A Man Without A Country Quotes

I'm a man without a country. Or I'm a man with too many countries-you pick. Ultimately, in both global politics and the high school power hierarchy, they amount to the same thing. ~ Ally Carter

A man without a mother is a man without a country, an exile ~ Jerry Weintraub

A self-respecting man is a man without a country. A fatherland is birdlime ... ~ Emile M. Cioran

Our close cousins the gorillas and orangs and chimps and gibbon apes have gotten along just fine all this time while eating raw vegetable matter, whereas we not only prepare hot meals but have now all but destroyed this once salubrious planet as a life-support system in fewer than two hundred years, mainly by making thermodynamic whoopee with fossil fuels. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Without compassion for a fellow man, for great splendors of our Sister, Mother Earth the humankind will never reconcile with itself. ~ Vinko Vrbanic

A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life ... he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul. ~ Alvin R. Dyer

If a politician isn't perfectly comfortable with the idea of his average constituent, any man, woman, or responsible child, walking into a hardware store and paying cash
for any rifle, shotgun, handgun, machinegun, anything - without producing ID or signing one scrap of paper, he isn't your friend no matter what he tells you. ~ L. Neil Smith

No man can sincerely resolve to apply to his daily life the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth without sensing a change in his own nature. The phrase, 'born again', has a deeper significance than many people attach to it. This changed feeling may be indescribable, but it is real. ~ David O. McKay

Nothing in this world is perpetual; Every thing, however seemingly firm, is in continual flux and change: The world itself gives symptoms of frailty and dissolution: How contrary to analogy, therefore, to imagine, that one single form, seeming the frailest of any, and subject to the greatest disorders, is immortal and indissoluble? What a daring theory is that! How lightly, not to say how rashly, entertained! How to dispose of the infinite number of posthumous existences ought also to embarrass the religious theory. Every planet, in every solar system, we are at liberty to imagine people with intelligent, mortal beings: At least we can fix on no other supposition. For these, a new universe must, every generation, be created beyond the bounds of the present universe: or one must have been created at first so prodigiously wide as to admit of this continual influx of beings. Ought such bold suppositions to be received by any philosophy: and that merely on the pretext of a bare possibility? When it is asked, whether Agamemnon, Thersites, Hannibal, Nero, and every stupid clown, that ever existed in Italy, Scythia, Bactria, or Guinea, are now alive; can any man think, that a scrutiny of nature will furnish arguments strong enough to answer so strange a question in the affirmative? The want of argument, without revelation, sufficiently establishes the negative. Quanto facilius, says Pliny, certiusque sibi quemque credere, ac specimen securitatis antegenitali sumere experimento. Our ~ David Hume

Love is wonderful, magical, and beautiful, but it can also be maddening, damaging, and dangerous,: she said. "It blinds us more than anything. It makes us selfish, it makes us feel like nothing else matters, and it tricks us into thinking the rest of the world doesn't exist - but it does exist. Whether you're on the high or low side of love, the world always moves on."
"So you're saying love is a weakness?" Arthur asked.
"That depends on you," Mother Goose said. "There's a reason we've got hearts and brains - we're supposed to listen to them both. A good man follows his heart, but a wise man follows his heart without ignoring his brain. Finding the right balance is one of the hardest parts of life. ~ Chris Colfer

Ah, God, it was too sad and awful, the endless hide-and-go-seek game one played with the middle class.
If one could only be sure that one did not belong to it, that
one was finer, nobler, more aristocratic. The truth was, she
hated it shakily from above, not solidly from below, and her
proletarian sympathies constituted a sort of snub that she ad-
ministered to the middle class, just as a really smart woman will
outdress her friends by relentlessly underdressing them. Scratch
a socialist and you find a snob. The semantic test confirmed
this. In the Marxist language, your opponent was always a
"parvenu," an "upstart," an "adventurer," a politician was al-
ways "cheap," and an opportunist "vulgar." But the proletariat
did not talk in such terms; this was the tone of the F.F.V.
What the socialist movement did for a man was to allow him-
self the airs of a marquis without having either his title or his 
sanity questioned. ~ Mary McCarthy

Man must have free-will to choose his own path, or else his heart will wither away. And a man without a heart has nothing to live for. ~ K.L. Hagaman

