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.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his sons the hardships that made him rich.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
Bulls get rich, bears get rich, but pigs get slaughtered An Irishman is never at his best except when fighting.
—Irish Proverb
Great countries are those that produce great people.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
The wealth and prosperity of the country are only the comeliness of the body, the fullness of the flesh and fat; but the spirit is independent of them; it requires only muscle, bone and nerve for the true exercise of its functions. We cannot lose our liberty, because we cannot cease to think.
—Humphry Davy (1778–1829) British Chemist, Science Propagandist
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
—Edmund Burke (1729–97) British Philosopher, Statesman
I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965) British Leader, Historian, Journalist, Author
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.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–72) Italian Patriot, Political Leader
The French are wiser than they seem, and the Spaniards seem wiser than they are.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
There is always something new out of Africa.
—Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) Roman Statesman, Scholar
The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members.
—Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) American Head of State
The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (1791–1865) American Poetaster, Author
Our true nationality is mankind.
—H. G. Wells (1866–1946) English Novelist, Historian, Social Thinker
The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations—great or small—to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century.
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
Altogether national hatred is something peculiar. You will always find it strongest and most violent where there is the lowest degree of culture.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
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.
—Alexander Herzen (1812–70) Russian Revolutionary, Writer
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.
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940) Lithuanian-American Anarchist, Feminist
A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932) French Prime Minister
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. “Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by “patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
With disadvantages enough to bring him to humility, a Scotsman is one of the proudest things alive.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
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.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (1469–1527) Florentine Political Philosopher
I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language—religion—government—blood—identity in these makes men of one country.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English Poet, Literary Critic, Philosopher
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.
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English Humanist, Pacifist, Satirist, Short Story Writer
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.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German Philosopher
Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.
—Erich Fromm (1900–80) German-American Psychoanalyst, Social Philosopher
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.
—Thorstein Veblen (1857–1929) American Economist, Social Critic
Switzerland is a curst, selfish, swinish country of brutes, placed in the most romantic region of the world.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.
—Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American Essayist, Novelist
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
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