Novalee Nation Quotes

A man can't love you because you haven't read as many books as he has? He can't love you because you don't speak French or because you don't go to operas? You're telling me we have to fall in love with people who are just like us? ~ Billie Letts

Nothing renders a nation so despicable as religious despotism. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

The typical journalist's typical lead for the typical Canadian story nowadays is along this line: that Canadians are hard at work trying to gain a reputation as a nation of rapid social change. ~ Stockwell Day

Take the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. I remember as a child how I used to choke up every morning "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." Now it didn't say, "I pledge allegiance to racism, to capitalism, and to neo­colonialism, and J. Edgar Hoover, and Richard Nixon, .and Ronald Reagan, and Mace, and billy clubs and dead niggers on the street shot by pigs." I mean it didn't say that shit, you see. ~ Eldridge Cleaver

The Jews are not a nation! ~ Joseph Stalin

We need to make it very clear to the Iranians, the same way we made it clear to the Soviet Union and China, that their first use of nuclear weapons would result in the devastation of their nation. ~ John Abizaid

No nation is drunken where wine is cheap, and none sober where the dearness of wine substitutes ardent spirits as the common beverage ~ Thomas Jefferson

A great nation is any mob of people which produces at least one honest man a century. ~ H.L. Mencken

I think Michelle Obama is on the right track with her Let's Move campaign to bring down childhood obesity. She and I come from the same state, Illinois, which is number four in the nation for obese children. One out of five Illinois children are considered obese. Not overweight, obese. And two-thirds of Americans are either overweight or obese. ~ Aaron Schock

It is wrong, and ultimately self-defeating for a nation of immigrants to permit the kind of abuse of our immigration laws that we have seen ... in recent years. There is too much of it, and we must do much more to stop it." "The fact is that employer sanctions have been in the law ... since 1986 but no prior administration has made a serious attempt to enforce them. ~ William J. Clinton

An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. ~ Bryan Stevenson

The worst thing we can do as a nation is taking the easy way out. If you start opening up offshore drilling, then you are buying time and you are not addressing the fundamental problem with fossil fuels. ~ Joe Biden

These practices - non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-receiving - are to be practised by every man, woman, and child; by every soul, irrespective of nation, country, or position. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Though our castes and institutions are apparently linked with our religion, they are not so. These institutions have been necessary to protect us as a nation, and when this necessity for self-preservation will no more exist, they will die a natural death. But the older I grow, the better I seem to think of these time-honored institutions of India. There was a time when I used to think that many of them were useless and worthless; but the older I grew, the more I seem to feel a diffidence in cursing any one of them, for each one of them is the embodiment of the experience of centuries. A child of but yesterday, destined to die the day after tomorrow, comes to me and asks me to change all my plans; and if I hear the advice of that baby and change all my surroundings according to his ideas, I myself should be a fool, and no one else. Much of the advice that is coming to us from different countries is similar to this. Tell these wiseacres: "I will hear you when you have made a society yourselves. You cannot hold on to one idea for two days, you quarrel and fail; you are born like moths in the spring and die like them in five minutes. You come up like bubbles and burst like bubbles too. First form a stable society like ours. First make laws and institutions that remain undiminished in their power through scores of centuries. Then will be the time to talk on the subject with you, but till then, my friend, you are only a giddy child. ~ Swami Vivekananda

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

A great industrial nation may conquer the world in the span of a single life, but its Achilles' heel is time. Its children, what of them? ~ Charles Lindbergh

We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory. ~ Vladimir Lenin

We are not going to deal with the violence in our communities, our homes, and our nation, until we learn to deal with the basic ethic of how we resolve our disputes and to place an emphasis on peace in the way we relate to one another. ~ Marian Wright Edelman

We will not fail your expectations of us as a new nation dedicated to peace, democracy, and freedom. ~ Shigeru Yoshida

A nation that fails to honor its heroes, soon will have no heroes to honor ... ~ Winston Churchill

I started really thinking a lot about where does a country go when we stop being able to speak to each other, when a nation stops being able to solve problems because its ideological differences become so deep that it just becomes dysfunctional. ~ Paolo Bacigalupi

The American people are proud to welcome your majesty back to the United States, a nation you've come to know very well. After all you've dined with 10 U.S. presidents. You've helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in 17 -in 1976 ~ George W. Bush

Speaking of California, the Illinois State Register asked: "Shall this garden of beauty be suffered to lie dormant in its wild and useless luxuriance? . . . myriads of enterprising Americans would flock to its rich and inviting prairies; the hum of Anglo-American industry would be heard in its valleys; cities would rise upon its plains and sea-coast, and the resources and wealth of the nation increased in an incalculable degree. ~ Howard Zinn

[W]e talk about the tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too; we are fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on state occassions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so, the meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if there be but a great parade of them. And as individuals get into trouble by making too great a show of liveries, or as slaves when they are too numerous rise against their masters, so I think I could mention a nation that has got into many great difficulties, and will get into many greater, from maintaining too large a retinue of words. ~ Charles Dickens

