72 quotes about Nations



Without a country, I am not a man.
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In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
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Nations, like men, have their infancy.
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It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for Wales!
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The French complain of everything, and always.
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I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world.
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Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
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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.
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A nation is not conquered which is perpetually to be conquered.
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Spain: A whale stranded upon the coast of Europe.
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England can never be ruined except by a Parliament.
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A Canadian is someone who knows how to make love in a canoe.
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I don't even know what street Canada is on.
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A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
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If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.
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China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.
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Be England what she will, with all her faults she is my country still.
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Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. [About Russia]
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The maxim of the British people is Business as usual.
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The soil of their native land is dear to all the hearts of mankind.
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I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language -- religion -- government -- blood -- identity in these makes men of one country.
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There's always something fishy about the French.
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God made the country and man made the town.
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Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.
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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.
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The more I saw of foreign countries the more I loved my own.
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Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
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Great countries are those that produce great people.
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Canada has never been a melting pot; more like a tossed salad.
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How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six varieties of cheese?
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.
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The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup.
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The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]
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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.
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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.
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The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
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A nation is the same people living in the same place.
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A people always ends by resembling its shadow.
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The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.
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The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.
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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.
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I am the state.
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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.
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The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there.
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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]
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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.
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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.
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Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.
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States are as the men, they grow out of human characters.
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There is always something new out of Africa.
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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.
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It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.
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Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
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Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.
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The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
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National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. Every nation mocks at other nations, and all are right.
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I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
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The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well ordered homes of the people.
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Russia has abolished God, but so far God has been tolerant.
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Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
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Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns! and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The historian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for want of a man that there are so many men. It is individuals that populate the world.
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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.
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France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
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Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.
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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.
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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.
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I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
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France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.
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France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cannot tear the toilet paper.
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