Adopted Country Quotes

Others did not fare so well. A German man in St. Louis who was believed to have spoken ill of his adopted country was set upon by a mob, dragged through the streets tied up in an American flag, and hanged. A jury subsequently found the mob leaders not guilty on the grounds that it had been a patriotic murder. ~ Bill Bryson

Happy was my adopted country, not my native land. I was still bracing to be expelled without warning. ~ Kimberly McCreight

My country is bleeding, my people are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am bound to tell the North, go on!go on! Never falter, never abandon the principles which you have adopted. ~ Angelina Grimke

SELF-HELP FOR FELLOW REFUGEES

If your name suggests a country where bells
might have been used for entertainment,

or to announce the entrances and exits of the seasons
and the birthdays of gods and demons,

it's probably best to dress in plain clothes
when you arrive in the United States.
And try not to talk too loud.

If you happen to have watched armed men
beat and drag your father
out the front door of your house
and into the back of an idling truck,

before your mother jerked you from the threshold
and buried your face in her skirt folds,
try not to judge your mother too harshly.

Don't ask her what she thought she was doing,
turning a child's eyes
away from history
and toward that place all human aching starts.

And if you meet someone
in your adopted country
and think you see in the other's face
an open sky, some promise of a new beginning,
it probably means you're standing too far.

Or if you think you read in the other, as in a book
whose first and last pages are missing,
the story of your own birthplace,
a country twice erased,
once by fire, once by forgetfulness,
it probably means you're standing too close.

In any case, try not to let another carry
the burden of your own nostalgia or hope.

And if you're one of those
whose left side of the face does ~ Li-Young Lee

She learned early on, in her adopted country, that race was an easy excuse to stop awkward explanations. People hesitated to probe into such a sensitive matter. ~ E. Journey

The more English is heard in the world, the more gratifying it seems to speak French, and above all to know the culture of our country. They find a kind of French social grace in the language and culture. ~ Bernard Pivot

This point deserves attention, for if a democratic republic similar to that of the United States were ever founded in a country where the power of a single individual had previously subsisted, and the effects of a centralized administration had sunk deep into the habits and the laws of the people, I do not hesitate to assert, that in that country a more insufferable despotism would prevail than any which now exists in the monarchical States of Europe, or indeed than any which could be found on this side of the confines of Asia. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

It never ceases to amaze me how many Christians, in the North and the South, continue to refer to the former as the "developed" and the latter as the "developing" world. When we in the South use this term to describe ourselves, we are evaluating ourselves by a set of cultural values that are alien to our own cultures, let alone to a Christian world-view! All our normative images and yardsticks of "development" are ideologically loaded. Who dictates that mushrooming TV satellite dishes and skyscrapers are signs of "development"? Who, apart from the automobile industry and the advertising agencies, seriously believes that a country with six-lane highways and multi-story car-parks is more "developed" than one whose chief mode of transport is railways? Does the fact that there are more telephones in Manhattan, New York, than in the whole of sub-Saharan Africa, mean that human communication is more developed in the former than the latter? ~ Vinoth Ramachandra

After a hundred years the son of the King then reigning, who was of another family from that of the sleeping Princess, was a-hunting on that side of the country, and he asked what those towers were which he saw in the middle of a great thick wood. ~ Charles Perrault

Men born in hot countries love the night because it refreshes them and have a horror of light because it burns them. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

There is one certain means by which I can be sure never to see my country's ruin: I will die in the last ditch. ~ William III Of England

We need ... to say to people that this is a temporary residential status, and we expect that, once there is peace in Syria again, once IS has been defeated in Iraq, that you go back to your home country with the knowledge that you have gained. ~ Angela Merkel

Oh, you know what, it's an honor to be mentioned in the company of those that might lead our country forward after President Obama. ~ Martin O'Malley

It is one thing to tell the citizens of some faraway country to go to hell, but it is another to do the same to your own citizens, who are supposedly your ultimate sovereigns. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

There's a sense you get from the Coens' work, like 'No Country for Old Men,' where you put these characters in situations, and you just let this painful amount of time take place. Part of the tension is just how long it takes to get out of that scene. ~ Noah Hawley

I am a patriot. I have always sought to serve my country, in theory a Republic. Learning that secrecy was evil rather than good was my first step. From there it was a steady march toward open-source everything. Now I see all the evil that secrecy enables in a corrupt Congress, a corrupt Executive, a corrupt economy, and a corrupt society. I see that the greatest service I or any other person can render to the Republic is to march firmly, non-violently, toward open-source everything. ~ Robert David Steele

If Jesus Christ was the being which those mythologists tell us he was, and that he came into this world to suffer, which is a word they sometimes use instead of 'to die,' the only real suffering he could have endured would have been 'to live.' His existence here was a state of exilement or transportation from heaven, and the way back to his original country was to die. - In fine, everything in this strange system is the reverse of what it pretends to be. It is the reverse of truth, and I become so tired of examining into its inconsistencies and absurdities, that I hasten to the conclusion of it, in order to proceed to something better. ~ Thomas Paine

