Quotes About Nationality

I am going to fight on the pitch for Newcastle and if it comes to the stage where someone says can you fight for England then I will fight for England. But I am not going to go on about it. It is just not worth it.

I must confess... I don't know any tongue but the Nether-Dutch.

Being Scottish is something you have in your heart not something that comes off your tongue.

When I'm in Brazil, I'm not Brazilian at all; I am a gringo. And then when I'm in England, I'm not really English, but when I lived in Canada, I was considered too English. So I never really felt like I clicked somewhere or that I belonged to one place.

People don't contest that I'm British as a black man, but they do contest that I'm English. Too many people are going back to an ethnocentric idea of what being English means.

I'm a Slovak. And when I was growing up, I believed that I was Czechoslovakian because of what Russia did. They came in and took two separate countries - Slovakia and the Czech Republic - put them together as one.

To me, terrorists should not be able to hide behind their passports and their citizenship, and that includes U.S. citizens, whether they are overseas or whether they are here in the United States. What we need to do is to apply the appropriate tool and the appropriate response.

It was very hard for me, for most of my life, to feel American, or call myself American, and that is a very complicated topic that would require a very long conversation.

Canada is a country of ingredients without a cuisine; we're a country with musicians without an indigenous instrument; Toronto's a city that doesn't even have a dish named after it.

I took pride in everything when it came to Canada. Not even just Toronto, everything that came with Canada, wearing that Toronto Raptors jersey.

I always say in my camps in Africa, in everything we do, 'My name is Masai and I'm from Nigeria.' My name is Masai and I'm from Nigeria. It's plain and simple. If you're from La Loche or you are from Toronto you should be proud of it.

I'm proud of Toronto. I'm proud of Canada. I'm proud of the NBA. I'm very proud of it.

Foreign writers - especially Germans - often feel that Shakespeare is really one of them, that he was somehow accidentally born in the wrong country. In much the same way, leftists sense in their bones that he was a radical, rightists that he was a Tory.

Israelis are the total Jews.

becoming American is less a function of birth or blood and more a function of embracing a set of ideas."14

Krezy, he pronounced it, krezy. Pure Roscommon. Pure Ghana.

Whenever I'm in the company of strangers and speak in a way that reveals my Slav accent, the question follows: "Where are you from?" I always reply politely. It's very important to me that I say exactly where I'm from, and explain where that place is in case the person I'm talking to has never hears of my country ("in Europe, near Italy"). I suppose that's the need in me to feel accepted for what I am.

You drink root beer while you watch an NBA game? You are an American wannabe, aren't you?" "That is perhaps the most horrid thing you could say to an Englishman." "Worse than French wannabe?" "Well, there is that.

I stood in the line for US citizens, my blue passport in hand, once again aware of the strangeness of returning to my country as the citizen of another. The customs official, a man in his thirties

Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.

I don't think contemporary writers spend a lot of time reading each other. Particularly writers of the same nationality.

I do not know,' said the man, 'what the custom of the English may be; but it is the custom of the Irish to hate villains.

I am by birth a Genevese

It was clearly one of those mornings when I was particularly American.