Beloved Country Quotes

We need to do more than win an election or win the House or win the presidency, my friends: we need to make this beloved country of ours God's country once again. ~ Pat Buchanan

Indeed, mother, you are always our helper."
"For what else are we born? ~ Alan Paton

I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against it not in anger but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and above all with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as a moral example of the world. ~ Martin Luther

I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find that we are turned to hating. ~ Alan Paton

For mines are for men, not for money. And money is not something to go mad about, and throw your hat into the air for. Money is for food and clothes and comfort, and a visit to the pictures. Money is to make happy the lives of children. Money is for security, and for dreams, and for hopes, and for purposes. Money is for buying the fruits of the earth, of the land where you were born. ~ Alan Paton

It was to the small serious boy that he turned for his enjoyment. He had bought the child some cheap wooden blocks, and with these the little one played endlessly and intently, with a purpose obscure to the adult mind, but completely absorbing. ~ Alan Paton

It is not permissible to add to one's possesions if these things can only be done at the cost of other men. Such development has only one true name, and that is exploitation. ~ Alan Paton

Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving. ~ Alan Paton

Have you ever heard the Hungarian national anthem? No? Good for you! I wouldn't recommend it at all. Unless you are looking for inspiration for your suicide attempt. If it is not just an attempt but you are deadly serious about your suicide then I strongly recommend you not only read the lyrics but listen to the music too. The most mournful funeral song sounds jolly compared to it. Other nations have inspiring anthems like 'God Save the Queen' or the 'La Marseillaise' or 'The StarSpangled Banner', and their lyrics are about victory and proudness like 'Russia – our sacred homeland, Russia – our beloved country' or 'Germany, Germany above everything, Above everything in the world!' But what about the Hungarian anthem? It starts with 'O Lord, bless the Hungarian' and then follow eight long and painful stanzas about our 'slave yoke' and 'funeral urn' and 'the corpses of our defeated army' and 'groans of death, weeping' and finally it finishes with 'Pity, O Lord, the Hungarians they who have suffered for all sins of the past and of the future!' Yes, of the future too. ~ Angela Kiss

Because life slips away, and because I need for the rest of my journey a star that will not play false to me, a compass that will not lie. ~ Alan Paton

Have you a room that you could let?"
"Yes, I have a room that I could let, but I do not want to let it. I have only two rooms, and there are six of us already, and the boys and girls are growing up. But school books cost money, and my husband is ailing, and when he is well it is only thirty-five shillings a week. And six shillings of that is for the rent, and three shillings of that is for the rent, and three shillings for travelling, and a shilling that we may all be buried decently, and a shilling for the books, and three shillings is for clothes and that is little enough, and a shilling for my husband's beer, and a shilling for his tobacco, and these I do not grudge for he is a decent man and does not gamble or spend his money on other women, and a shilling for the Church, and a shilling for sickness. And that leaves seventeen shillings for food for six, and we are always hungry. Yes I have a room but I do not want to let it. How much could you pay?"
"I could pay three shillings a week for the room."
"And I would not take it."
"Three shillings and sixpence."
"Three shillings and sixpence. You can't fill your stomach on privacy. You need privacy when your children are growing up, but you can't fill your stomach on it. Yes, I shall take three shillings and sixpence. ~ Alan Paton

The truth is, our civilization is not Christian; it is a tragic compound of great ideal and fearful practice, of loving charity and fearful clutching of possessions. ~ Alan Paton

Patriotism was used to muddle the sense of morality: "Our beloved country is being attacked and we must be loyal to it; in times of crisis it is not right to criticize your leaders. It is disloyal, an act of treachery." Using jingoist language is far easier than taking responsibility for righteousness in the nation. Far easier to shout patriotic slogans than to work patriotically for justice. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

Do not let us despair of the cause of liberty: it is still dear to the hearts of Frenchmen, and we shall one day have the felicity of seeing it established in our beloved country. ~ Marquis De Lafayette

They were your friends?"
"Yes, they were my friends."
"And they will leave you to suffer alone?"
"Now I see it."
"And until this, were they friends you could trust?"
"I could trust them."
"I see what you mean. You mean they were the kind of friends that a good man could choose, upright, hard-working, obeying the law?
Tell me, were they such friends?
And now they leave you alone?
Did you not see it before?"
"I saw it. ~ Alan Paton

I see only one hope for our country, and that is when white men and black men, desiring neither power nor money, but desiring only the good for their country, come together to work for it.
I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they are turned to loving, they will find we are turned to hating. ~ Alan Paton

