Nation Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

On the same line of reasoning, if Australians were to be Australians, or rather if Australians were as separate from any other nation as Australia from any other land, there would be no jealousy between them on England's account.

To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.

The only fruitful promise of which the life of any individual or any nation can be possessed, is a promise determined by an ideal.

A good government may, indeed, redress the grievances of an injured people; but a strong people can alone build up a great nation.

Thomas Francis Meagher

It would be stupid tameness, and unaccountable folly, for whole nations to suffer one unreasonable, ambitious and cruel man, to wanton and riot in their misery

Jonathan Mayhew

Let me remind you that nuclear disarmament is not just an ardent desire of the people, as expressed in many resolutions of the United Nations. It is a legal commitment by the five official nuclear states, entered into when they signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

A constitution that is made for all nations is made for none.

Joseph de Maistre

Industry entirely left to itself, would soon fall to ruin, and a nation letting everything alone would commit suicide.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education... no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Abraham Flexner

I am sure that if the mothers of various nations could meet, there would be no more wars.

You can tell the ideals of a nation by its advertisements.

The best Party is but a kind of Conspiracy against the rest of the Nation. They put every body else out of their Protection. Like the Jews to the Gentiles, all others are the Offscowrings of the World.

George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax

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.

Franz von Papen

The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the States in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being. It is the nearest thing we have to a representative institution that can address the interests of all states, and all peoples. Through this universal, indispensable instrument of human progress, States can serve the interests of their citizens by recognizing common interests and pursuing them in unity.

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.

Giambattista Vico

The upper classes are merely a nation's past; the middle class is its future.

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few - the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

There is no single magic formula, no one simple step, no words, whether written into the Organization's Charter or into a treaty between states, which can automatically guarantee to us what we seek. Peace is a day-to day problem, the product of a multitude of events and judgments. Peace is not an "is", it is a "becoming." We cannot escape the dreadful possibility of catastrophe by miscalculation. But we can reach the right decisions on the myriad subordinate problems which each new day poses, and we can thereby make our contribution and perhaps the most that can be reasonably expected of us in 1963 to the preservation of peace.
It is here that the United Nations has served us — not perfectly, but well.

The major functions of the government are, as in the communist nations, operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it.

With Germany herself falling, it is not strange that the nations leagued with her also went down to defeat.

Kelly Miller (scientist)

Outside the kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than any other. God and history will remember your judgment.

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.

Henry A. Wallace

A marriage without conflicts is almost as inconceivable as a nation without crises.

Democracy is never a thing done. Democracy is always something that a nation must be doing. What is necessary now is one thing and one thing only, that democracy become again democracy in action, not democracy accomplished and piled up in goods and gold.

Archibald MacLeish