Quotes
Quotes about Nation
We are in the midst of a great transition from narrow nationalism to international partnership.
The root of the problem is very simply stated: if there were no sovereign independent states, if the states of the civilized world were organized in some sort of federalism, as the states of the American Union, for instance, are organized, there would be no international war as we know it ... The main obstacle is nationalism.
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
If nations could only depend upon fair and impartial judgments in a world court of law, they would abandon the senseless, savage practice of war.
Nations, like plants and human beings, grow. And if the development is thwarted they are dwarfed and overshadowed.
We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.
Money speaks sense in a language all nations understand.
Among all nations there should be vast temples raised where people might worship in silence and listen to it, for it is the voice of God
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.
Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim upon men's hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.
Isaiah 55 1 Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. 2 Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. 3 Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. 4 Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. 5 Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. 6 Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: 7 Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: 11 So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. 12 For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
In really hard times the rules of the game are altered. The inchoate mass begins to stir. It becomes potent, and when it strikes, it strikes with incredible emphasis. Those are the rare occasions when a national will emerges from the scattered, specialized, or indifferent blocs of voters who ordinarily elect the politicians. Those are for good or evil the great occasions in a nation's history.
I'm afraid we have become a nation of plodders, who feel that all problems can be found in books and that the answers are on a certain page.
The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
It is sometimes necessary to lie damnably in the interests of the nation.
Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason's imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.
Panic is a sudden desertion of us, and a going over to the enemy of our imagination.
A nation is a society united by a delusion about it's ancestry and by common hatred of it's neighbours.
The big trick in putting is not method the secret of putting is domination of the nerves.
George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . . . Should the General raise his left hand as he has raised his right, it would point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of national or personal freedom they have found refuge here, and the patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville that caricatures the posterity of the proteges.
Just where the Treasury's marble front Looks over Wall Street's mingled nations,-- Where Jews and Gentiles most are wont To throng for trade and last quotations; Where, hour, by hour, the rates of gold Outrival, in the ears of people, The quarter-chimes, serenely tolled From Trinity's undaunted steeple.
It is perhaps common in the world for individuals and nations to suffer for their noble qualities more than for their ignoble ones. For nobility is an occasion for pride, the most treacherous of sentiments.
