And Nation Quotes

The artist labors while he may, But finds at best too brief the day; And, tho' his works outlast the time And nation that they make sublime, He feels and sees that Nature knows Nothing of time in what she does, But has a leisure infinite Wherein to do her work aright. ~ Henry Abbey

No man is an island, said John Donne, but I humbly dare to add: No man or woman is an island, but every one of us is a peninsula, half attached to the mainland, half facing the ocean – one half connected to family and friends and culture and tradition and country and nation and sex and language and many other things, and the other half wanting to be left alone to face the ocean.

I think we ought to be allowed to remain peninsulas. Every social and political system that turns each of us into a Donnean island and the rest of humankind into an enemy or a rival is a monster. But at the same time every social and political and ideological system that wants to turn each of us into no more than a molecule of the mainland is also a monstrosity. The condition of peninsula is the proper human condition. That's what we are and that's what we deserve to remain. ~ Amos Oz

Fight them with your faith in God, fight them in defense of every free honorable woman and every innocent child, and in defense of the values of manhood and the military honor ... Fight them because with their defeat you will be at the last entrance of the conquest of all conquests. The war will end with ... dignity, glory, and triumph for your people, army, and nation. ~ Saddam Hussein

I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school. ~ Nelson Mandela

A man is the history of his breaths and thoughts, acts, atoms and wounds, love indifference and dislike, also of his race and nation, the soil that fed him and his forbears, the stones and sands of his familiar places, long-silenced battles and struggles of conscience, of the smiles of girls and the slow utterance of old women, of accidents and the gradual action of inexorable law, of all this and something else, too, a single flame which in every way obeys the laws that pertain to Fire itself, and yet is lit and put out from one moment to the next, and can never be relumed in the whole waste of time to come. ~ A.S. Byatt

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself - as men have done to women, and class has done to class, and nation has done to nation - you may hate it or deify it; but in either case you have denied its spiritual equality and its human reality. You have made it into a thing, to which the only possible relationship is a power relationship. And thus you have fatally impoverished your own reality. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

The unspooling of the skein of the genome has effectively abolished racism and creationism, and the amazing findings of Hubble and Hawking have allowed us to guess at the origins of the cosmos. But how much more addictive is the familiar old garbage about tribe and nation and faith. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The real menace of our Republic is the invisible government which like a giant octopus sprawls its slimy legs over our cities, states and nation. At the head is a small group of banking houses ... This little coterie ... runs our government for their own selfish ends. It operates under cover of a self-created screen ... seizes ... our executive officers ... legislative bodies ... schools ... courts ... newspapers and every agency created for the public protection. ~ John Francis Hylan

To maintain their power, dominant groups create and maintain a popular system of 'commonsense' ideas that support their right to rule. In the United States, hegemonic ideologies concerning race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation are often so pervasive that it is difficult to conceptualize alternatives to them, let alone ways of resisting the social practices that they justify. ~ Patricia Hill Collins

A small knowledge of human nature will convince us, that, with far the greatest part of mankind, interest is the governing principle ... Few men are capable of making a continual sacrifice of all views of private interest, or advantage, to the common good. It is vain to exclaim against the depravity of human nature on this account; the fact is so, the experience of every age and nation has proved it and we must in a great measure, change the constitution of man, before we can make it otherwise. No institution, not built on the presumptive truth of these maxims can succeed. ~ George Washington

We keep waiting for another Mahatma to make a difference in our society and nation. Well it is time to stop waiting. The mantra is "I change to change India". Which means each of us is the Mahatma and has the power to change this nation. Failing which we shall never change for the better. ~ Jeroninio Almeida

In 1980 we declared the globe free of smallpox. It was the largest campaign in United Nations history until the Iraq war. A hundred and fifty thousand people from all over the world, doctors of every race, religion, culture and nation, who fought side by side, brothers and sisters, with each other, not against each other, in a common cause to make the world better. ~ Larry Brilliant

