National Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Anyone (including retired ROC generals) would have stood up under that circumstance (during PRC national anthem) or it would be impolite.

... though it is England's right to enforce the law of Europe [i. e. treaties] as between contending states, she has no claim, so long as her own interests are untouched, to interfere in the national affairs of any country, whatever the extent of its misgovernment or its anarchy.

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury

Instead of designing an extension to the elegant facade of the National Gallery which complements it and continues the concept of columns and domes, it looks as if we may be presented with a kind of municipal fire station, complete with the sort of tower that contains the siren. I would understand better this type of high-tech approach if you demolished the whole of Trafalgar Square and started again with a single architect responsible for the entire layout, but what is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend.

I don't know how you feel, but I'm pretty sick of church people. You know what they ought to do with churches? Tax them. If holy people are so interested in politics, government, and public policy, let them pay the price of admission like everybody else. The Catholic Church alone could wipe out the national debt if all you did was tax their real estate.

In the turbulent years after 1933, anti-semitic slogans were current among the small shopkeepers of Vienna, as they had been sixty years before; they were directed primarily against the big department stores. In glaring contrast to the racial anti-semitism of the National-Socialists, however, the background to this movement was purely economic. No legal restrictions were placed on the Jews nor were any economic handicaps imposed,... There was never any discrimination in the schools, and in the academic profession, the business world and cultural life Jews continued to play their respected, even leading, role.

Kurt Schuschnigg

The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.

Jean-Baptiste Say

... it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress.

Condoleezza Rice

Militarism consumes the strongest and most productive elements of each nation. Militarism swallows the largest part of the national revenue.

America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.

We already had success in creating a democratic, national government that is revolutionary and popular. That is how socialism begins, not with decrees.

Salvador Allende

Creative destruction can apply to economic concepts as well. And this downturn offers an excellent opportunity to get rid of one that has long outlived its usefulness: gross domestic product. G. D. P. is one measure of national income, of how much wealth Americans make, and it's a deeply foolish indicator of how the economy is doing. It ought to join buggy.

Kennaston could find in the past — even he, who was privileged to view the past in its actuality, rather than through the distorting media of books and national pride — no suggestion as to what, if anything, he was expected to do while his physical life lasted, or to what, if anything, this life was a prelude. Yet that today was only a dull overture to tomorrow seemed in mankind an instinctive belief. All life everywhere, as all people spent it, was in preparation for something that was to happen tomorrow.

James Branch Cabell

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic revolutionary changes.... Competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be getting six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge for its citizens, just like national defense." —Sam Seaborne, West Wing

You are afraid of life, Little Man, deadly afraid. You will murder it in the belief of doing it for the sake of "socialism," or "the state," or "national honor," or "the glory of God."

I proposed that it be called the "Phoenix National Literary Society" – the word Phoenix signifying that the Irish cause was again to rise from the ashes of our martyred nationality.

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa

In the name of Almighty God, in accordance with the Iranian Constitution and its amendments, I solemnly declare that from this day, 9 Aban 1359 (31 October 1980), as I enter my twenty-first year, I am ready to assume my responsibilities and obligations as king of Iran... From today... I solemnly swear before the glorious Iranian tricolor flag, and on the Holy Koran, that in my high office I will dedicate my whole life to protecting the independence, national sovereignty and legitimate rights of the Iranian people.

In point of fact there are a certain number of values and of forces which are of decisive importance in our world civilization: the primacy of production, the continual growth of the power of the State and the formation of the National State, the autonomous development of technics, etc. These, among others — far more than the ownership of the means of production or any totalitarian doctrine — are the constitutive elements of the modern world. So long as these elements continue to be taken for granted, the world is standing still.

While local economies may experience significant price imbalances, a national severe price distortion seems most unlikely in the United States, given its size and diversity.

It is a well-known fact that in countries in which the national debt is properly funded, and an object of established confidence, it answers most of the purposes of money. Transfers of stock, or public debt, are there equivalent to payments in specie; or, in other words, stock, in the principal transactions of business, passes current as specie. The same thing would, in all probability, happen here, under the like circumstances.

Alexander Hamilton

Long before many of us were even conscious of our own degradation, Marcus Garvey fought for African national and racial equality.

Palestine was the West Point and Annapolis for the world. In that little country God was training up a people out of whom, when the fullness of the time should come, His gospel cadets should emerge, fitted by all the training of all their national history for going out among the heathen and proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ.

William Mackergo Taylor

We are constantly thinking of the great war … which which we think today as a war which saved the Union, and it did indeed save the Union, but it was a war that did a great deal more than that. It created in this country what had never existed before — a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union, it was the rebirth of the Union.

However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U.S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

There are three bodies no sensible man directly challenges: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the National Union of Mineworkers.

Harold Macmillan

Unlike national markets, which tend to be supported by domestic regulatory and political institutions, global markets are only 'weakly embedded'. There is no global lender of last resort, no global safety net, and of course, no global democracy. In other words, global markets suffer from weak governance, and are therefore prone to instability, inefficiency, and weak popular legitimacy.