National Identity Quotes

• The loss of national identity is the greatest defeat a nation can know, and it is inevitable under the contemporary form of colonization.

  Slobodan Milosević

  Loss, Identity, Defeat

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• Theatre has no national identity. It is something for the world, whether it is Irish, English, or French.

  Cyril Cusack

  Theatre, Identity, World

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• You talked about national identity cards and the terrorism bill. We have made a government that has grown used to viewing us as subjects, has grown used to seeing its role as commanding us.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Government, Identity, Roles

  "Frontier Freedom: An Interview with Malcolm Wallop". Interview with Rick Henderson, William H. Mellor , Ill, reason.com. November 1995.

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• We don't need a nation that has national identity cards.

  Malcolm Wallop

  Identity, Needs, Cards

  "[Flashback interview] Retired Senator Malcolm Wallop: 'Frontier Freedom'". Interview with John W. Kennedy, www.ff.org. December 21, 2012.

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• Vietnamese must be made to feel that they are racial inferiors with no right to national identity.

  Wilfred Burchett

  Identity, Made, Feels

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• Part of America's genius has always been its ability to absorb newcomers, to forge a national identity out of the disparate lot that arrived on our shores.

  Barack Obama

  America, Identity, Genius

  Barack Obama (2007). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.231, Canongate Books

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• Nations which don't find their national identities will be preyed upon by other nations.

  Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

  Identity, Nations

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• National identity is the last bastion of the dispossessed. But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same.

  Umberto Eco

  Hatred, Identity, Lasts

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.355, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• It is terribly important to maintain a national identity in a way that it probably wasn't before.

  Robert Dessaix

  Important, Identity, Way

  Source: www.compulsivereader.com

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• National identity is a motion. It's something you're inside, you don't get what's happening, you can't see it from above. And that's where you have to write. You can't see what's happening now or what's going to happen, so you just dive into it and write.

  Karl Ove Knausgard

  Writing, Identity, Happens

  ""Something that's not yourself." - An Interview with Karl Ove Knausgård". Interview with Rebecka Bülow, logger.believermag.com. September 18, 2013.

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• People are less certain of their national identities or their place in the world. It starts looking different and disorienting. And there is no doubt that that has produced populist movements both from the left and from the right in many countries in Europe.

  Barack Obama

  Country, Europe, People

  Remarks by President Obama and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras of Greece in Joint Press Conference, Maximos Mansion, Athens, Greece, obamawhitehouse.archives.gov. November 15, 2016.

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• Globalisation, which benefits only multi-national companies and takes away all sense of local or national pride and identity, is the biggest threat facing all the member states of the EU.

  Steve Blake

  Pride, Identity, Benefits

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• Different nations have different ways of forming their national identity. In America, for instance, the model was one of homogeneity breaking from different backgrounds, and the whole effort was to blend them all together like a wonderful making of a milkshake!

  Kabir Bedi

  America, Effort, Together

  Source: www.youthkiawaaz.com

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• The identity of just one thing, the "clash of civilization" view that you're a Muslim or a Hindu or a Buddhist or a Christian, I think that's such a limited way of seeing humanity, and schools have the opportunity to bring out the fact that we have hundreds of identities. We have our national identity. We have our cultural identity, linguistic identity, religious identity. Yes, cultural identity, professional identity, all kinds of ways.

  Amartya Sen

  Christian, Religious, Buddhist

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Trump's "Make America Great Again" program trumpets a national identity built on scapegoating, self-pity and grandiosity, and the promise of a strongman.

  Susan Faludi

  Self, America, Promise

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• Freedom and diversity guard each other, and if a country could form the whole of one's character, Napoleon III and Victor Hugo would have been the same person... if national identity means anything, it means something that comes with you wherever you go, and stays with you no matter how long you stay away.

  Clive James

  Country, Character, Mean

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• The basis of national identity is to say, "This is authentic to me or my forebears," and is there even such a thing? How authentic is it to your life? Just because your grandfather did it, what does that have to do with you? If I say I'm working in the style of Rembrandt, so what? You can say it, but are you really? No, because when you try to literally copy a cultural artifact, you change it. It dissolves, and then who's looking at it? People who appreciate that kind of drawing, or people it means nothing to?

  Ben Katchor

  Mean, Drawing, People

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Almost 20 percent of the people living in Germany today have a foreign background. The problem is that Germany can't really offer foreigners an identity because the Germans hardly have a national identity themselves. That is certainly a result of Auschwitz.

  Bassam Tibi

  People, Identity, Germany

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• We are undermining a generation's happiness by depriving them of national identity, religious identity, and gender identity

  Dennis Prager

  Religious, Identity, Generations

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• I've never felt British. I'm just not interested in national identity. I don't know why.

  Elvis Costello

  Identity, British, Not Interested

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• Early on, New York already had a national and even international identity.

  Ron Chernow

  New York, Identity, International

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• The Palestinian people have no national identity.
  I, Yasser Arafat, man of destiny, will give them that identity through conflict with Israel.

  Yasser Arafat

  Destiny, Men, Israel

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• We have the tools, the intellect, the will to create a caring global culture. It isn't going to come without a recognition of the power of the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is the birth right of every human being on the planet. It is as much a basic part of each and every one of us as our sexuality, our national identity, our consciousness of self. And any society which attempts to hold back or impede this dimension of self-expression, when the history of that society is written, it will be called barbarous.

  Terence McKenna

  Caring, Self, Expression

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• The new culture war is about national identity rather than religion and 'transcendent authority.' It focuses on which groups the United States will formally admit to residence and citizenship. It asks the same question as the old culture war: 'Who are we?' But the earlier query was primarily about how we define ourselves morally. The new question is about how we define ourselves ethnically, racially and linguistically. It is, in truth, one of the oldest questions in our history, going back to our earliest immigration battles of the 1840s and 1850s.

  E. J. Dionne

  War, Battle, Identity

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• We, the people. Manifest Destiny. Conceived in liberty. Fear itself. Ask not. Morning in America. United we stand. Yes, we can. In times of great change and tumult, presidents seek to inspire beleaguered Americans by reminding them of their national identity.

  Ron Fournier

  Morning, Destiny, Yes We Can

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