Quotes about nationalities-and-nationalism

The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent, and is modest about it.

— James Agate

Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks. I fear that nationalism is one of England's many spurious gifts to the world.

— Richard Aldington

The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.

— Francis Bacon

There are few more impressive sights in the world than a Scotsman on the make.

— Sir James M. Barrie

All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity -- their links with their dead and the unborn.

— John Berger

Nothing and no one can destroy the Chinese people. They are relentless survivors.

— Pearl S. Buck

England is paradise for women, and hell for horses: Italy is a paradise for horses, hell for women.

— Robert Burton

Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.

— Lord Byron

It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.

— Albert Camus

There are few virtues that the Poles do not possess and there are few errors they have ever avoided.

— Winston Churchill

It is easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.

— Fyodor Dostoevsky

I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.

— Robert Frost

Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.

— Bob Geldof

The Jews have always been students, and their greatest study is themselves.

— Albert Goldman

With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.

— Oliver Goldsmith

Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.

— E. J. Hobsbawm

Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.

— Eric Hoffer

In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.

— Dean William R. Inge

Pervading nationalism imposes its dominion on man today in many different forms and with an aggressiveness that spares no one. The challenge that is already with us is the temptation to accept as true freedom what in reality is only a new form of slavery.

— John Paul II

The Irish are a fair people: They never speak well of one another.

— Samuel Johnson

The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England.

— Samuel Johnson

Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.

— Samuel Johnson

The British have a remarkable talent for keeping calm, even when there is no crisis.

— Franklin P. Jones

All the nationalists are wasms -- except one, the most powerful of this century, indeed, of the entire democratic age, which is nationalism.

— John Lukacs

If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.

— W. Somerset Maugham

Without country you have neither name, token, voice, nor rights, no admission as brothers into the fellowship of the Peoples. You are the bastards of Humanity. Soldiers without a banner, Israelites among the nations, you will find neither faith nor protection; none will be sureties for you. Do not beguile yourselves with the hope of emancipation from unjust social conditions if you do not first conquer a Country for yourselves.

— Giuseppe Mazzini

We Jews have a secret weapon in our struggle with the Arabs; we have no place to go.

— Golda Meir

An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.

— Austin O'Malley

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

— George Orwell

No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country, Thus far shalt thou go and no further.

— Charles Stewart Parnell

Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.

— Pope John XXIII

The Canadian spirit is cautious, observant and critical where the American is assertive.

— V. S. Pritchett

The Irish ignore anything they can't drink or punch.

— Proverb

The French work to live, but the Swiss live to work.

— French Proverb

Bulls get rich, bears get rich, but pigs get slaughtered An Irishman is never at his best except when fighting.

— Irish Proverb

Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin.

— Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi

The English are predisposed to pride, the French to vanity.

— Jean Jacques Rousseau

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

— George Bernard Shaw

The English have a heavy hearted way of amusing themselves.

— Sully

The Britons are quite separated from all the world.

— Virgil

How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!

— Voltaire