But sorrow is better than fear. For fear impoverishes always, while sorrow may enrich. ~ Alan Paton

Patriotic to the point of arrogance, quick to take offense at any seeming slight of his beloved country and government ~ Craig Pittman

There is only one thing that has power completely, and that is love. ~ Alan Paton

Again I admonish you not to be turned from your stern purpose of defending your beloved country and its free institutions by any arguments urged by ambitious and designing men, but stand fast to the Union and the old flag. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Let us pray that the great historic tragedy of our time may not have been enacted without instructing our whole beloved country through terror and pity; and may fulfillment verify in the end those expectations which kindle the bards of Progress and Humanity. ~ Herman Melville

I not only rejoice, but congratulate my beloved country Texas is reannexed, and the safety, prosperity, and the greatest interest of the whole Union is secured by this great and important national act. ~ Andrew Jackson

This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our states, in our homes and in our hearts, to eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country. So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife - I urge every American - to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people, and to bring peace to our land. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

I only look to the gracious protection of the Divine Being whose strengthening support I humbly solicit, and whom I fervently pray to look down upon us all. May it be among the dispensations of His Providence to bless our beloved country with honors and with length of days; may her ways beways of pleasantness, and all her paths be peace. ~ Martin Van Buren

Strong hearts and helpful hands are needed, and, fortunately, we have them in every part of our beloved country. ~ William McKinley

Peace, plenty, and contentment reign throughout our borders, and our beloved country presents a sublime moral spectacle to the world. ~ James K. Polk

Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us
by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country
during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to
that all personal and local considerations. ~ Thomas Jefferson

There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely beyond any singing of it ... ~ Alan Paton

But there is only one thing that has power completely, and this is love. Because when a man loves, he seeks no power, and therefore he has power. ~ Alan Paton

Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that's the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing. Nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him if he gives too much. ~ Alan Paton

I have never thought that a Christian would be free of suffering, umfundisi. For our Lord suffered. And I come to believe that he suffered, not to save us from suffering, but to teach us how to bear suffering. For he knew that there is no life without suffering. ~ Alan Paton

What broke in a man when he could bring himself to kill another? ~ Alan Paton

He who fights on a foreign soil another man's war
Not for his family or his country's honor
And, when he lies dying, hit by a deadly blow
From an Angry firearm
But cannot say, "Oh! My beloved country
Here is the life you gave me, I come back to you"
Dies twice, reduced to eternal wretchedness. ~ Leopardi

Grateful to Almighty God for the blessings which, through Jesus Christ Our Lord, He had conferred on my beloved country in her emancipation and on myself in permitting me, under circumstances of mercy, to live to the age of 89 years, and to survive the fiftieth year of independence, adopted by Congress on the 4th of July 1776 ... ~ Charles Carroll Of Carrollton

The blurring of the line between policy and strategy] encouraged soldiers to make the preposterous claim that policy should be subservient to their conduct of operations, and (especially in democratic countries) it drew the statesman on to overstep the definite border of his sphere and interfere with his military employees in the actual use of their tools. ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

The prestige of government has undoubtedly been lowered considerably by the prohibition law. For nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this. ~ Albert Einstein

My victims never knew what was going to happen to them. I've had shooting, knifings, strangulations, beatings, and I've participated in actual crucifixions of humans. All across the country, there's people just like me, who set out to destroy life. ~ Henry Lee Lucas

You want to know the truth about the poor in this country? They're not cool. They're not soulful. They're not honest. They're not the salt of the fucking earth. They're thick. They're myopic. They're violent. They're drunk most of the time. They like shit music. They wear shit clothes. They tell shit jokes. They're racist, most of them, and homophobic, the lot of them. They have tiny parameters of possibility and a minuscule spirit of enquiry or investigation. They would be better off staying in their little holes and fucking each other. And killing each other. ~ Simon Stephens

I am free. I am one of the few free people in this country of utterly transparent slavery. A slavery covered by a sloppy coat of contemporary varnish. I have fought a long and bloodless battle for this pitiable personal freedom. I fought for my freedom against the temptations, ambitions, and appetites witch drive everyone blindly on the slaughterhouse. To the so-called modern slaughterhouse for human dignity, honor, and for something else, too, which we forgot about a long time ago. ~ Tadeusz Konwicki

but we did not come into India, as they did, at the head of great armies, with the avowed intention of subjugating the country. We crept in as humble barterers, whose existence depended on the bounty and favour of the lieutenants of the kings of Delhi; and the 'generosity' we have shown was but a small acknowledgement of the favours his ancestors had conferred to our race. ~ William Dalrymple