President Obama and Democrats won a mandate to move us forward with jobs, healthcare reform, equality, and nation building here at home. ~ Christine Pelosi

What we have been raised to think of as inevitable - division and hierarchy, monotheism and nation states - actually accounts for less than 10 percent of human history. ~ Gloria Steinem

The blood of Christ "purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9 NIV). ~ Billy Graham

The communications revolution has given millions of people both a wider and more detailed understanding of the world. Because of technology, ordinary citizens enjoy access to information that formerly was available only to elites and nation-states. One consequence of this change is that citizens have become acutely conscious of environmental destruction, entrenched poverty, health catastrophes, human rights abuses, failing education systems, and escalating violence. Another consequence is that people possess powerful communication tools to coordinate efforts to attack those problems. ~ David Bornstein

The Negro has been here in America since 1619, a total of 344 years. He is not going anywhere else; this country is his home. He wants to do his part to help make his city, state, and nation a better place for everyone, regardless of color and race. ~ Medgar Evers

What we want is to destroy our false, inorganic connections, especially those related to money, and re-establish the living organic connections, with the cosmos, the sun and earth, with mankind and nation and family. Start with the sun, and the rest will slowly, slowly happen. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Yet woman, though she ceased to be a king* and man protected her, was still reverenced as the source of life. Only now when man is learning that she cannot give life without him does he begin to scorn her whom he protects. So she that created property will become property. "So it is already in the Eastern World, so it will be here. And out of that constant injustice will rise continually more evils to breed wars and fresh injustice until men forget that there was ever a world at peace. When humankind lets one half of humankind be enslaved it will be long and long, even when that slavery wanes, before freedom is respected and nation ceases to tear nation; before the world unlearns the habit of force." He ~ Evangeline Walton

In Britain, when someone says they do not believe in God, they stop going to church. In the U.S., many who may have doubts about Christian orthodoxy may continue to go to church. They do so because they assume that a vague god vaguely prayed to is the god that is needed to support family and nation. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

For, as I have suggested, disruption of the unity of the self is not limited to the cases that come to physicians and institutions for treatment. They accompany every disturbance of normal relations of husband and wife, parent and child, group and group, class and class, nation and nation. Emotional responses are so total as compared with the partial nature of intellectual responses, of ideas and abstract conceptions, that their consequences are more pervasive and enduring. I can, accordingly, think of nothing of greater practical importance than the psychic effects of human relationships, normal and abnormal, should be the object of continues study, including among the consequences the indirect somatic effects." – The unity of the human being ~ John Dewey

There is a city myth that country life was isolated and lonely; the truth is that farmers and their families then had a richer social life than they have now. They enjoyed a society organic, satisfying and whole, not mixed and thinned with the life of town, city and nation as it now is. ~ Rose Wilder Lane

I think I've done more right than wrong on foreign policy. I've criticized the president for being weak and indecisive. I've been a problem solver in Washington and I think I've got something to offer the party and nation. ~ Lindsey Graham

The brave pilot gave his life defending his faith, country and nation and joined other Jordanian martyrs who gave their lives for Jordan. ~ Abdallah II

Time is on our side to fulfill the will of God in our church and nation ~ Sunday Adelaja

Western societies want men to be upstanding, proactive citizens who take responsibility for themselves, who work with others to improve their communities and nation as a whole. The irony is that society is not giving the support, guidance, means, or places for these young men even to be motivated or interested in aspiring to these goals. In fact, society - from politics to the media to the classroom to our very own families - is a major contributor to this demise because it is inhibiting young men's intellectual, creative, and social abilities right from the start. And the irony is only compounded by the fact that men play such a powerful part in society, which means they are effectively denying their younger counterparts the opportunity to thrive. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Doors vurst open all along the walls, and skeletal warriors marched in, hundreds of them, from every time period and nation in Western civilization. They lined the perimeter of the room, blocking the exits.
Hades bellowed, "Do you think I want war godling?"
I wanted to say, 'Well, these guys don't look like peace activists'. But I thought that might be a dangerous answer. ~ Rick Riordan

