Quotes About Nation

The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.

We are a nation not only of dreamers, but also of fixers. We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and time again, "This is not good enough; we can be better.

God forbid, but if this nation ultimately fails, I believe it will be because opinions, propaganda, and superstitions replaced facts as the basis for our governance. By doing so, we will have undercut a key strength of the United States over the course of its history, one that receives too little attention: science.

I worry that our nation today suffers from a deficit of empathy, and this is especially true of many in positions of national leadership

God forbid, but if this nation ultimately fails, I believe it will be because opinions, propaganda, and superstitions replaced facts as the basis for our governance.

The pendulum of our great nation seems to have swung toward conceit and unsteadiness once again, but it is in our power to wrest it back. Our government is there to serve us, not the other way around.

And I saw how thoroughly these families embraced their American identity—they were patriots, just like the people with whom I had grown up. But they also understood that they were from another continent. This is one of the greatest lessons of our nation's improbable makeup: A united citizenry can be quilted together from so many different cultural fabrics.

The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H.

What is a nation? A body of associates living under one common law and represented by the same legislature.

What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that though our great nation and the United States were in complete ruins, the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact?

Thus, virtually any threat of first use of a nuclear weapon is a terrorist threat. Any nation making such threats is a terrorist nation. That means the United States and all its allies, including Israel, along with Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea.

Just like the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, any future attack by a single tactical nuclear weapon near a densely populated area would kill tens to hundreds of thousands of noncombatants, as those did. Thus, virtually any threat of first use of a nuclear weapon is a terrorist threat. Any nation making such threats is a terrorist nation. That means the United States and all its allies, including Israel, along with Russia, Pakistan, and North Korea.

I hope this scene isn't playing out all over the nation. People like me struggling to grab what they can. Whole families, even. Grasping at the leftover shards of their lives.

Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.

Honours can generate a lot of income for the nation because they are viewed as so prestigious internationally.

May the United Nations ever be vigilant and potent to defeat the swallowing up of any nation, at any time, by any means-by armies with banners, by force or by fraud, by tricks or by midnight treachery.

In so many areas, it is critical to our Nation's future that we restore and preserve in their full vigor our Founding principles. Not the least of these is the Framers' vision of a strong, independent Executive, chosen by the country as a whole.

Culture survives in smaller spaces - not in the history books that erect monuments to the nation's grand history but in cafes and cinema houses, village squares, and half-forgotten libraries.

All of Africa's resources should be declared resources of the state and managed by the nation. Our experience in Bolivia shows that when you take control of natural resources for the people of the town and village, major world change is possible.

We have to convince our youth that the nation does not need the white-collared class only. We have to find work for the rural young people in the village itself and stop the exodus to the cities.

I refer, of course, to the debts our nation has amassed for itself over decades of indulgence. It is the new Red Menace, this time consisting of ink. We can debate its origins endlessly and search for villains on ideological grounds, but the reality is pure arithmetic.

We should tell the honest, painful stories of 9/11 because it dishonors the memory of heroes to invent a phony cast of villains when the actual terrorists were terrible enough to tear open this nation's heart.

It's one of the nice things about this nation that when the Constitution is violated, if it affects you, you can bring a suit.

I'm very optimistic because I think that the real strength of a nation like the United States comes from blending cultures. There's no way that you can close the frontiers anywhere. The borders are there to be violated permanently.