What we need is to think strategically about development, analyzing a country's potential role in its region and the world in search of opportunities for growth. Platforms like the Global Social Business Summit can facilitate the process on bringing about change. ~ Muhammad Yunus

Never invite someone who is speaking a foreign language in your presence to "Go back to your country." The only time that phrase is every acceptable is if you are British and you are speaking to Madonna. ~ Celia Rivenbark

Women need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else ... And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them ... It's a vicious cycle that's affecting women, particularly in a part of the country like this, where mining is the mainstay; traditionally, women have not gone into that line of work, to say the least. ~ John McCain

One strain of African American thought holds that it is a violent black recklessness - the black gangster, the black rioter - that strikes the ultimate terror in white America. Perhaps it does, in the most individual sense. But in the collective sense, what this country really fears is black respectability, Good Negro Government. It applauds, even celebrates, Good Negro Government in the unthreatening abstract - The Cosby Show, for instance. But when it becomes clear that Good Negro Government might, in any way, empower actual Negroes over actual whites, then the fear sets in, the affirmative-action charges begin, and birtherism emerges. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

The historical truth is a fiction. OK, I did whatever I could to find out what happened from
surviving friends, family and media, but that is simply a skeleton upon which the story is draped.
This is the unmasking of the myth, and, as Jean Cocteau put it: "Man seeks to escape himself
in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw
into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."
I wanted to go beyond a recreation of the past to discover meaning in the degradation of my
addiction experience. The past is another country and not my prime interest. It's more what
the past can tell us about how we deal with the present moment.
- William Pryor ~ William Pryor

I don't see why a man shouldn't pay an inheritance tax. If a Country is good enough to pay taxes to while you are living, it's good enough to pay in after you die. By the time you die you should be so used to paying taxes that it would just be almost second nature to you. ~ Will Rogers

Unlike the millionaire next door, the soldier next door is uncelebrated by commerce and culture. He is the sheepdog, the ranger, the sentry who walks our walls. She is the corpsman, the driver, the mate who patrols our harbors. It was my brief privilege to stand with - not the prettiest people, nor the best educated or most flossily advantaged - but the very best people my country could offer up. ~ Jack Lewis

All those people who go to NASCAR and sing country & western songs and live in Tennessee, they totally ignore me, they don't come to my shows, I just don't exist for them and they don't exist for me. ~ Al Stewart

Living in Montgomery, I've been antagonized by the emergence of a narrative about our history that I believe is quite false and misleading, and actually dangerous. And the narrative that emerges when you spend time in the South - places likes Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana - is that we have always been a noble, wonderful, glorious region of the country, with wonderful, noble, glorious people doing wonderful, noble, glorious things. And there's great pride in the Alabamians of the nineteenth century. ~ Bryan Stevenson

There exists, I believe, throughout the whole Christian world, a law which makes it blasphemy to deny or doubt the divine inspiration of all the books of the Old and New Testaments, from Genesis to Revelations. In most countries of Europe it is punished by fire at the stake, or the rack, or the wheel ... Now, what free inquiry, when a writer must surely encounter the risk of fine or imprisonment for adducing any argument for investigating the divine authority of those books? ~ John Adams

The greatest evil in our country today is...ignorance...We need to be taught to study rather than to believe. ~ Septima Poinsette Clark

It is clear that the future of freedom and peace depend on the actions of America. This nation is freedom's home, and freedom's defender. We welcome this charge of history, and we are keeping it. (Applause.) The war on terror continues. The enemies of freedom are not idle, and neither are we. This country will not rest, we will not stop, we will not tire, until this danger to civilization is removed. ~ George W. Bush

I'm excited to be part of a movement that's progressing country music. There's always gonna be people saying, 'It ain't country anymore,' but I don't get into that whole deal. ~ Luke Bryan

And the difference was this, she mused: those who are twenty don't know what it is like to be forty, whereas those who are forty know what it is like to be twenty. It was a bit like discussing a foreign country with somebody who has never been there. They are prepared to listen, but it's not quite real for them. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

The imperialists and domestic reactionaries will certainly not take their defeat Lying down and they will struggle to the last ditch. After there is peace and order throughout the country, they will still engage in sabotage and create disturbances in various ways and will try every day and every minute to stage a comeback. This is inevitable, beyond all doubt, and under no circumstances must we relax our vigilance. ~ Mao Zedong

America is a young country with an old mentality. ~ George Santayana

I'm not opposed to letting people work and labor in our country, but we shouldn't provide an easy route to citizenship. We're the only country I know of where a person can come in illegally and that baby becomes a citizen and I think that should stop also. ~ Rand Paul

America: the only country in the world where failing to promote yourself is regarded as being arrogant. ~ Garry Trudeau

I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely ... The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country. ~ Rick Santorum

As a teenager, I had to struggle alone to learn about myself and what it meant to be gay. Now for [48] years I've had the satisfaction of working with other gay people all across the country to get the bigots off our backs, to oil the closet door hinges, to change prejudiced hearts and minds, and to show that gay love is good for us and for the rest of the world too. It's hard work
but it's vital, and it's gratifying, and it's often fun! ~ Barbara Gittings