What if we who follow Jesus worked as one unit? What if we put aside the slight doctrinal differences, the denominational/movement mentality? What if we saw it as it truly will be one day - people of every tribe, kindred, tongue and nation united in one common cause! What if we all stood as one powerful resounding force against all oppression and wickedness and for all righteousness, peace and love. What if we were a city on a hill, a light that cannot be hidden. What if....what if? ~ David Holdsworth

Truly, God's plan of redemption is about more than me and you and our neighbor down the street. It's about men and women from every tribe, tongue, and nation on earth becoming a part of His covenant community. ~ Matt Chandler

You are not wrong," Laurence said. He had assumed as much himself, after all, in his Navy days: had thought the Corps full of wild, devil-may-care libertines, disregarding law and authority as far as they dared, barely kept in check-- to be used for their control over the beasts, and not respected.

"But if we have more liberty than we ought," Laurence said, after a moment, struggling through, "it is because they have not enough: the dragons. They have no stake in victory but our happiness; their daily bread and nation would give them just to have peace and quiet. We are given licence so long as we do what we ought not; so long as we use their affections to keep them obedient and quiet, to ends which serve them not at all-- or which harm."

"How else do you make them care?" Granby said. "If we left off, the French would only run right over us, and take our eggs themselves."

"They care in China," Laurence said, "and in Africa, and they care all the more, that their rational sense is not imposed on, and their hearts put into opposition with their minds. If they cannot be woken to a natural affection for their country, such as we feel, it is our fault, and not theirs. ~ Naomi Novik

Americans are citizens from the moment they are born, and not when they become twenty-one years of age. By then, if they have not performed the acts of a citizen in a democracy, it is too late. They remain irresponsible and therefore immature. From the first grade on, the child should be taught his duties as a citizen, and given his voice in municipal matters and then in state and nation. ~ Pearl S. Buck

Praise the green earth. Chance has appointed her home, workshop, larder, middenpit. Her lousy skin scabbed here and there by cities provides us with name and nation. ~ Basil Bunting

Because there are little to no consequences for conducting cyberattacks, criminals and nation-states are becoming bolder in their threats and behavior. Russia, China, North Korea and Iran are increasingly hacking into U.S. companies and government networks for espionage purposes or financial gain. ~ Michael McCaul

Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation. ~ Samuel Smiles

Anyway, culture and nation are partners, inextricable from each other. National culture and nation, they are reciprocities. ~ Mark McMorris

Reform is the mission from which we shall not digress; it is an expression of belief and determination between us and our people. With the help of Allah, we will proceed forward in this promising national process within the natural progress of the life cycle and the development of people and nation. ~ Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa

The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth and falsehood, for the good or evil side;
Some great cause, some new decision, offering each bloom or blight,
And the choice goes by forever twixt that darkness and that light. ~ James Russell Lowell

The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice. We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for ... the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

The existence and increase of our race and nation, the sustenance of its children and the purity of its blood, the freedom and independence of the Fatherland, and the nation's ability to fulfill the mission appointed to it by the Creator of the universe. ~ Adolf Hitler

Formative Christian worship paints a picture of the beauty of the Lord--and a vision of the shalom he desires for creation--in a way that captures our imagination....The biblical vision of shalom--of a world where the Lamb is our light, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, where abundance is enjoyed by all, where people from every tribe and tongue and nation sing the same song of praise, where justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like an everlasting stream--is the vision that should be enacted in Christian worship. ~ James K.A. Smith

It was nineteen fifty seven, the Little Rock nine were escorted to school by Federal troops under the order of President Eisenhower to counteract the attempt of Arkansas Governor Faubus to prevent it. Southern racial tensions produced a supreme irony: Federal troops against the National Guard. This visible strife between state and nation was one of the evidences of the racial turmoil of the times ~ Sara Niles