A man can't be angry at his own time without suffering some damage. ~ Robert Musil

When he says "Skins or blankets?" it will take you a moment to realized that he's asking which you want to sleep under. And in your hesitation he'll decide that he wants to see your skin wrapped in the big black moose hide. He carried it, he'll say, soaking wet and heavier than a dead man, across the tundra for two - was it hours or days or weeks? But the payoff, now, will be to see it fall across one of your white breasts. It's December, and your skin is never really warm, so you will pull the bulk of it around you and pose for him, pose for his camera, without having to narrate this moose's death. ~ Pam Houston

If a man of good natural disposition acquires Intelligence [as a whole], then he excels in conduct, and the disposition which previously only resembled Virtue, will now be Virtue in the true sense. Hence just as with the faculty of forming opinions [the calculative faculty] there are two qualities, Cleverness and Prudence, so also in the moral part of the soul there are two qualities, natural virtue and true Virtue; and true Virtue cannot exist without Prudence. ~ Aristotle.

...Chief without soldiers is just a very lonely man in a big bloody field ~ Joe Abercrombie

That which we call character is a reserved force which acts directly by presence, and without means. It is conceived of as a certain undemonstrable force, a familiar or genius, by whose impulses the man is guided, but whose counsels he cannot impart. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I've come to the conclusion that a man without a cause is nothing. He has nothing to look forward to, he has nothing to work toward; he is as a man lost, wandering in the darkest part of his heart to find a deeper, better purpose in his life. ~ Hazel B. West

The scientist is a practical man and his are practical (i.e., practically attainable) aims. He does not seek the ultimate but the proximate. He does not speak of the last analysis but rather of the next approximation. His are not those beautiful structures so delicately designed that a single flaw may cause the collapse of the whole. The scientist builds slowly and with a gross but solid kind of masonry. If dissatisfied with any of his work, even if it be near the very foundations, he can replace that part without damage to the remainder. ~ Gilbert N. Lewis

So what if you're plain? Anyone can like a beautiful woman or a handsome man. That's easy. But power is the ability to inspire attraction without the obvious. ~ Donna Lynn Hope

Without the connotation good or bad, bin Laden's a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history. ~ Michael Scheuer

I have entered upon a performance which is without example, whose
accomplishment will have no imitator. I mean to present my
fellow-mortals with a man in all the integrity of nature; and this man
shall be myself.

I know my heart, and have studied mankind; I am not made like any one I
have been acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not
better, I at least claim originality, and whether Nature did wisely in
breaking the mould with which she formed me, can only be determined after
having read this work.

Whenever the last trumpet shall sound, I will present myself before the
sovereign judge with this book in my hand, and loudly proclaim, thus have
I acted; these were my thoughts; such was I. With equal freedom and
veracity have I related what was laudable or wicked, I have concealed no
crimes, added no virtues; and if I have sometimes introduced superfluous
ornament, it was merely to occupy a void occasioned by defect of memory:
I may have supposed that certain, which I only knew to be probable, but
have never asserted as truth, a conscious falsehood. Such as I was, I
have declared myself; sometimes vile and despicable, at others, virtuous,
generous and sublime; even as thou hast read my inmost soul: Power
eternal! assemble round thy throne an innumerable throng of my
fellow-mortals, let them listen to my confessions, let them blush at my
depravity, ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A man may carry the whole scheme of Christian truth in his mind from boyhood to old age without the slightest effect upon his character and aims. It has had less influence than the multiplication table. ~ J.G. Holland

Years later, a Japanese visitor tried to apologize to Mao for his country's invasion of China. Mao interrupted, "Should I not thank you instead?" Without a worthy opponent, he explained, a man or group cannot grow stronger. ~ Robert Greene

He loves her because she is a fierce, wholly unexpected, electric storm, yet she is a constant, quiet, pure and utterly calm shelter from the cruel, cold world. She Is a Wild Thing! She is nature's most enigmatic, rare and magickal creature and he is the only man able to ravish her body, soul and spirit without destroying her. They are a match made in heaven raising all manners of hell. ~ Mishi McCoy

You cannot find, I believe, a case in the Bible where a man is converted without God's calling in some human agency
using some human instrument. ~ Dwight L. Moody

