Country Quotes - Page 176

To be recognised by a whole country is incredible. This is massive.

It seems hopeless, hopeless. Those who eat meat [at public expense] are a mean, selfish lot, and so the country is doomed. Our only hope lies in the grass-roots folk who eat our traditional food.

I'm the finance minister of a bankrupt country!

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.

That long (Canadian) frontier from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, guarded only by neighbourly respect and honourable obligations, as an example to every country and a pattern for the future of the world.

Question everyone in authority, and see that you get sensible answers to your questions ... questioning does not mean the end of loving, and loving does not mean the abnegation of intelligence. Vow as much love to your country as you like ... but, I implore you, do not forget to question.

We are serving no one man, we are serving our country.

A mistress should be like a little country retreat near the town, not to dwell in constantly, but only for a night and away.

This is emphatically an age of discoveries; but I will venture the assertion, that none but an American slaveholder could have discovered that a man born in a country was not a citizen of it.

We should stay on the right track to the 21st century. Opportunity alone is not enough. I want to build an America in the 21st century in which all Americans take personal responsibility for themselves, their families, their communities and their country.

I think I might as well give up being a candidate. There are so many people in the country who don't like me.

The Irish are hearty, the Scotch plausible, the French polite, the Germans good-natured, the Italians courtly, the Spaniards reserved and decorous - the English alone seem to exist in taking and giving offense.

If you live in a country run by committee, be on the committee.

Why should any country continue, forever, to be "great"?

The hopelessness of the Turkish Government should make me witness with delight its being swept out of the countries which it tortures. Next to the Ottoman Government nothing can be more deplorable and blameworthy than jealousies between Greek and Slav and plans by the States already existing for appropriating other territory. Why not Macedonia for the Macedonians as well as Bulgaria for the Bulgarians and Serbia for the Serbians?

The disease of an evil conscience is beyond the practice of all the physicians of all the countries in the would.

I shall accord to myself the honor of inscribing myself as an applicant for the American citizenship which according to law I can obtain only after five years residence in this country. And I shall yield to no one of my future countrymen in patriotism. I consider America now my real home.

If in a country, most of the wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few, then this country can hardly witness harmony and stability.

The sooner the Iraqi people are able to take their country's destiny in their own hands and establish their own control over it and its national resources, the sooner the process of pushing the forces of international terrorism out of Iraq will be able to begin. And the sooner the process of consolidating Iraqi society itself will also be able to begin.

Each country has its own particular features, its own traditions that find their reflection today and will find it in future. There are such traditions in Russia but it is not a question of a strong figure, although a strong figure is needed in power, it is a question of what is implied by this term. It is one thing if it is a person with dictatorial tendencies. But if it is a fair leader, who acts within the law and in the interests of a vast majority of society, who acts coherently and is guided by principles, it is a completely different matter.

Democracy is an internal subject of the developing society. There are fundamentals of democracy, and they should be understood universally in different countries.

A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood... A day will come when we shall see... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.

I have called this phenomenon of stealing common knowledge and indigenous science "biopiracy" and "intellectual piracy." According to patent systems we shouldn't be able to patent what exists as "prior art." But the United States patent system is somewhat perverted. First of all, it does not treat the prior art of other societies as "prior art." Therefore anyone from the United States can travel to another country, find out about the use of a medicinal plant, or find a seed that farmers use, come back here, claim it as an invention or an innovation.

You know it's not "you have to see it to believe it" - sometimes you have to believe it to see it. You have to know what you're looking for when you're seeing signs of an authoritarian takeover of your country.

I chose to take the oath of office with my personal copy of the Bhagavad Gita because its teachings have inspired me to be a servant-leader, dedicating my life in the service of others and to my country.