Countries Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Listening to what people in other countries are saying and trying to understand how they perceive their place in the world is essential to a future of peace and security at home and abroad.

Hillary Clinton

My own lab has two Chinese, a Malaysian, a Canadian, an American, a German, it has had all sorts of people. And it's actually fun because people from different countries come together, they have cultural exchanges, they learn more about each others' countries and way of life. Science is a great international mixer, so the idea that it is a sort of cricket match where our team won — that simply is a wrong way of looking at scientific discovery.

Venkatraman Ramakrishnan

The condition of women affords in all countries the best criterion by which to judge the character of men.

Languages happily restrict the mind to what is of its own native growth and fitted for it, as rivers and mountains bond countries; or the empire of learning, as well as states, would become unwieldy and overgrown.

William Hazlitt

As an artistic style, mannerism conformed to a divided outlook on life which was, nevertheless, spread uniformly all over Western Europe; the baroque is the expression of an intrinsically more homogeneous worldview, but one which assumes a variety of shapes in the different European countries. Mannerism, like Gothic, was a universal European phenomenon, even if it was restricted to much narrower circles than the Christian art of the Middle Ages; the baroque, on the other hand, embraces so many ramifications of artistic endeavour, appears in so many different forms in the individual countries and spheres of cultures, that it seems doubtful at first sight whether it is possible to reduce them all to a common denominator.

Several of Republic of China's remaining diplomatic allies were already looking to switch their allegiance to PRC. The only reason that the countries have not yet done so is that Beijing has yet to embrace them due to its consideration of cross-strait relations.

The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.

The President recalled the very warm ties that exist between the two countries build on civilisational links of thousands of years. We felt that there are enormous opportunities of cooperation between the two countries in the field of information and digital technologies

The earth appears to us as an immense plain, chequered with a thousand varieties of aspects and reliefs - verdant hills, flowery valleys, mountains more or less elevated, winding rivers in the plains, lakes of fresh water, vast oceans, countries of infinite variety.

Camille Flammarion

You will have Time, that rare and lovely gift that your Western countries have lost the more they have pursued it.

Global economic competition is a game of unequal players … Consequently, it is only fair that we 'tilt the playing field' in favour of the weaker countries. In practice, this means allowing them to protect and subsidize their producers more vigorously and to put stricter regulations on foreign investment. These countries should also be allowed to protect intellectual property rights less stringently so that they can more actively 'borrow' ideas from more advanced countries.

Countries with high levels of atheism are... the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world.

Per capita availability of good, potable water is diminishing in all developed and developing countries.

Marq de Villiers

What if a small group of world leaders were to conclude that the principal risk to the Earth comes from the actions of the rich countries? And if the world is to survive, those rich countries would have to sign an agreement reducing their impact on the environment. Will they do it? The group's conclusion is 'no'. The rich countries won't do it. They won't change. So, in order to save the planet, the group decides: Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?

Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

It takes 1,000 tons of water to produce 1 ton of grain. As water becomes scarce and countries are forced to divert irrigation water to cities and industry, they will import more grain. As they do so, water scarcity will be transmitted across national borders via the grain trade. Aquifer depletion is a largely invisible threat, but that does not make it any less real.

Lester R. Brown

Families, like countries, take their prophets unkindly, but a verse-speaker in the house is dishonor to be hooted.

[T]he view that anti-Communism equals Fascism remained obligatory in countries subject to Communist censorship until the advent of Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost. It was prevalent also in foreign 'progressive' circles. Western scholars who had the temerity to link Mussolini or Hitler with Communism in any way or to depict their regimes as genuine mass movements risked verbal or other forms of harassment.

All that is best in the great poets of all countries is not what is national in them, but what is universal.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

As I think of the many myths, there is one that is very harmful, and that is the myth of countries. I mean, why should I think of myself as being an Argentine, and not a Chilean, and not an Uruguayan. I don't know really. All of those myths that we impose on ourselves — and they make for hatred, for war, for enmity — are very harmful. Well, I suppose in the long run, governments and countries will die out and we'll be just, well, cosmopolitans.

Jorge Luis Borges

Talk loud enough about human rights and it gives the impression of democracy at work, justice at work. There was a time when the United States waged war to topple democracies, because back then democracy was a threat to the Free Market. Countries were nationalising their resources, protecting their markets.... So then, real democracies were being toppled. They were toppled in Iran, they were toppled all across Latin America, Chile.

The concept of individual rights is so prodigious a feat of political thinking that few men grasp it fully - and two hundred years have not been enough for other countries to understand it. But this is the concept to which we owe our lives - the concept which made it possible for us to bring into reality everything of value that any of us did or will achieve or experience.

Among the innumerable monuments of architecture constructed by the Romans, how many have escaped the notice of history, how few have resisted the ravages of time and barbarism! And yet even the majestic ruins that are still scattered over Italy and the provinces, would be sufficient to prove that those countries were once the seat of a polite and powerful empire.

We always support peace... and we will keep supporting peace for all people. In Sri Lanka we also fought thirty years of war against terrorists. So the whole development process, the economy went down. We suffered for thirty years but now we have peace for the last four years. In 2009 we managed to eradicate terrorism. Though we have eradicated terrorism, now we have to face the international community, which is pressurizing us. Now our issue is that some of the countries are criticizing though there are no bombs blasting in our country. Every March or every six months in Geneva we are facing a confrontation with these countries. Some of the Western countries are bringing resolutions in the Human Rights Commission.

Mahinda Rajapaksa

Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries.