Nations Quotes - Page 13

• We cannot allow the defense of American lives to be held hostage by the United Nations -- which has already given Saddam Hussein a final warning, and now wants to give him another final warning. And, if he doesn't heed that, they will threaten him with yet another warning.

  Thomas Sowell

  War, Giving, Finals

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• The Middle Eastern states aren't nations; they're quarrels with borders.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny, Humor, Borders

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• Why then would people look to the United Nations as an instrument of peace, if instead all it is, is an instrument of putting out declarations that nobody intends to take seriously anyway?

  Ari Fleischer

  War, People, Looks

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• Teller contended, not implausibly, that hydrogen bombs keep the peace, or at least prevent thermonuclear war, because the consequences of warfare between nuclear powers are now too dangerous. We haven't had a nuclear war yet, have we? But all such arguments assume that the nuclear-armed nations are and always will be, without exception, rational actors, and that bouts of anger and revenge and madness will never overtake their leaders (or military and secret police officers in charge of nuclear weapons). In the century of Hitler and Stalin, this seems ingenuous.

  Carl Sagan

  Revenge, Military, War

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• The potential beauty of human life is constantly made ugly by man's ever recurring song of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever rising tides of revenge. Man has never risen above the injunction of the lex talionis: "Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot." In spite of the fact that the law of revenge solves no social problems, men continue to follow its disastrous leading. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Song, Revenge, Ocean

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• We will export death and violence to the four corners of the earth in defense of our great nation.

  George W. Bush

  Defense, Earth, Four

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• It will be just as easy for nations to get along in a republic of the world as it is for you to get along in the republic of the United States. Now, if Kansas and Colorado have a quarrel over a watershed they don't call out the national guard in each state and go to war over it. They bring suit in the Supreme Court and abide by its decision. There isn't a reason in the world why we can't do that internationally.

  Harry S. Truman

  War, Rivers, Kansas

  "Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, 1945, Volume 1". Book by Harry S. Truman, Best Books on, 1961.

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• If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.

  James Madison

  Taken, Over It, Ifs

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• Take away a nation's heritage and they are more easily persuaded.

  Karl Marx

  Heritage

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• Englishmen Francis Galton to describe the "science" of bettering human stock and the elimination of unwanted characteristics... and individuals. Galton proposed societal intervention for the furtherance of "racial quality," maintaining that "Jews are specialized for a parasitical existence upon other nations" and that "except by sterilization I cannot yet see any way of checking the produce of the unfit who are allowed their liberty and are below the reach of moral control.

  Francis Galton

  Liberty, Quality, Way

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• My brothers, family of our nation, secured Kuwait shall be, and secured you shall all be from every evil and long live Kuwait. And may you all live as her saviors, virtuous sons to her soil, and be her envoys. May she long live, may you long live adhering to her propitious principles, defending her kind and humanitarian lifespan, and her immaculate and tolerant Islamic faith.

  Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

  Brother, Islamic, Son

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• There is a groan that unites men and women, rich and poor, in any nation. These muscle pains are "explained" in every culture, but the universal fact of this persistence must mean that no adequate therapy exists.

  Patrick David Wall

  Pain, Mean, Persistence

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• Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Destiny, Men, Years

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1991). “Democracy in America”, p.436, Рипол Классик

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• To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50 percent children is ‘in the highest moral traditions of our country.'

  Robert Byrd

  Country, Peace, Children

  "The Byrd That Roared" by Matteen Mokalla, www.motherjones.com. March 2004.

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• A permanent peace cannot be prepared by threats but only by the honest attempt to create a mutual trust. However strong national armaments may be, they do not create military security for any nation nor do they guarantee the maintenance of peace.

  Albert Einstein

  Strong, Peace, War

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• This is a war between good and evil. And we have made it clear to the world that we will stand strong on the side of good, and we expect other nations to join us. This is not a war between our world and their world. It is a war to save the world.

  George W. Bush

  Peace, Strong, War

  George W. Bush's address to State Department Employees in Washington, D.C., georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov. October 4, 2001.

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• The creatures with whom we share the planet and whom, in our arrogance, we wrongly patronize for being lesser forms, they are not brethren, they are not underlings, they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the Earth.

  Henry Beston

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

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• The diversion of baiting an author has the sanction of all ages and nations, and is more lawful than the sport of teasing other animals, because, for the most part, he comes voluntarily to the stake, furnished, as he imagines, by the patron powers of literature, with resistless weapons, and impenetrable armour, with the mail of the boar of Erymanth, and the paws of the lion of Nemea.

  Samuel Johnson

  Sports, Writing, Animal

  Samuel Johnson, Arthur Murphy (1840). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius /c by Arthur Murphy, Esq”, p.267

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• Truth, like beauty, varies its fashions, and is best recommended by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literatures of his own age. As the manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who perhaps would not have looked upon better performances.

  Samuel Johnson

  Fashion, Writing, Mind

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.

  Samuel Johnson

  Writing, Curiosity, Age

  Samuel Johnson, Elizabeth Carter, Samuel Richardson, Catherine Talbot (1825). “The Rambler: A Periodical Paper, Published in 1750, 1751, 1752”

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• The Armenian genocide showed what could happen when empires were beaten into nations.

  Niall Ferguson

  History, Empires, Genocide

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• Contrary to received wisdom, the British are not an insular people in the conventional sense - far from it. For most of their early modern and modern history, they have had more contact with more parts of the world than almost any other nation - it is just that this contact has regularly taken the form of aggressive military and commercial enterprise.

  Linda Colley

  Military, Taken, People

  Linda Colley (2005). “Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837”, p.8, Yale University Press

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• Wealth from trade was the mainspring of Western material advance; the visible agents of change were great guns. These came of age in Europe in the 15th century. On land their potency in reducing castle walls favoured central over local power, since in general only monarchs could afford siege-trains; so nation-states were consolidated and extended into great territorial empires. At sea, guns transformed sailing ships into mobile castles virtually impregnable to opponents who lacked equally powerful ordnance. With the ocean-going gunned warship, western Europe began to extend around the globe.

  Peter Padfield

  Wall, Powerful, Ocean

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• Nations, as well as man, almost always betray the most prominent features of their future destiny in their earliest years. When I contemplate the ardour with which the Anglo-Americans prosecute commercial enterprise, the advantages which befriend them, and the success of their undertakings, I cannot refrain from believing that they will one day become the first maritime power of the globe. They are born to rule the seas, as the Romans were to conquer the world.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Believe, Destiny, Men

  Alexis de Tocqueville (1835). “Democracy in America”, p.447

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• Whether in peaceful trade or warlike attack, the sea unites more than it divides. Even if it were possible to treat England, or the British Isles, as a single, homogenous, united nation, it would still be impossible to write its naval history without reference to the histories of the other nations, near and far, with which the sea has connected it.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Writing, Sea, Peaceful

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