A Nation Quotes

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Every Latter-day Saint should love the inspired Constitution of the United States - a nation with a spiritual foundation and a prophetic history - which nation the Lord has declared to be his base of operations in these latter days. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Given everything we know about the universe it would seem utterly impossible for any sane person to believe that the ultimate truth about the universe and human existence is the story of Israeli, German or Russian nationalism – or indeed of nationalism in general. A story that ignores almost the whole of time, the whole of space, the Big Bang, quantum physics and the evolution of life is at most just a tiny part of the truth. Yet people somehow manage not to see beyond it.
Indeed, billions of people throughout history have believed that for their lives to have meaning, they don't even need to be absorbed into a nation or a great ideological movement. It is enough if they just 'leave something behind', thereby ensuring that their personal story continues beyond their death. The 'something' I leave behind is ideally my soul or my personal essence. If I am reborn in a new body after the death of my present body, then death is not the end. It is merely the space between two chapters, and the plot

"that began in one chapter will carry on into the next. Many people have at least a vague faith in such a theory, even if they do not base it on any specific theology. They don't need an elaborate dogma – they just need the reassuring feeling that their story continues beyond the horizon of death. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Cambodians resent outsiders' implications that they are a nation of shell-shocked survivors, but in 2004 news from police stations around the country made it impossible not to notice how many seemingly pedestrian conflicts escalated into stunning violence: the farmer who beheaded his neighbor with a machete in a dispute over a fence; the disgruntled relative who stormed away from an argument at a wedding and returned to douse the guests with battery acid. ~ Corinne Purtill

We waste an awful lot of energy as a Nation through inefficient use of energy. ~ Chris Van Hollen

Clearly our current form of medicine will bankrupt us and simultaneously keep the chemical industry the number one money-maker as physicians nurture a nation of drugged zombies. ~ Sherry Rogers

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. ~ Matt Taibbi

As a nation, we are on a path of rapid and deep systemic change to our health system, and it's going to unfold for some time to come. It is already transforming the fundamental nature of the U.S. medical care delivery system. ~ John E. McDonough

Money has, as we know, no value in itself. It is a convenient yardstick for a large number of material values. But the health and life of an individual as well as the health of a nation cannot be measured by that yardstick. If we, entrusted with protecting and defending the health of the population, give in to a salesman's scale of values we are lost. ~ Karl Evang

The woman is the fiber of the nation. She is the producer of life. A nation is only as good as its women. ~ Muhammad Ali

in view of the law of natural selection it was agreed that a nation or world of people who will not use their intelligence are no better than animals who do not have intelligence. Such people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent. ~ Milton William Cooper

How can you hope to build up a nation by fragmenting its politics into opposing camps? Whatever one group builds, the other will endeavour to destroy. ~ Mohammed Reza Pahlavi

When the destiny of a nation is in a woman's bedroom, the best place for the historian is in the antechamber. - CHARLES-AUGUSTIN SAINTE-BEUVE ~ Eleanor Herman

Never should the power of an individual be allowed to impede the progress of the rest of the nation; never should the power of a nation be allowed to impede the progress of mankind. ~ Leon Bourgeois

We must surely appear to the world as exactly what we are: a nation that organizes its economy around consuming twice as much oil as it produces, and around the profligate wastefulness of the wars and campaigns required to defend such consumption. In recent years we have defined our national interest largely in terms of the oil fields and pipelines we need to procure fuel. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

A love of tradition has never weakened a nation ... ~ Winston Churchill

Most people don't realize that since the time of Apollo we've been in a feedback loop: as a nation, we elect representatives who thwart NASA, and then we blame NASA for its lack of vision. ~ Margaret Lazarus Dean

Ours is a nation that does not seek revenge. ~ George W. Bush

My connection was we never want to put ourselves in a position as a nation where we pit group against group. ~ Kenneth Langone

The famous speech Martin Luther King Jr. delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, included the sentence: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character". Today's left-wing, through identity politics, affirmative-action policies, and hiring quotas, has shattered that dream. ~ Tammy Bruce

