Nations Quotes - Page 19

• If you want to understand a nation, look at its dances and listen to its folk songs - don't pay any attention to its politicians.

  Agnes de Mille

  Dance, Song, Looks

  12 Copy quote

• A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Education, Advice, Bayonets

  9 Copy quote

• America is a fortunate country. She grows by the follies of our European nations.

  Napoleon Bonaparte

  Country, America, Folly

  20 Copy quote

• The English nation is never so great as in adversity.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Adversity, England

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A nation, as an individual, has duties to fulfill appointed by God and His moral law.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Law, Moral, Individual

  Benjamin Disraeli (1870). “Lothair”, p.214

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• England is a domestic country. Here the home is revered and the hearth sacred. The nation is represented by a family,--the Royal family,--and if that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty, it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence it may exercise over a nation.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Country, Responsibility, Home

  Benjamin Disraeli (Earl of Beaconsfield) (1886). “Wit and Wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield: Collected from His Writings and Speeches”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• And it is a singular truth that, though a man may shake off national habits, accent, manner of thinking, style of dress,--though he may become perfectly identified with another nation, and speak its language well, perhaps better than his own,--yet never can he succeed in changing his handwriting to a foreign style.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Men, Thinking, Style

  7 Copy quote

• The historic glory of America lies in the fact that it is the one nation that was founded like a church. That is, it was founded on a faith that was not merely summed up after it had exited, but was defined before it existed.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Lying, America, Church

  5 Copy quote

• I've noticed that the children of other nations always seem precocious. That's because the strange manners of their elders have caught our attention most and the children echo those manners enough to seem like their parents.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Children, Echoes, Parent

  13 Copy quote

• Few rash of any modern nation have a proper sense of an aesthetical whole; they praise and blame by parts; they are charmed by passages. And who has greater reason to rejoice in this than actors, since the stage is ever but a patched and piecemeal matter?

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Acting, Matter, Actors

  10 Copy quote

• No single character is ever so great that a nation can afford to form itself upon it. Imitation belittles. This appears in the instance of the Chinese. The Chinese are so many Confucii; in miniature. And so with the Jews. Moses, the lawgiver, is poorly represented by Moses, the old clothesman ; or even by Dives, the hanker.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Character, Chinese, Imitation

  5 Copy quote

• Crisis' seems to be too mild a word to describe conditions in countless African-American communities. It is beyond crisis when in the richest nation in the world, African Americans in Harlem live shorter lives than the people of Bangladesh, one of the poorest nations of the world.

  Johnnetta B. Cole

  Racism, People, Community

  9 Copy quote

• No nation has ever produced great art that has not made a high art of cookery, because art appeals primarily to the senses.

  Willa Cather

  Art, Cooking, Made

  Willa Cather (1990). “Willa Cather in Person: Interviews, Speeches, and Letters”, p.146, U of Nebraska Press

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• What a man does in his own house cannot concern the nation.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Men, Rights, House

  4 Copy quote

• men cannot be free in a nation where women are forbidden freedom.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Men, Forbidden

  Pearl S. Buck (1941). “Of Men and Women”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once you teach people to say what they do not understand, it is easy enough to get them to say anything you like. v One could wish no easier death than that of Socrates, calmly discussing philosophy with his friends; one could fear nothing worse than that of Jesus, dying in torment, among the insults, the mockery, the curses of the whole nation. In the midst of these terrible sufferings, Jesus prays for his cruel murderers. Yes, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a philosopher, the life and death of Christ are those of a God.

  Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Jesus, Philosophy, People

  7 Copy quote

• Make money and the whole nation will conspire to call you a gentleman.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Gentleman, Making Money, Prosperity

  12 Copy quote

• A nation may be in a tumult to-day for a thought which the timid Erasmus placidly penned in his study more than two centuries ago.

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Two, Erasmus, May

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1871). “Literature and Life”, p.11

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is with antiquity as with ancestry, nations are proud of the one, and individuals of the other; but if they are nothing in themselves, that which is their pride ought to be their humiliation.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Pride, Proud, Ancestry

  Charles Caleb Colton (1823). “Remarks on the Talents of Lord Byron and the Tendencies of Don Juan”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The reign of terror to which France submitted has been more justly termed "the reign of cowardice." One knows not which most to execrate,--the nation that could submit to suffer such atrocities, or that low and bloodthirsty demagogue that could inflict them. France, in succumbing to such a wretch as Robespierre, exhibited, not her patience, but her pusillanimity.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Suffering, Atrocities, Reign

  Charles Caleb Colton (1832). “Lacon: Or Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.70

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• That nation is proudest and noblest and most exalted which has the greatest number of really great men.

  Sinclair Lewis

  Men, Numbers, Really Great

  Sinclair Lewis (2002). “Arrowsmith: Elmer Gantry ; Dodsworth”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• By conversing with the mighty dead, we imbibe sentiment with knowledge. We become strongly attached to those who can no longer either hurt or serve us, except through the influence which they exert over the mind. We feel the presence of that power which gives immortality to human thoughts and actions, and catch the flame of enthusiasm from all nations and ages.

  William Hazlitt

  Hurt, Reading, Flames

  William Hazlitt, Herschel Moreland Sikes, William Hallam Bonner, Gerald Lahey (1979). “The Letters of William Hazlitt”, p.224, Springer

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a composite Nation like ours, made up of almost every variety of the human family, there should be, as before the Law, no rich, no poor, no high, no low, no black, no white, but one country, one citizenship equal rights and a common destiny for all.
  A government that cannot or does not protect the humblest citizen in his right to life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness, should be reformed or overthrown, without delay.

  Frederick Douglass

  Country, Pursuit Of Happiness, Equality

  204 Copy quote

• Nations, like individuals, live and die; but civilization cannot die.

  Giuseppe Mazzini

  Civilization, Individual, Dies

  Giuseppe Mazzini (1864). “Life & Writings of Joseph Mazzini”

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despotism can no more exist in a nation until the liberty of the press be destroyed than the night can happen before the sun is set.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Night, Liberty, Sun

  Charles Caleb Colton (1824). “Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think”, p.198

  7 Copy quote

  Show source