Although I strongly believe in individual rights and the rights of parents to raise their children as they see fit, I also recognize that public health and public safety are extremely important in our society. Certain communicable diseases have been largely eradicated by immunization policies in this country. We should not allow those diseases to return by forgoing safety immunization programs for philosophical, religious or other reasons when we have the means to eradicate them. ~ Ben Carson

The country is in an extraordinary ferment. ~ William Hamilton Maxwell

The people in this country are in furious rages at each other after the last vote, she said, and the government we've got has done nothing to assuage it and instead is using people's rage for its own political expediency. Which is a grand old fascist trick if ever I saw one, and a very dangerous game to play. And what's happening in the United States is directly related, and probably financially related. ~ Ali Smith

I support a very active programme on disarmament and arms control for Iraq, and of course every other country in the world ... That does not require economic sanctions ... I think we've got to take the risk and give up economic sanctions while hanging on to the disarmament programme and allow the Iraqis to get on with rebuilding their country. ~ Denis Halliday

Old age is rather like another country. You will enjoy it more if you have prepared yourself before you go. ~ B.F. Skinner

DREAM ! Dreams shape the world . Dreams create the world anew, every night. Do not dream the world the way it is now, in thrall to our feline masters and mistresses ~ Neil Gaiman

War crimes, you say?

No matter how many policies you put on paper, in reality, there are no rights and wrongs in war. War itself is a crime. War cannot be justified.

I believe, the only people, in this world, whose opinions matter, are the ones who go the extra mile to help other people expecting nothing in return.

Soldiers who fight fiercely for their country, the doctors in Sri Lanka's public hospitals attending to hundreds of patients at a time for no extra pay , the nuns who voluntarily teach English and math to children of refugee camps in the north, the monks who collect food to feed entire villages during crises, they are the people worth listening to, their opinion matters.

So find me one of them who will say: they wish the war didn't end in 2009, that they wish Sri Lanka was divided into two parts. Find me one of them who agrees with the international war crime allegations against Sri Lanka, and I will listen.

But I will not listen to the opinions of those who are paid to find faults in a war they were never a part of, a war they never experienced themselves. I will not listen to the opinions of those who watched the war on tv or read about it on the internet or were moved by a documentary on Al Jazeera.

The war is over. The damage is done. Let Sri Lanka move on. So our children will never have to see what we've seen. ~ Thisuri Wanniarachchi

To say he felt guilty would ascribe to him ethical borders that were lines on a map of a country that no longer existed. At least, that's what he told himself. Better to deny the existence of objective morality than to live in its shadow. Better to tell yourself that the world of right and wrong is not the world you belong to. In the bathroom mirror he saw the face of a man his seventeen-year-old self would have disdained with the vanity of someone yet unaware of the many means the world has to break him. ~ Anthony Marra

Financiers live in a world of illusion. They count on something which they call the capital of the country, which has no existence. ~ George Bernard Shaw

Being a prime minister is a very demanding job. And as long as I have the strength, I will continue to do this and be of benefit to my country. ~ Dmitry Medvedev

We must also strive to understand the nature of mobs. A mob has its own constitution. It has its own country. It drafts its own orders and directives, and identifies its own prey. ~ Ravish Kumar

Iceland is 50 percent Celtic blood, from the females that they stole from us, which is why our country has only got dogs left. It was a joke! I'll never be let back in Scotland again! ~ Gerard Butler

The two most radical things you can do in America are to slow down, and to talk to each other. If you do these things, you will improve your country. ~ Mary Pipher

Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement: to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, has done to the world. But you cannot arrange your life around them and the small chance of the Dreamers coming into consciousness. Our moment is too brief. Our bodies are too precious. And you are here now, and you must live - and there is so much out there to live for, not just in someone else's country, but in your own home. The warmth of dark energies that drew me to The Mecca, that drew out Prince Jones, the warmth of our particular world, is beautiful, no matter how brief and breakable. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

No it was my choice. It's what I wanted to do. And I knew they'd probably send me to Iraq. It's not like anybody lied to me."
She groans. "Billy, all these mofos ever do is lie. You think if they halfway told the truth we'd even be in a fucking war? You know what I think, I think we don't deserve to have you guys die for us. No country that lets It's leaders lie like that deserves a single soldier to die for it. ~ Ben Fountain

