During an interview with H. R.<!-- Hubert Renfro --> Knickerbocker (1939), quoted in A Life of Jung (2002) by Ronald Hayman, p. 360
Variant: No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps.
Context: No nation keeps its word. A nation is a big, blind worm, following what? Fate perhaps. A nation has no honour, it has no word to keep. … Hitler is himself the nation. That incidentally is why Hitler always has to talk so loud, even in private conversation — because he is speaking with 78 million voices.
“It is, in other words, time for a national oil change. That is apparent to anyone who has looked at our national dipstick.”
Quotes, NYU Law School speech (2006)
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Al Gore 127
45th Vice President of the United States 1948Related quotes
“Although our great man at the head of the nation, has changed his course, I will not change mine.”
On US President Andrew Jackson, as quoted in David Crockett: The Man and the Legend (1994) by James Atkins Shackford, p. 112
Context: Although our great man at the head of the nation, has changed his course, I will not change mine. … I was also a supporter of this administration after it came into power, and until the Chief Magistrate changed the principles which he professed before his election. When he quitted those principles, I quit him. I am yet a Jackson man in principles, but not in name... I shall insist upon it that I am still a Jackson man, but General Jackson is not; he has become a Van Buren man.
1990s, A Period of Consequences (September 1999)
Ruth Levinson, Chapter 14 Ira, p. 199
2009, The Longest Ride (2013)
As quoted in Sid Meier's Civilization V (2010).
1980s, First term of office (1981–1985), First Inaugural address (1981)
Context: We are a nation that has a government — not the other way around. And this makes us special among the nations of the Earth. Our Government has no power except that granted it by the people. It is time to check and reverse the growth of government which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.
It is my intention to curb the size and influence of the Federal establishment and to demand recognition of the distinction between the powers granted to the Federal Government and those reserved to the States or to the people. All of us need to be reminded that the Federal Government did not create the States; the States created the Federal Government.
Now, so there will be no misunderstanding, it is not my intention to do away with government. It is, rather, to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back. Government can and must provide opportunity, not smother it; foster productivity, not stifle it.
To Princess Frederica of Greece, as cited by Doug Lennox in Now You Know Royalty, Monarchies in Action, p. 57
From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, NATIONALISM
1900s, The Strenuous Life: Essays and Addresses (1900), National Duties
Context: The man who works, the man who does great deeds, in the end dies as surely as the veriest idler who cumbers the earth’s surface; but he leaves behind him the great fact that he has done his work well. So it is with nations. While the nation that has dared to be great, that has had the will and the power to change the destiny of the ages, in the end must die, yet no less surely the nation that has played the part of the weakling must also die; and whereas the nation that has done nothing leaves nothing behind it, the nation that has done a great work really continues, though in changed form, to live forevermore. The Roman has passed away exactly as all the nations of antiquity which did not expand when he expanded have passed away; but their very memory has vanished, while he himself is still a living force throughout the wide world in our entire civilization of today, and will so continue through countless generations, through untold ages.