If you say merit does not matter but miracles or favor matters, you are equally destroying yourself and nation. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The anti-apartheid prisoners on the island, like so many in every age and nation, found that Shakespeare had a peculiar ability to gentle their condition. They used to gather clandestinely to read the plays; on one occasion, the book was passed around for each man to mark his favourite lines. ~ Daniel Hannan

If you wish to prosper, let your customer prosper. When people have learned this lesson, everyone will seek his individual welfare in the general welfare. Then jealousies between man and man, city and city, province and province, nation and nation, will no longer trouble the world. ~ Frederic Bastiat

Miracle centered gospels do more damage than good to the listeners and nation. ~ Sunday Adelaja

Your ideas about possession must increase until you get to a state of full possession of the land, city and nation ~ Sunday Adelaja

Little has changed in our New York neighborhoods except the faces, the names, and the languages spoken. The same decent values of hard work and accomplishment and service to city and nation still exist. ~ David Dinkins

We're talking about the fate of our economy and the questionable resiliency of our Nation's critical infrastructure. Why are experts so polite, patient, and forgiving when talking about cybersecurity and National Security? The drama of each script kiddie botnet attack and Nation State pilfering of our IP has been turned into a soap opera through press releases, sound bites and enforced absurdity of mainstream media. It's time for a cybersecurity zeitgeist in the West where cyber hygiene is a meme that is aggressively distributed by those who have mastered it and encouraged to be imitated by those who have experienced it. ~ James Scott, Senior Fellow, Institute For Critical Infrastructure Technology

. We are guided by outcomes, not ideology. We have a policy of principled realism, rooted in shared goals, interests, and values. That realism forces us to confront a question facing every leader and nation in this room. It is a question we cannot escape or avoid. We will slide down the path of complacency, numb to the challenges, threats, and even wars that we face. Or do we have enough strength and pride to confront those dangers today, so that our citizens can enjoy peace and prosperity tomorrow? ~ Donald J. Trump

The Declaration of Independence pronounced the irrevocable decree of political separation, between the United States and their people on the one part, and the British king, government, and nation on the other. ~ John Quincy Adams

Our aim is to achieve a socialist system of society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war. ~ Vladimir Lenin

A contract for the establishment of government, being nothing but a voluntary contract between individuals for their mutual benefit, differs, in nothing that is essential to its validity, from any other contract between man and man, or between nation and nation. ~ Lysander Spooner

I will use all my strength to bring about a just society to a nation living in a tough world. ~ Pierre Trudeau

It is not in our interest, I suppose, to let South Sudan fall under the category of the burdened societies. We must be critical about our own actions if we want to move forward as a nation proud of its immense diversity. ~ Duop Chak Wuol

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. ~ Harry S. Truman

There is no better illustration of that crisis than the fact that the president is openly violating our nation's laws by authorizing the NSA to engage in warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. ~ John Conyers

The importance to the nation of a generously adequate food supply for the coming year cannot be overemphasized, in view of the economic problems which may arise as a result of the entrance of the United States into the war. ~ David F. Houston

There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help. ~ Charles Dudley Warner

No nation gains the power of judgment except it can pass judgment on itself. But to attain this great privilege takes a very long time. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

We may scavenge the dross of the nation, we may shudder past bloody sod,
But we thrill to the new revelation that we are parts of God. ~ Robert Haven Schauffler

The average person doesn't understand what a stem cell is. There's a lack of health literacy in our nation. So the public can't really get into this dialogue because they don't understand the complexity of stem cells, not the faith-based approach, not the ideological or political, but the science behind stem cells. ~ Richard Carmona

The government of the world's most powerful nation is running furiously in place. ~ Ron Suskind

Gramacho is the last landfill that allows people in. Brazil is the leading nation in recycling due to its poverty. There are people there surviving from what they find in the garbage. ~ Vik Muniz

