A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.
—Jimmy Carter (b.1924) American Head of State, Military Leader
In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.
—Walter Bagehot (1826–77) English Economist, Journalist
No nation can be destroyed while it possesses a good home life.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–81) American Editor, Novelist
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
Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78) Swiss-born French Philosopher
God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Critic
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
I am the state.
—Louis XIV of France (1638–1715) King of France
A nation’s character is the sum of its splendid deeds; they constitute one common patrimony, the nation’s inheritance. They awe foreign powers, they arouse and animate our own people.
—Henry Clay (1777–1852) American Politician
As for the just and noble idea, that nations, as well as individuals, are parts of one wondrous whole, it has hardly passed the lips or pen of any but religious men and poets.—It is the one great principle of the greatest religion which has ever nourished the morals of mankind.
—Harriet Martineau (1802–76) English Sociologist, Economist, Philosopher, Essayist
Individuals may form communities, but it is institutions alone that can create a nation.
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81) British Head of State
There’s always something fishy about the French.
—Noel Coward (1899–1973) English Dramatist, Actor, Composer
A people always ends by resembling its shadow.
—Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) British Writer, Poet, Novelist, Short Story Author
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 (1668–1744) Italian Philosopher, Rhetorician, Jurist
Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
—Eric Hobsbawm (1917–2012) British Historian
It is equality of monotony which makes the strength of the British Isles.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
—Mark Twain (1835–1910) American Humorist
The best thing I know between France and England is the sea.
—Douglas William Jerrold (1803–57) English Writer, Dramatist, Wit
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
Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
—Benjamin Franklin (1706–90) American Political Leader, Inventor, Diplomat
God made the country and man made the town.
—William Cowper (1731–1800) English Anglican Poet, Hymn writer
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
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 strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.
—John Ruskin (1819–1900) English Writer, Art Critic
In the youth of a state, arms do flourish; in the middle age, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age, mechanical arts and merchandise.
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English Philosopher
I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish Playwright
The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.
—Stanley Kubrick (1928–99) American Film Director, Producer
The French complain of everything, and always.
—Napoleon I (1769–1821) Emperor of France
The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual.
—Charles Sumner (1811–74) American Lawyer, Statesman
A nation is the same people living in the same place.
—James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish Novelist, Poet
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