We are a Nation Under God. If we ever forget this, we are a nation gone UNDER. ~ Ronald Reagan

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God? ~ Thomas Jefferson

To exist as a nation, to prosper as a state, and to live as a people, we must have trees. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

For example, the citizens will live out the value of diligence in their enterprises. They will live out the value of prudence in their finances. They will live out the value of industry in the economy. They will live out the value of love in their neighbourhood. They will live out the value of dignity of labour in the market place, etc. All these will go a long way into propelling both the economy and political life of a nation to the greatest height possible. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Whoever knows the ways of God can also do the works of God, and lead a nation, manifesting the miracles and signs of God ~ Sunday Adelaja

My grandfather asked whether the country had "come to the point in our life as a nation where the Governor of a great state - one who perhaps aspires to the nomination for President of the United States - can desert a good wife, [the] mother of his grown children, divorce her, then persuade a young mother of four youngsters to abandon her husband and their four children and marry the Governor." Clearly Prescott Bush was not afraid to express his beliefs. I can only imagine what he would say if he saw what our society looks like today. ~ George W. Bush

The divine right of kings may have been a plea for feeble tyrants, but the divine right of government is the keystone of human progress, and without it governments sink into police, and a nation is degraded into a mob. ~ Benjamin Disraeli

On every level - as individuals, and as members of a family, a community, a nation, and a planet - the most mischievous troublemakers we face are anger and egoism. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

An economy should exist for the people who inhabit it, not the other way around. The purpose of an economy is to provide everyone with opportunities to live full, happy, and productive lives. Yet when most people come to view the economic game as rigged, this most basic purpose cannot be achieved. It is impossible to live happily in a society that seems fundamentally unfair or to live well in a nation rife with anger and cynicism. ~ Robert B. Reich

When exactly did this downward cultural spiral begin, this loss of tact and refinement and understanding that some things should not be said or directly represented? When did we no longer appreciate that to dignify certain modes of behavior, manners, and ways of being with artistic representation was implicitly to glorify and promote them? There is, as Adam Smith said, a deal of ruin in a nation: and this truth applies as much to a nation's culture as to its economy. The work of cultural destruction, while often swifter, easier, and more self-conscious than that of construction, is not the work of a moment. Rome wasn't destroyed in a day. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

What is the best thing that happens if we refuse to abide by the dictates of political correctness? I believe that we could return to a nation that truly cherishes freedom of speech and freedom of expression. ~ Ben Carson

To accumulate wealth, power or land beyond one's needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral, be it as an individual, an institution, or a nation-state. ~ Bill Mollison

The manners of women are the surest criterion by which to determine whether a republican government is practicable in a nation or not. ~ John Quincy Adams

A psychologist would probably diagnose insanity for a nation that spends more on its military than the next 8 nations combined, while its poor are starving. ~ Steven Magee

All warfare is based on deception. For years, the West hypocrisy has made the world a battlefield. The corrupt talk while our brothers and sons spill their own blood. But deceit cuts both ways. The bigger the lie, the more likely people will believe it, and when a nation cries for vengeance, the lie spreads like a wildfire. The fire builds, devouring everything in its path. Our enemies believe that they alone dictate the course of history, and all it takes is the will of a single man. ~ Vladimer Makarov

We're a nation of hope, of high ideals. ~ Cory Booker

So let us be bold in our efforts and even bolder in our vision. Let us tell the story of an America becoming - of a nation breaking free from the limits of its own arrested development and transforming into the place we were told about in school but which never really existed as such. Just because that place has been a cruel and taunting mirage for so long does not mean we cannot mold it into a reality. As the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) - one of the premier civil rights groups of our nation's history - used to say, Come, let us build a new world together. ~ Tim Wise

Many writers upon the science of political economy have declared that it is the duty of a nation first to encourage the creation of wealth; and second, to direct and control its distribution. All such theories are delusive. ~ Leland Stanford

