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

Our Federal Union, next to our liberty most dear.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

And now gentlemen, you must have a national hero!

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

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.

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.

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).

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

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

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

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.