The late brilliant actions in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas divided and weakened the enemy on the Rappahannock, and the auspicious moment seems to have arrived to strike a great and mortal blow at the Rebellion, and to gain that decisive victory which is due to the country. ~ Ambrose Burnside

The country that consistently ranks among the highest in educational achievement is Finland. A rich country, but education is free. Germany, education is free. France, education is free. ~ Noam Chomsky

I do get a bit of a sense, just from e-mails some people send me, just a little sense of how people in different countries seem to respond differently to certain lines in a song. ~ Gotye

It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

I keep a picture of my beloved children close by. Also, water and plenty of pads and pens. ~ Alain De Botton

Wal-Mart's size and scale is so vast they literally have the ability to change the face of the entire country. If Wal-Mart were to make a decision tomorrow to refuse to sell a single product made with partially hydrogenated oils, for example, we'd probably see rates from heart disease decline a few years later. That's how powerful Wal-Mart is. ~ Simon Sinek

We do, and there is a law in the United States - the Torture Convention - that prohibits the United States from deporting an individual to a country where there is a reasonable expectation that he will be subjected to torture - physical, mental or otherwise. ~ Jonathan Shapiro

I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on a steady advance. Even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In, short, the flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these and all who work for them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Ours is not a poor country and even though we are now a poor people, there should be no room for the despondency that has settled on large sections of the population. ~ John Agyekum Kufuor

America My Country: last nation on earth to abolish human slavery; first of all nations to drop the nuclear bomb on our fellow human beings. ~ Edward Abbey

I believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now. ~ Rick Santorum

The basic attitude of reverence is the presupposition for every true love, above all, the love of neighbor, because it alone opens our eyes to the value of men as spiritual persons, and because, without this awareness, no love is possible. Reverence for the beloved one is also an essential element of every love. To give attention to the specific meaning and value of his individuality, to display consideration toward him, instead of forcing our wishes on him, is part of reverence. It is from reverence that there flows the willingness of a lover to grant the beloved the spiritual "space" needed to freely express his own individuality. All these elements of every true love flow from reverence. What would a mother's love be without reverence for the growing being, for all the possibilities of value that yet lie dormant, for the preciousness of the child's soul? ~ Dietrich Von Hildebrand

The English playwrights of the '50s and '60s didn't really keep writing or getting produced, while the Irish did. There's encouragement for the younger ones also in the fact that Ireland is exceptional in its ability to make theater part of the national dialogue, and it reaches to all four corners of the country. ~ Garry Hynes

The love of justice and the love of country plead equally the cause of these people, and it is a moral reproach to us that they should have pleaded it so long in vain. ~ Thomas Jefferson

If a country puts its entire focus on making sure that the education system improves, then that's the kind of progress that you can see. ~ Michelle Rhee

To date, there has been no serious attempt in Western countries to use laws to control excessive population growth, although there exists ample authority under which population growth could be regulated. ~ John Holdren

There is ... a huge tacit conspiracy between the U.S. government, its agencies and its multinational corporations, on the one hand, and local business and military cliques in the Third World, on the other, to assume complete control of these countries and "develop" them on a joint venture basis. The military leaders of the Third World were carefully nurtured by the U.S. security establishment to serve as the "enforcers" of this joint venture partnership, and they have been duly supplied with machine guns and the latest data on methods of interrogation of subversives. ~ Edward S. Herman

It means so much being a part of country music and the Opry. ~ Martina Mcbride

Above all, what you have as young people that's vitally needed to make social change, is impatience. You want it to happen now. There have to be enough people that say, "We want it now, in our lifetime. " We want to see apartheid in South Africa come down right now. We want to see the war in Central America stop right now. We want the CIA off our campus right now. We want an end to sexual harassment in our communities right now. Be adventurists in the sense of being bold and daring. Be opportunists and seize this opportunity, this moment in history, to go out and save our country. It's your turn now. ~ Abbie Hoffman

We are all in this together. We will all make it or none of us will make it. If everyone cleans up their act except one big ole country, it isn't going to work. ~ Ted Danson

A godly man often grows best when his worldly circumstances decay. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I think people are just really disappointed, disappointed with Blair as well, who's just like Bush's lapdog. I think everyone's just disillusioned with politics in our country, and it must be the same in your country. ~ Paul Weller