A clean and sensitive conscience, a steady and scrupulous integrity in small things as well as large, is the most valuable of all possessions, to a nation as to an individual. ~ Henry Van Dyke

I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians. ~ Henry David Thoreau

A nation which receives a culture ready made, and not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at most it can only hope to imitate well. ~ Emilia Pardo Bazan

We've become a nation of defaulters: we buy on credit, and when the bill comes in, we're so deeply outraged that we refuse even to look at it. ~ Tana French

Nevertheless, four years later, at the end of August 2004, a Zogby poll discovered the critical fact that 57 percent of the undecided voters in that year's election would rather have a beer with George Bush than with John Kerry.
The question was odd enough on its face, but a nation to which it would matter is odder still. Be honest. Consider all the people with whom you've tossed back a beer. How many of them would you trust with nuclear launch codes? ~ Charles P. Pierce

Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Into a world unknown,-the corner-stone of a nation! ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Men cannot be free in a nation where women are forbidden freedom. ~ Pearl S. Buck

When the British-Malaysian photographer Ian Teh first worked in China, more than a decade ago, he rendered it as a nation of people in Technicolor. ~ Evan Osnos

Are we a nation that educates the world's best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs, businesses, and industries right here in America? ~ Barack Obama

A nation which fails to adequately remember salient points of
its own history, is like a person with Alzheimer's. And that can be a
social disease of a most destructive nature. ~ S.M. Sigerson

A Catholic culture does not mean or imply universality. A nation or a whole civilization is of the Catholic culture not when it is entirely composed of strong believers minutely practicing their religion, nor even whit it boasts a majority of such, but when it presents a determining number of units-family institutions, individuals, inspired by and tenacious of the Catholic spirit. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Persistent inequality costs the U.S. hundreds of billions of dollars a year, undermining our global competitiveness, our democracy, and our ideals as a nation. ~ Wendy Kopp

The hardest lesson of my life has come to me late. It is that a nation can win freedom without its people becoming free. ~ Joshua Nkomo

Why is the integrity of the literary canon everywhere articulated in terms of its imagined integration to a nation-state as well as a racialized civilization? What would it mean to seek justification for literary studies on the basis of aesthetic value rather than the contestable presumption that literary canons function as the preeminent repositories of national cultures and/or racialized civilizations? ~ David Lloyd

It's like we're suffering from an identity crisis, and that identity is in our arts and the fact that we don't find it chief amongst our agendas to teach our kids who we are as a nation and the battles we've had on this ground and how they've been successfully resolved. We can't enjoy the fruits of the labor of our ancestors. ~ Wynton Marsalis

[In] colonial history...we find true Christian nations - the colonies - founded on Christian principles. Those Christian governments were so tyrannical that they became examples for the founders of how not to build a nation. ~ Andrew L. Seidel

A sovereignty is always presumed to act upon principles of justice, and if, from mistake or oversight, it does injury to a nation or an individual, it is always supposed to be ready and willing to repair it. ~ Roger B. Taney

You cannot have democratic accountability in anything bigger than a nation state. ~ Vaclav Klaus

We were born a nation of entrepreneurs. That is why so many
people came to this country from so many different nations and cultures
around the globe. The entrepreneur sees the opportunity, takes
action, and successfully learns from the experience. They go on to
create wealth. They become part of that demographic that is called
"the rich." They, not the government, drive the economy and create
jobs. Only a mind with an envious, greedy perspective would consider
punitively taxing the rich as a viable solution to our fiscal miasma.
This is a solution springing from the fount of ignorance and deemed
wise only by fools. ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

For too long in this society, we have celebrated unrestrained individualism over common community. For too long as a nation, we have been lulled by the anthem of self-interest. For a decade, led by Ronald Reagan, self-aggrandizement has been the full-throated cry of this society: "I've got mine, so why don't you get yours" and "What's in it for me? ~ Joe Biden

