Foreigners Quotes - Page 12

• I like being a foreigner. For me, to live in California is very pleasant - I'm more comfortable not feeling a part of everything, not feeling responsible for the government or the roads or the health system.

  Eric Idle

  Government, California, Feelings

  "This much I know: Eric Idle" by John O'Connell, www.theguardian.com. March 20, 2010.

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• During the years I lived here, the people of Alexandra ignored tribal and ethnic distinctions. Instead of being Xhosas, or Sothos, or Zulus, or Shangaans, we were Alexandrans. We were one people, and we undermined the distinctions that the apartheid government tried so hard to impose. It saddens and angers me to see the rising hatred of foreigners.

  Nelson Mandela

  Government, Years, People

  Nelson Mandela (2011). “Nelson Mandela By Himself: The Authorised Book of Quotations”, p.424, Pan Macmillan

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• Basque is one of the world's more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words - profanities, I assume.

  Jan Morris

  Devil, Adults, Three

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• There are three things the prospective traveler to Russia does well to bear in mind. One: It is their country. Two: Most foreigners are profoundly relieved that this is so. Three: You don't have to go.

  Ilka Chase

  Country, Two, Russia

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• The moment there's a foreigner in a film it gives a novelty to the script. We make regional films and we need to hype our films.

  Arin Paul

  Hype, Giving, Needs

  "Tolly-ho! on The Telegraph, Calcutta". telegraphindia.com, 2008.

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• As towards most other things of which we have but little personal experience (foreigners, or socialists, or aristocrats, as the case may be), there is a degree of vague ill-will towards what is called Thinking. ... I am tempted to believe that much of the mischief thus laid at the door of that poor unknown quantity Thinking is really due to its ubiquitous twin-brother Talking.

  Vernon Lee

  Brother, Believe, Thinking

  Vernon Lee (1904). “Hortus Vitae: Essays on the Gardening of Life”

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• Of little use, the man you may suppose,
  Who says in verse what others say in prose;
  Yet let me show a poet's of some weight,
  And (though no soldier) useful to the state,
  What will a child learn sooner than a song?
  What better teach a foreigner the tongue?
  What's long or short, each accent where to place
  And speak in public with some sort of grace?

  Alexander Pope

  Song, Children, Men

  Alexander Pope (1829). “An Essay on Man: And Other Poems”, p.156

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• The national State divides its inhabitants into three classes: State citizens, State subjects, and foreigners.  It must be held in greater honour to be a citizen of this Reich even if only a crossing-sweeper, than to be a king in a foreign State.

  Adolf Hitler

  Kings, Class, Three

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• I was born in the Year 1632, in the City of York, of a good Family, tho' not of that Country, my Father being a Foreigner of Bremen, who settled first at Hull; He got a good Estate by Merchandise, and leaving off his Trade, lived afterward at York, from whence he had married my Mother, whose Relations were named Robinson, a very good Family in that Country, and from whom I was called Robinson Kreutznaer; but by the usual Corruption of Words in England, we are now called, nay we call ourselves, and write our Name Crusoe, and so my Companions always call'd me.

  Daniel Defoe

  Mother, Country, Father

  Daniel Defoe (1998). “The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner: Who Lived Eight and Twenty Years, All Alone in an Un-inhabited Island on the Coast of America, Near the Mouth of the Great River of Oroonoque, Having Been Cast on Shore by Shipwreck, Wherein All the Men Perished But Himself with an Account how He was at Last as Strangely Deliver'd by Pyrates, Written by Himself”, p.3, Oxford University Press, USA

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• Printing currency for foreigners to buy is the best racket a government can get into.

  Lee Child

  Government, Printing, Currency

  Lee Child (2006). “Killing Floor: A Jack Reacher Novel”, p.285, Penguin

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• Foreigners are sending messages to the planets. We are sending rice and cereals to our dead fore-father through the Brahmins. It is a wise deed?

  Periyar E. V. Ramasamy

  Wise, Father, Cereal

  Collected works of Periyar E.V.R., p. 511, 2005.

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• [for indicted foreigners] simple expulsion is not enough (...) they must be arrested immediately, tried using a fast-track procedure, and then expelled to serve their sentences in the countries they came from, (...) it isn't right that foreign criminals are being housed in our [Italian] jails.

