Quotes about nations

"How can you govern a country with two hundred and forty six varieties of cheese?"

Gaulle, Charles De on nations
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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."

Goldman, Emma on nations   

"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 on nations   

"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."

Hobsbawm, E. J. on nations   

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

Hochhuth, Rolf on nations   

"The only thing chicken about Israel is their soup."

Hope, Bob on nations   

"The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]"

Hope, Bob on nations   

"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."

Hugo, Victor on 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 on nations   

"The best thing I know between France and England is the sea."

Jerrold, Douglas William on nations   

"A nation is the same people living in the same place."

Joyce, James on nations   

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"A people always ends by resembling its shadow."

Kipling, Rudyard on nations   

"The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes."

Kubrick, Stanley on nations
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"The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes."

Kubrick, Stanley on nations   

"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. on nations   

"I am the state."

Louis XIV on nations   

"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 on nations   

"The country has charms only for those not obliged to stay there."

Manes, Edouard on nations   

"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 on nations   

"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 on nations   

"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 on nations   

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

Moliere on nations   

"States are as the men, they grow out of human characters."

Plato on nations   

"There is always something new out of Africa."

Pliny The Elder on nations   

"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 on nations   

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor on nations   

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

Rousseau, Jean Jacques on nations   

"Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art."

Ruskin, John on nations   

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

Ruskin, John on nations   

"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."

Schopenhauer, Arthur on nations   

"I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could."

Shaw, George Bernard on nations   

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

Sigourney, Lydia on nations   

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

Swayze, John on nations   

"Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance."

Swift, Jonathan on nations   

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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."

Thoreau, Henry David on 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 on nations   

"France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country."

Twain, Mark on nations
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"Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it."

Twain, Mark on nations
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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."

Vico, Giambattista on nations   

"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 on nations