I apologize to everyone who was offended by my insensitive tweet about the situation in Egypt. I've dedicated my life to raising awareness about serious social issues, and in hindsight my attempt at humor regarding a nation liberating themselves against oppression was poorly timed and absolutely inappropriate. ~ Kenneth Cole

If a nation cannot face its past, it has no future. ~ Ai Weiwei

A man should not be a silkworm; nor a nation a tent of caterpillars. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perhaps that is what ultimately unites us as a world: the fact that, no matter how prosperous a nation, how developed, all share the plight and embarrassment of having so many suffering children. We are united by our neglect, our abuse, our absence of love. Have we forgotten about the children, and thus forsaken the next generation? ~ Audrey Hepburn

This is what language is:
a habitual grief. A turn of speech
for the everyday and ordinary abrasion
of losses such as this:
which hurts
just enough to be a scar
And heals just enough to be a nation. ~ Eavan Boland

Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

Formerly, a nation that broke the peace, did not trouble to try and prove to the world that it was done solely from higher motives ... Now war has a bad conscience. Now every nation assures us that it is bleeding for a human cause, the fate of which hangs in the balance of its victory ... No nation dares to admit the guilt of blood before the world. ~ Ellen Key

For perhaps the first time in public, he used the neutral 'Africans' instead of the pejorative 'Kaffirs'. The change in language reflected a deeper change in his way of thinking about the world. When he first came to South Africa, Gandhi had pleaded for Indians to be distinguished from Africans, whom he then considered 'uncivilized'. Now, fifteen years later, he brought all races within a single ambit. They all had similar hopes, and would one day have the same rights. In the future, Indians and Africans would be absolutely free men, mingling with Boers and Britons in a nation where one's citizenship did not depend on the colour of one's skin. ~ Ramachandra Guha

We take, and must continue to take, morally hazardous actions to preserve our civilization. We must exercise our power. But we ought neither to believe that a nation is capable of perfect disinterestedness in its exercise, nor become complacent about a particular degree of interest and passion which corrupt the justice by which the exercise of power is legitimatized. ~ Reinhold Niebuhr

That is where we stand as a nation today. Twenty years ago, our society began regularly prescribing psychiatric drugs to children and adolescents, and now one out of every fifteen Americans enters adulthood with a "serious mental illness." That is proof of the most tragic sort that our drug-based paradigm of care is doing a great deal more harm than good. The medicating of children and youth became commonplace only a short time ago, and already it has put millions onto a path of lifelong illness. (246) ~ Robert Whitaker

As God can send a nation or people no greater blessing than to give them faithful, sincere and upright ministers, so the greatest curse that God can possibly send upon a people in this world is to give them over to blind, unregenerate, carnal, lukewarm and unskilled guides. ~ George Whitefield

Nothing is more important to a nation than its history. It is the earth upon which any society stands. ~ Robert Harris

Education is the future of a nation ~ Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'

A nation that spends billions to fix international problems will not have much left over for the victims of tornadoes in Oklahoma. ~ Deacon Jones

We Indians are an extremely intelligent people but we can progress as a nation only when we learn the secret of unleashing this positive power of the people. Whenever this happens it disturbs a lot of people - because they know that a giant is waking up. ~ Verghese Kurien

India is the world's most youthful nation. A nation with such youth power cannot dream small. We cannot commit this crime. We should dream big, we should enable the youth to dream big and we should give them an opportunity to realize their dreams ~ Narendra Modi

Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. ~ Mark Twain

It is perhaps dangerous to conclude too much about the character and intentions of a nation based on the snacks menu in a railway carriage, but I couldn't help wonder if Scottish nationalism hasn't gone a little too far now. I mean, these poor people are denying themselves simple comforts like KitKats and Cornish pasties and instead are eating neeps and foot medication on grounds of patriotism. Seems a bit unnecessary to me. ~ Bill Bryson