Evil-doers who denounce the wise resemble a person who spits against the sky; the spittle will never reach the sky, but comes down on himself. Evil-doers again resemble a man who stirs the dust against the wind; the dust is never raised without doing him injury. Thus, the wise will never be hurt, but the curse is sure to destroy the evil-doers themselves. ~ Gautama Buddha

No man of common sense will value a woman the less, for not giving herself up at the first attack, or for not accepting his proposal without enquiring into his person or character; on the contrary, he must think her the weakest of all creatures in the world, as the rate of men now goes; in short, he must have a very contemptible opinion of her capacities, nay, even of her understanding, that having but one cast for her life, shall cast that life away at once, and make matrimony like death, be a leap in the dark. ~ Daniel Defoe

I admire most of all The Renaissance Man, and if it can be said without pretentiousness, I like to think of myself as one, at least in some small measure. Not a Michelangelo, mark you, but perhaps a poor man's Cellini or a road company Cosimo de' Medici ... the Renaissance Man did a number of things, many of them well, a few beautifully. He was no damned specialist. ~ Lucius Beebe

I know all too well how Dane Bolton ticks," I began incontrovertibly. "he is bossy and domineering. He is what he is, and I wouldn't change a thing about him. Dane is loyal, honest, fiercely protective, loving and completely dedicated to me. A better man has never walked this earth, and I could not imagine my life without him in it. ~ Keegan Kennedy

As to the right of men to act anywhere according to their pleasure, without any moral tie, no such right exists. Men are never in a state of total independence of each other. It is not the condition of our nature: nor is it conceivable how any man can pursue a considerable course of action without its having some effect upon others; or, of course, without producing some degree of responsibility for his conduct. ~ Edmund Burke

I'm not going anywhere." Gently, he stroked her back, cradled her head. Was there anything more astounding or more frightening to a man, he wondered, than a strong woman in tears?
"I've been right here all along. I love you, Eve, almost more than I can stand."
"I need you. I can't help it. I don't want to."
"I know." He eased back, tucking a hand under her chin to lift her face to his.
"We're going to have to deal with it." He kissed one wet cheek, then the other. "I really can't do without you. ~ J.D. Robb

Peter always said the difference between men and women when they skied was only noticeable at the tol of a run. "A man drops down in the chute without a question. A woman wonders which turn might turn into a fall. That possibility never occurs to a man until it literally occurs. ~ Beck Anderson

As a younger man I wrote for eight years without ever earning a nickel which is a long apprenticeship, but in that time I learned a lot about my trade. ~ James A. Michener

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause; for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age. But to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing ~ David Hume

Sir Lewis Finch was not only a brilliant inventor, but he's become a royal advisor. He was said to have the ear of the Prince Regent himself, when he chose to bend it. The right word from this man could have Bram back with his regiment next week.
And idiot that he was, Bram had announced his arrival in the neighborhood by tackling the man's daughter in the road, rending her frock, and kissing her without leave. As strategic campaigns went, this one would not be medal-worthy. Fortunately, Sir Lewis seemed not to have noticed his daughter's bedraggled state on their arrival. But Bram had best conclude this interview before Miss Finch returned and had a chance to relate the tale. ~ Tessa Dare

[A]s it is impossible that any man endowed with rational faculties, and being in a state of freedom, should willingly agree, without some motive of love or friendship, absolutely to sacrifice his own interest to that of another; it becomes necessary to impose upon him, to persuade him, that his own good is designed, and that he will be a gainer by coming into those schemes, which are, in reality, calculated for his destruction. And this, if I mistake not, is the very essence of that excellent art, called the art of politics. ~ Henry Fielding

Surely: the adverb of a man without an argument. ~ Edward St. Aubyn

To keep something, you must take care of it. More, you must understand just what sort of care it requires. You must know the rules and abide by them. She could do that. She had been doing it all the months, in the writing of her letters to him. There had been rules to be learned in that matter, and the first of them was the hardest: never say to him what you want him to say to you. Never tell him how sadly you miss him, how it grows no better, how each day without him is sharper than the day before. Set down for him the gay happenings about you, bright little anecdotes, not invented, necessarily, but attractively embellished. Do not bedevil him with the pinings of your faithful heart because he is your husband, your man, your love. For you are writing to none of these. You are writing to a soldier. ~ Dorothy Parker

