Nations Quotes - Page 22

• As a native Washingtonian, I am well aware that childhood obesity is a real problem in our nations capital.

  Daniel Snyder

  Real, Childhood, Problem

  "Athletes Hit Hill For Kid Health". Politico, September 28, 2010.

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• This nation is able to legislate for its own people on every question, without waiting for the aid or consent of any other nation on earth.

  William Jennings Bryan

  People, Waiting, Earth

  Democratic National Convention Address, originally delivered 8 July 1896 and later recorded in studio

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• When the life of the nation was attempted, when the cause of liberty and human rights called for their aid, they rushed forth to rally under the banner they loved, with grand singleness of purpose and heroic devotion--leaving all behind them, to meet toil and danger, hunger, sickness, wounds, and death, for nothing but the sublime satisfaction of doing their duty to their country and to mankind.

  Carl Schurz

  Country, Singleness Of Purpose, Rights

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• When the United Nations was born it was believed to be a positive instrument for peace. From this exalted position it became an organization in which nations would at least keep talking instead of shooting. Soon it was discovered ... that words were as deadly as any weapon, and when these words had a number of interpretations they could and did lead to conflict.

  Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

  Talking, Organization, Numbers

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• One of the great disappointments of our time has been that the United States, a beacon of hope during the freedom struggles of the Asian peoples, succumbed to the views and greater colonial experience of nations grown to power in an earlier period.

  Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

  Disappointment, Struggle, Views

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• The building of a just and peaceful world order, the aim of the United Nations, is hampered not by a dearth of ideas, resources, and manpower but by the lack of will on the part of governments to take the required steps.

  Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit

  Government, Order, Ideas

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• Instead of casting away all our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, to take more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted and the more generally they have prevailed, the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, Age, Casting

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• All wars derive from lack of empathy: the incapacity of one to understand and accept the likeness or difference of another. Whether in nations or the encounters of race and sex, competition then replaces compassion, subjection excludes mutuality.

  Marya Mannes

  Sex, War, Compassion

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• art is the pulse of a nation.

  Gertrude Stein

  Art, Pulse, Art Is

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• where families suffer from disasters that are preventable, this is a measure of a whole nation's neglect. A society imperils its own future when, out of negligence or contempt, it overlooks the need of children to be reared in a family ... or when, in the midst of plenty, some families cannot give their children adequate food and shelter, safe activity and rest, and an opportunity to grow into full adulthood as people who can care for and cherish other human beings like themselves.

  Margaret Mead

  Family, Children, Opportunity

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• the people of one nation alone cannot save their own children; each holds the responsibility for the others' children.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Responsibility, People

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• Everybody's suffering is mine but not everybody's murdering ... I do not distinguish for one moment whether my child is in danger or a child in central Asia. But I will not accept responsibility for what other people do because I happen to belong to that nation or that race or that religion. I do not believe in guilt by association.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Believe, Responsibility

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• I have heard from my father and mother all the answers that faith in God could offer to those who doubt and search for the truth. In our home and in many other homes the eternal questions were more actual than the latest news in the Yiddish newspaper. In spite of all the disenchantments and all my skepticism I believe that the nations can learn much from those Jews, their way of thinking, their way of bringing up children, their finding happiness where others see nothing but misery and humiliation.

  Isaac Bashevis Singer

  Mother, Children, Father

  Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joseph C. Landis (1986). “Aspects of I.B. Singer”

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• Humor, in one form or another, is characteristic of every nation; and reflecting the salient points of social and national life, it illuminates those crowded corners which history leaves obscure.

  Agnes Repplier

  Humor, Obscure, Social

  Agnes Repplier (1894). “In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers”

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• The sanguine assurance that men and nations can be legislated into goodness, that pressure from without is equivalent to a moral change within, needs a strong backing of inexperience.

  Agnes Repplier

  Strong, Men, Law

  Agnes Repplier (2009). “American Austen: The Forgotten Writing of Agnes Repplier”, Intercollegiate Studies Institute

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• The earliest voice listened to by the nations in their infancy was the voice of the storyteller.

  Agnes Repplier

  Voice, Storytelling, Infancy

  Agnes Repplier (1898). “Varia”

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• America has invested her religion as well as her morality in sound income-paying securities. She has adopted the unassailable position of a nation blessed because it deserves to be blessed; and her sons, whatever other theologies they may affect or disregard, subscribe unreservedly to this national creed.

  Agnes Repplier

  Blessed, Son, America

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• I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

  John Ruskin

  Believe, Greatness, Men

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.158, Cosimo, Inc.

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• The art of nations is to be accumulative, just as science and history are; the work of living men not superseding, but building itself upon the work of the past.

  John Ruskin

  Art, Past, Men

  John Ruskin (1872). “The Political Economy of Art: Being the Substance (with Additions) of Two Lectures Delivered at Manchester, July 10th and 13th, 1857”, p.56

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• Superstition, in all times and among all nations, is the fear of a spirit whose passions are those of a man, whose acts are the acts of a man; who is present in some places, not in others; who makes no places holy and not others; who is kind to one person, unkind to another; who is pleased or angry according to the degree of attention you pay him, or praise you refuse to him; who is hostile generally to human pleasure, but may be bribed by sacrifice of a part of that pleasure into permitting the rest. This, whatever form of faith it colors, is the essence of superstition.

  John Ruskin

  Passion, Sacrifice, Men

  John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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• nations decay from within more often than they surrender to outward assault.

  Ellen Glasgow

  Decay, Surrender, Assault

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• Uncontrollable consumerism has become a watchword of our culture despite regular and compelling calls for its end. The United States has more malls than high schools; Americans spend more time shopping than reading. ... Some of the most insightful writing about the American character over the nation's history has been about neither freedom nor democracy but about the crazed impulse to acquire things.

  Anna Quindlen

  Reading, Writing, School

  Anna Quindlen (2004). “Loud and Clear”, p.184, Random House

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• When trust is lost, a nation's ability to transact business is palpably undermined.

  Alan Greenspan

  Lost, Ability

  Alan Greenspan (2008). “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World”, p.256, Penguin

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• Nice is a pallid virtue. Not like honesty or courage or perseverance. On the other hand, in a nation notably lacking in civility, there is much to be said for nice.

  Molly Ivins

  Perseverance, Honesty, Nice

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• If an armed nation were a polite nation, America would be paradise. We have more than 200 million guns in private owernship here. But our manners are not getting better.

  Molly Ivins

  Gun, America, Get Better

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