France eats more conciously, more intelligently, than any other nation. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

You do the hundreds of things that a Christward heart does in the hope that God will put a match to those little sparks to cause it to become a conflagration in a community or in a nation. ~ John Piper

Today, as yesterday, a nation is judged by its attitude towards refugees, ~ Elie Wiesel

It took man 250,000 years to transcend the hunting pack. It will not take him so long to transcend the nation. ~ J.B.S. Haldane

We need to be on a war footing. We need to understand that our nation is in grave danger. ~ Benjamin Carson

Social Security is at last on the nation's front burner. ~ Nick Clooney

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

Through the history of our nation, Americans have always extended their hands in gestures of assistance. ~ Ronald Reagan

There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization. ~ Felix Adler

The prospective colonization of space responds, not to the particular problems of the American nation, or of any other nation, but to those of mankind as a whole ... In an ideal view, such an undertaking by mankind as a whole would tend to divert it from its present preoccupation with international conflict, would tend to channel its energies into the pursuit of a great common purpose. ~ Louis J. Halle

A nation ... is just a society for hating foreigners. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation - not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago. ~ Barack Obama

One athlete does not make a team.
One singer does not make a band.
One actor does not make an ensemble.
One participant does not make a contest.
One employee does not make a company.

One stroke does not make a portrait.
One word does not make an essay.
One paragraph does not make a thesis.
One note does not make a symphony.
One instrument does not make an orchestra.

One finger does not make a hand.
One toe does not make a foot.
One lip does not make a voice.
One member does not make a body.
One cell does not make a being.

One memory does not make an experience.
One habit does not make a character.
One act does not make a destiny.
One day does not make a year.
One moment does not make a lifetime.

One man does not make a family.
One home does not make a neighborhood.
One clan does not make nation.
One tribe does not make a continent.
One people does not make a world. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. ~ Robert Runcie

A fourteen-year-old lad crouching with his bazooka behind a ruined wall on a burned out street is worth more to the nation than ten intellectuals who attempt to prove that our chances now are nil. ~ Joseph Goebbels

But 'tis the talent of our English nation, Still to be plotting some new reformation. ~ John Dryden

The ability to cultivate the land is the growth of any nation. ~ Sunday Adelaja

The Soviet Union began by banishing God. The United States began as a community of people who wanted to worship God as they chose ... Man does not live by bread alone. Those in the United States whose desire to create a strictly secular society is as strong as Lenin's was should study this Cold War lesson closely. Communism was defeated by an alliance spearheaded by 'one nation under God.' ~ Richard M. Nixon

Our nation was horrified, but it's not going to be terrorized. ~ George W. Bush

When George Washington directed federal troops to exterminate the Onondaga during the Revolutionary War, a nation that had numbered in the tens of thousands was reduced to a few hundred people in a matter of one year. ~ Robin Wall Kimmerer

Every book is a time machine, a flying carpet, a passport to the most powerful nation in the world....... your imagi-nation! ~ Mike Thaler

I hope this scene isn't playing out all over the nation. People like me struggling to grab what they can. Whole families, even. Grasping at the leftover shards of their lives. ~ Daniel H. Wilson

The USA has neither the wisdom to stop
putting junk food into its children's bodies, nor junk education into it's
children's minds. Such a nation lacking in such real wisdom, must rapidly
make some radical changes or go to oblivion. ~ Peter B. Lockhart

America Is A Gun

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona's hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun. ~ Brian Bilston

China no longer has an ideology that makes any sense to them, but what they do have is great pride in the Chinese nation. ~ Evan Osnos

You can't kill America. We're more than a nation. We're a notion. We're an idea. The American Dream. You never heard of the Afghanistani Dream have you. Except by bearded hermetic recluses with a fetish for uneducated women dressed as giant shuttlecocks. ~ Will Durst