No man can be happy without a friend, nor be sure of his friend till he is unhappy. ~ Thomas Fuller

But are we to accept a form of government which we do not entirely approve of, merely in hopes that it will be administered well? Does not every man know, that nothing is more liable to be abused than power. Power, without a check, in any hands, is tyranny; ~ Bernard Bailyn

God does hear and answer prayers. I have never doubted that fact. From childhood, at my mother's knee where I first learned to pray; as a young man in my teens; as a missionary in foreign lands; as a father; as a Church leader; as a government official, I know without question that it is possible for men and women to reach out in humility and prayer and tap that Unseen Power; to have prayers answered. Man does not stand along, or, at least, he need not stand alone. Prayer will open doors; prayer will remove barriers; prayer will ease pressures; prayer will give inner peace and comfort during times of strain and stress and difficult. Thank God for prayer ~ Ezra Taft Benson

But even a medicine man like myself has to have some money, because you force me to live in your make-believe world where I can't get along without it. ~ John Lame Deer

I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system - that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. ~ Harper Lee

A man without a heroic bent starts dying at the age of thirty. ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

There is no meditation without wisdom, and there is no wisdom without meditation. When a man has both meditation and wisdom, he is indeed close to nirvana. ~ Gautama Buddha

Memory cannot be understood, either, without a mathematical approach. The fundamental given is the ratio between the amount of time in the lived life and the amount of time from that life that is stored in memory. No one has ever tried to calculate this ratio, and in fact there exists no technique for doing so; yet without much risk of error I could assume that the memory retains no more than a millionth, a hundred-millionth, in short an utterly infinitesimal bit of the lived life. That fact too is part of the essence of man. If someone could retain in his memory everything he had experienced, if he could at any time call up any fragment of his past, he would be nothing like human beings: neither his loves nor his friendships nor his angers nor his capacity to forgive or avenge would resemble ours.

We will never cease our critique of those persons who distort the past, rewrite it, falsify it, who exaggerate the importance of one event and fail to mention some other; such a critique is proper (it cannot fail to be), but it doesn't count for much unless a more basic critique precedes it: a critique of human memory as such. For after all, what can memory actually do, the poor thing? It is only capable of retaining a paltry little scrap of the past, and no one knows why just this scrap and not some other one, since in each of us the choice occurs mysteriously, outside our will or our interests. We won't understand a thing about human life if we persist in avoiding the ~ Milan Kundera

Twenty-two months are a long time and a lot of things can happen in them- there is time for new families to be formed, for babies to be born and even begin to talk, for a great house to rise where once there was only a field, for a beautiful woman to grow old and no one desire her any more, for an illness- for a long illness- to ripen (yet men live on heedlessly), to consume the body slowly, to recede for short periods as if cured, to take hold again more deeply and drain away the last hopes; there is time for a man to die and be buried, for his son to be able to laugh again and in the evening take the girls down the avenues and past the cemetery gates without a thought. But it seemed as if Drogo's existence had come to a halt. The same day, the same things, had repeated themselves hundreds of times without taking a step forward. The river of time flowed over the Fort, crumbled the walls, swept down dust and fragments of stone, wore away the stairs and the chain, but over Drogo it passed in vain- it had not yet succeeded in catching him, bearing him with it as it flowed. ~ Dino Buzzati

A man may cry out against sin in principle; but he cannot abhor it except by virtue of a godly aversion against it. I have heard many cry out against sin in the pulpit, but who still live with it without any problem in their heart, house, and everyday life. ~ John Bunyan

One might conclude that only clever people remain free, but it's not so: foolish men also remain free if they know how to hide their folly. And the clever ones are locked away if they show their cleverness. The others who remain free are those who have the right to be whatever they want. My brother was a nobody, a happy man, not clever enough to be feared and not foolish enough for no one to know what he might do; he was too cowardly to be an outlaw, too naive to be bad, too lazy to be someone's enemy. In a word, he was destined by divine providence to be greeted by people without respect, to be recognized for his value without being asked to show it. ~ Mesa Selimovic