If we are going to solve the challenges we face, you need a President who will pursue genuine solutions day in and day out. And that is my commitment to you. We need immigration reform that will secure our borders, and punish employers who exploit immigrant labor; reform that finally brings the 12 million people who are here illegally out of the shadows by requiring them to take steps to become legal citizens. We must assert our values and reconcile our principles as a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. That is a priority I will pursue from my very first day. ~ Barack Obama

Every time one of us starts talking about more effective immigration controls, somebody else throws up the Statue of Liberty, how we're a nation of immigrants and all of that. The debate takes on tinges of racism, emotion. ~ Alan K. Simpson

I think there is no work of art which represents the spirit of a nation more surely than "Die Meister Singer" of Richard Wagner. Here is no plaything with local colour, but the raising to its highest power all that is best in the national consciousness of his country. ~ Ralph Vaughan Williams

Listen, our history is a history...of failed revolutions. Always, in the end, someone was bought or someone turned traitor. We are a nation of traitors. We are a nation of traitors...we delight in seeing the downfall of others, even friends. ~ F. Sionil Jose

Our most serious problem, perhaps, is that we have become a nation of fantasists. We believe, apparently, in the infinite availability of finite resources. ~ Wendell Berry

Nigeria is not a nation. It is a mere geographical expression. There are no 'Nigerians' in the same sense as there are 'English,' 'Welsh,' or 'French.' The word 'Nigerian' is merely a distinctive appellation to distinguish those who live within the boundaries of Nigeria and those who do not. ~ Obafemi Awolowo

I just hope Americans come to understand that food isn't something to be manipulated by our teeth and shoved down our gullet, that it's our spiritual and physical nourishment and important to our well-being as a nation. ~ Alice Waters

Where there is a worker, there lies a nation. ~ Evita Peron

If I were president, I'd be very glad to see the Palestinians have a nation recognized by the United Nations. There's no downside to it. ~ Jimmy Carter

We are each born into a situation - a particular body (its race, sex, health ... ), a set of ancestors, a community, a nation - and born into the stories told of each of these. ~ Lewis Hyde

For centuries, faith has helped us overcome problems and helped us work to achieve a more perfect union. It has inspired the many leaders who played a key role in abolishing slavery, protecting civil rights and, hopefully one day, becoming a nation where all life from conception to natural death is protected. ~ Marco Rubio

The chase is among the best of all national pastimes; it cultivates that vigorous manliness for the lack of which in a nation, as in an individual, the possession of no other qualities can possibly atone. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

There are truths which can kill a nation. ~ Jean Giraudoux

Tell me how much a nation knows about its own language, and I will tell you how much that nation knows about its own identity. ~ John Ciardi

To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation. ~ Benjamin Spock

The sheer folly of trying to defend a nation by destroying all life on the planet must be apparent to anyone capable of rational thought. Nuclear capability must be reduced to zero, globally, permanently. There is no other option. ~ Queen Noor Of Jordan

The very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types of private property and free contracting disappear from the moral horizon of the people. ~ Joseph A. Schumpeter

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Poverty is when there is no food and a child is forced to fill its stomach with water for the night. ~ Matsime Simon Mohapi

Once, standing in an open space, he'd seen a commercial airliner pass overhead, on its way from one country to another, the sun golden upon its wings. It seemed incredible to him that there were people inside, drinking wine and eating from plastic trays, pressing a button for the hostess. Did they have any idea what was going on directly below them, a nation devouring itself? He felt like a drowning man watching a ship sail by. ~ Aminatta Forna

The fate of a Nation may sometimes depend upon the position of a fortress. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

We as a nation need to be reeducated about the necessary and sufficient conditions for making human beings human. We need to be reeducated not as parents
but as workers, neighbors, and friends; and as members of the organizations, committees, boards
and, especially, the informal networks that control our social institutions and thereby determine the conditions of life for our families and their children. ~ Urie Bronfenbrenner

We need to remain a nation that doesn't just welcome but that celebrates legal immigrants who come here seeking to pursue the American Dream. ~ Ted Cruz