The history of Germany is not the history of a nation, but of a race. It has little unity, therefore; it is complicated, broken, and attached on all sides to the histories of other countries. ~ Bayard Taylor

That's the biggest problem existing in this country! People are always mixing up the word free and freedom. Free is something you get for nothin.' Freedom is a responsibility. We think freedom means do nothing, don't be responsible for your actions ... I think its time for adult Americans to be responsible for themselves, to take back the responsibility of being a free nation. ~ Aaron Tippin

Yes, more than 100 Democrats voted to authorize Bush to take the nation to war. Most of them did so in the belief that the president and his administration were truthful in their statements that Saddam Hussein was a gathering menace. ~ Bob Graham

XVII. THE PROPAGANDA OF HISTORY

How the facts of American history have in the last half century have been falsified because the nation was ashamed. The South was ashamed because it fought to perpetuate human slavery. The North was ashamed because it had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery and establish democracy. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

Massachusetts led the nation passing the first state minimum wage a century ago in June 1912, and with passage of an $11 state minimum wage ... will be leading the nation again with a wage floor that is good for business, good for customers and good for our economy. ~ Holly Sklar

In all the thrashing about that results from our dwindling gold reserves, it's about time that this country and other countries get some perspective on the situation. The day this country is out of the stuff, that day gold becomes what it's worth as a metal and no longer will have much significance as a monetary measurement. It isn't the gold we have that makes this nation rich. It's what we make, our knowhow, our productivity. So long as this country produces more and better, the world will continue to want what we make. ~ Malcolm Forbes

When I was growing up, there were just the three channels, so as a nation we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day. Now there's been this explosion. ~ Rory Bremner

Regardless of what happens, I still honor my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, because at the end of the day, that's what's important, win or lose ... We need to get back to one nation under God, and be role models for kids, ~ Tim Tebow

By strengthening the economy, providing job opportunity and meeting the needs of working families, we can ensure the continued prosperity of our nation. ~ Christopher Dodd

We are a nation of 20 million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub. ~ Mary McCarthy

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

This nation asks for action, and action now. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt

That's the oldest sin of all. Pride. Spiritual pride. Believing that you're better than others. Believing that you're enlightened, you're smart, you're in the know, and everyone else is stumbling about blindly in the darkness. The old us-versus-them. My group is better than your group. My people, my nation, my country, my religion, my gender, my sexual orientation. Old as sin. And it's a Big Lie. ~ Jerome Wilde

Let us not be unmindful that liberty is power, that the nation blessed with the largest portion of liberty must in proportion to its numbers be the most powerful nation upon earth. Our Constitution professedly rests upon the good sense and attachment of the people. This basis, weak as it may appear, has not yet been found to fail. Always vote for a principle, though you vote alone, and you may cherish the sweet reflection that your vote is never lost. America, in the assembly of nations, has uniformly spoken among them the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. ~ John Quincy Adams

No nation is fit to sit in judgement upon any other nation. ~ Woodrow Wilson

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

Liberty is a great celestial Goddess, strong, beneficent, and austere, and she can never descend upon a nation by the shouting of crowds, nor by arguments of unbridled passion, nor by the hatred of class against class. ~ Annie Besant

What a shame it is for a nation to be developing without a sense of beauty, and eating bananas for breakfast. ~ Edith Wharton

The Seductive Lure of Socialism Here I encounter the most popular fallacy of our times. It is not considered sufficient that the law should be just; it must be philanthropic. Nor is it sufficient that the law should guarantee to every citizen the free and inoffensive use of his faculties for physical, intellectual, and moral self-improvement. Instead, it is demanded that the law should directly extend welfare, education, and morality throughout the nation. This is the seductive lure of socialism. And I repeat again: These two uses of the law are in direct contradiction to each other. We must choose between them. A citizen cannot at the same time be free and not free. ~ Frederic Bastiat

We're a nation hungry for more joy: Because we're starving from a lack of gratitude. ~ Brene Brown

National Osteoporosis Awareness and Prevention Month is celebrated each May, and becomes a chance for our Nation to become more familiar with the effects of this disease, and about the preventable steps that we can take to deal with it. ~ Lois Capps

We come humbly to say to the men in the forefront of our government that the civil rights issue is not an Ephemeral, evanescent domestic issue that can be kicked about by reactionary guardians of the status quo; it is rather an eternal moral issue which may well determine the destiny of our nation in the ideological struggle with communism. The hour is late. The clock of destiny is ticking out. We must act now, before it is too late. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

To assess a nation through its economic data is a little like re-envisaging oneself via the results of a blood test, whereby the traditional markers of personality and character are set aside and it is made clear that one is at base, where it really counts, a creatinine level of 3.2, a lactate dehydrogenase of 927, a leukocyte (per field) of 2 and a C-reactive protein of 2.42. ~ Alain De Botton

We are aware that many national farm organizations are putting forth various plans to provide both short- and long-term relief to our nation's agricultural producers. While we believe long-term solutions are essential, the current situation demands a more immediate response. ~ Mel Carnahan