Quotes
Quotes about Nation
...regrettable as it may seem to the idealist, the experience of history provides little warrant for the belief that real progress, and the freedom that makes progress possible, lies in unification. For where unification has been able to establish unity of ideas it has usually ended in uniformity, paralysing the growth of new ideas. And where the unification has merely brought about an artificial or imposed unity, its irksomeness has led through discord to disruption.Vitality springs from diversity- which makes for real progress so long as there is mutual toleration, based on the recognition that worse may come from an attempt to suppress differences than from acceptance of them. For this reason, the kind of peace that makes progress possible is best assured by the mutual checks created by a balance of forces- alike in the sphere of internal politics and of international relations.
Power always has to be kept in check; power exercised in secret, especially under the cloak of national security, is doubly dangerous.
The assumption that spending more of the taxpayer's money will make things better has survived all kinds of evidence that it has made things worse. The black family- which survived slavery, discrimination, poverty, wars and depressions- began to come apart as the federal government moved in with its well-financed programs to "help.".
A nation's policy form an integral whole. Foreign policy and domestic policy are closely linked together; they are but one system; they condition each other.
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
Bad monetary and fiscal policy, often designed by the IMF, is the real cause of global problems. The only explanation for why government leaders continue to follow these policies is that by blaming markets, they avoid blaming themselves.
I've analyzed the best I can ... and I have not found an impeachable offense, and therefore resignation is not an acceptable course.
A politician will always tip off his true belief by stating the opposite at the beginning of the sentence. For maximum comprehension, do not start listening until the first clause is concluded. Begin instead at the word "but" which begins the second, or active, clause. This is the way to tell a liberal from a conservativeâbefore they tell you. Thus: "I have always believed in a strong national defense, second to none, but ... " (a liberal, about to propose a $20 billion defense cut).
The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference,and undernourishment.
The hungry world cannot be fed until and unless the growth of its resources and the growth of its population come into balance. Each man and woman--and each nation--must make decisions of conscience and policy in the face of this great problem.
The English, a spirited nation, claim the empire of the sea; the French, a calmer nation, claim that of the air. [Fr., Les Anglais, nation trop fiere S'arrogent l'empire des mers; Les Francais, nation legere, S'emparent de celui des airs.]
Carrier of news and knowledge, Instrument of trade and industry, Promoter of mutual acquaintance, Of peace and good-will Among men and nations.
A foreign nation is a kind of contemporaneous posterity.
This administration has broken faith with the people of America. They have squandered the immense good will extended by other nations.
We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions--bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one nationality against another, seeks to degrade all nationalities.
The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly as necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
The genius, wit, and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs.
Proverbs like the sacred books of each nation, are the sanctuary of the intuitions.
Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.
The continuous disasters of man's history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation.We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
...originality consists of the achievement of new combinations, and not of the creation of something out of nothing.
Facts per se can neither prove nor refute anything. Everything is decided by the interpretation and explanation of the facts, by the ideas and the theories.
The inertia of the human mind and its resistance to innovation are most clearly demonstrated not, as one might expect, by the ignorant mass- which is easily swayed once its imagination is caught- but by professionals with a vested interest in tradition and in the monopoly of learning. Innovation is a twofold threat to academic mediocrities: it endangers their oracular authority, and it evokes the deeper fear that their whole, laboriously constructed intellectual edifice might collapse. The academic backwoodsmen have been the curse of genius from Aristarchus to Darwin and Freud; they stretch, a solid and hostile phalanx of pedantic mediocrities, across the centuries.
The revolutions of thought which shape the basic outlook of an age are not disseminated through text-books- they spread like epidemics, through contamination by invisible agents and innocent germ carriers, by the most varied forms of contact, or simply by breathing the common air.