  Franco Frattini

  Country, Italian, Simple

  Il Giornale Interview, April 28, 2008.

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• America's humanitarian concern for foreign victims of natural disasters or civil strife is being abused by President Bush when he extends legal status to foreigners in the US when there is no reason that they could not go home safely.

  Dan J. Stein

  Home, America, President

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• With respect to our State and federal governments, I do not think their relations correctly understood by foreigners. They generally suppose the former subordinate to the latter. But this is not the case. They are co-ordinate departments of one simple and integral whole.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Thinking, Simple, Government

  Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Caldwell Calhoun (1832). “The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 and '99: With Jefferson's Original Draught Thereof. Also, Madison's Report, Calhoun's Address, Resolutions of the Several States in Relation to State Rights. With Other Documents in Support of the Jeffersonian Doctrines of '98”, p.65

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• The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are the foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English. Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get in this country?

  John Rocker

  Country, New York, Block

  "At Full Blast Shooting outrageously from the lip, Braves closer John Rocker bangs away at his favorite targets: the Mets, their fans, their city and just about everyone in it". Interview with Jeff Pearlman, www.si.com. December 27, 1999.

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• English is full of booby traps for the unwary foreigner. Any language where the unassuming word fly signifies an annoying insect, a means of travel, and a critical part of a gentleman's apparel is clearly asking to be mangled.

  Bill Bryson

  Mean, Gentleman, Asking

  Bill Bryson (1990). “The Mother Tongue”, William Morrow Paperbacks

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• High national emotions are permissible when a soccer team is playing precisely because they are impermissible at most other times. There aren't, simply, many other places where you can sing your national anthem until you lose your voice without causing a riot. In the context of soccer, flag-waving nationalism - even chauvinistic, anti-foreigner, flag-waving nationalism - is acceptable in Britain.

  Anne Applebaum

  Soccer, Football, Team

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• I left a couple of my foreigners out last week and they started talking in foreign. I knew they were saying "Blah, blah, blah, le bastard manager..."

  Harry Redknapp

  Soccer, Football, Couple

  "Said & Done" by Davis Hills, www.theguardian.com. March 28, 2004.

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• Can't spell, can't spot fake Shakespeare, can't tell one wacky foreigner from another: it's increasingly obvious that Barbra is some deep sleeper planted by the Republicans to discredit the very concept of activist celebrities. Poor old Democrats, in thrall to her fundraising: people who need Barbra are the unluckiest people in the world.

  Mark Steyn

  Fundraising, People, Fake

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• Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.

  Irwin Winkler

  Government, Groups, Culture

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• there i was in late middle age, cut loose in a thoroughly looted, bankrupt nation whose assets had been sold off to foreigners, a nation swamped by unchecked plagues and superstition and illiteracy and hypnotic tv, with virtually no health services for the poor. where to go? what to do?

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Cutting, Age, Superstitions

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.66, Penguin

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• I have experienced the intensity of patriotism as a submarine officer, the ambitions of a competitive businessman, and the intensity of political debate. I have been sorely tempted to launch a military attack on foreigners, and have felt the frustration of having to negotiate with allies or even former enemies to reach a consensus instead of taking more decisive unilateral action.

  Jimmy Carter

  Military, Ambition, Frustration

  Jimmy Carter (2014). “The Jimmy Carter Library”, p.429, Simon and Schuster

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• We shed blood to take the word `Grexit' away from the mouth of foreigners, and Syriza is bringing this word back to their mouths.

  Antonis Samaras

  Blood, Mouths, Shed

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• All classes in proportion to their lack of travel and familiarity with foreign literature are bellicose, prejudiced against foreigners, fond of fighting as a cruel sport - in short, dog-like in their notions of foreign policy.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Sports, Dog, Travel

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• Crowds stand around all day long and criticise that bridge, and find fault with it, and tell with unlimited frankness how it ought to have been planned, and how they would have built it had the city granted them the $14,000 it cost. It is really refreshing to hang around these and listen to them. A foreigner would come to the conclusion that all America was composed of inspired professional bridge builders.

  Mark Twain

  Bridges, Cities, America

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