Quotes about homeland
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“There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.”

George Eliot book Daniel Deronda

Book 3, Ch. 24
Source: Daniel Deronda (1876)

“Ninety-eight percent of the adults in this country are decent, hard-working, honest Americans. It's the other lousy two percent that get all the publicity. But then--we elected them.”

Lily Tomlin (1939) American actress, comedian, writer, and producer

“The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that.

It has to do with cutting the right deal.”

Nelson DeMille (1943) American writer

Life, Evil

“People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do.
We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more
like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a
country without an army.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Source: Banging Your Head Against a Brick Wall

People, Painting

“I hope we shall… crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

to George Logan, 1816 http://memory.loc.gov/master/mss/mtj/mtj1/049/0600/0642.jpgLetter <br class="br">Posthumous publications, On financial matters <br class="br">Source: The Papers of Thomas Jefferson: Retirement Series, Volume 10: 1 May 1816 to 18 January 1817

Law, Hope, Birth

“I don't believe there's any problem in this country, no matter how tough it is, that Americans, when they roll up their sleeves, can't completely ignore.”

George Carlin book Brain Droppings

Source: Brain Droppings

Problem

“I thought that a man can be an enemy of other men, of the moments of other men, but not of a country: not of fireflies, words, gardens, streams of water, sunsets.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

The Garden of Forking Paths (1942), The Garden of Forking Paths

Men, Water

“The great corporation which employed you lied to you, and lied to the whole country—from top to bottom it was nothing but one gigantic lie.”

Upton Sinclair book The Jungle

Source: The Jungle

Lie

“I'm very depressed how in this country you can be told "That's offensive" as though those two words constitute an argument.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon's promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies.”

Megan Whalen Turner The Queen of Attolia

Source: The Queen of Attolia

Love, God

“A country that demands moral perfection in its foreign policy will achieve neither perfection nor security.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Source: "Reflections on Containment", Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 3 (June 1994), p. 130

Perfection

“It is a bad sign when the people of a country stop identifying themselves with the country and start identifying with a group. A racial group. Or a religion. Or a language. Anything, as long as it isn't the whole population.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Friday

Source: Friday

People, Religion

“Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”

Anthony Doerr (1973) American writer

Home

“Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Address to ANPA
Context: Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy. And that is why our press was protected by the First Amendment — the only business in America specifically protected by the Constitution- -not primarily to amuse and entertain, not to emphasize the trivial and the sentimental, not to simply "give the public what it wants" — but to inform, to arouse, to reflect, to state our dangers and our opportunities, to indicate our crises and our choices, to lead, mold, educate and sometimes even anger public opinion.
This means greater coverage and analysis of international news — for it is no longer far away and foreign but close at hand and local. It means greater attention to improved understanding of the news as well as improved transmission. And it means, finally, that government at all levels, must meet its obligation to provide you with the fullest possible information outside the narrowest limits of national security — and we intend to do it.

“In all times, and all countries especially in those countries which are divided within by religious faith, there are always fanatics who will be well contented to be regarded as martyrs.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

Faith, Time

“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.”

Homér Iliad

Source: The Iliad

Drawing

“Some say it's too country, some say it's too rock n' roll. But it's just good music if you can feel it in your soul.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Music, Feeling, Soul

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Life, Dreams

“I believe that children in this country need a more robust literary diet than they are getting…. I will never talk down to, or draw down to, children.”

Barbara Cooney (1917–2000) American writer and illustrator of children's books

Children, Drawing

“When I am abroad I always make it a rule never to criticize or attack the Government of my country. I make up for lost time when I am at home.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

In the House of Commons (18 April 1947), cited in The Oxford Dictionary of Political Quotations (1996), Jay, Oxford University Press, p. 93.
Post-war years (1945–1955)

Home, Time

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.”

L. Frank Baum book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

People, Beauty, Home

“It may sound corny, but what's wrong with wanting to fight for your country. Why are people reluctant to use the word patriotism?”

Jimmy Stewart (1908–1997) American film and stage actor

People, Fight

“If we would spend on education half the amount of money that we currently lavish on sports and entertainment, we could provide complete and free education for every student in this country.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Money, Education, Sport

“All I really want is enough to live on, a little house in the country… and a tree in the garden with seven of my enemies hanging in it.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Tree, Housing

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it…”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The World (15 November 1893)
1890s

World, Funny

“War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

War, People, Feeling, Imagination

“It is important for this country to make its people so obsessed with their own liberal individualism that they do not have time to think about a world larger than self.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Source: Black Genius: African-American Solutions to African-American Problems

People, World, Thinking, Time

“Guns are our friends because in a country without guns, I'm what's known as "prey." All females are.”

Ann Coulter book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

Source: If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans

“I love Canada… It is a great country much too cold for good sense, inhabited by compassionate, intelligent people with bad hairdos.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Love, People, Intelligence, Sense

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

Lynsay Sands Canadian writer

Source: A Quick Bite

Birthday, Birthday

“It’s bad enough… when a country gets colonized, but when the people do as well! That’s the end, really, that’s the end.”

Tsitsi Dangarembga Nervous Conditions

Source: Nervous Conditions

People

“Your fey cousin here has the miraculous ability to hold his liquor--and mine, and yours, and the king's, and half the country's, I expect.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

Source: Enchanted

“I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Autobiographical Notes (1952)
Context: I don't like people who like me because I'm a Negro; neither do I like people who find in the same accident grounds for contempt. I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. I think all theories are suspect, that the finest principles may have to be modified, or may even be pulverized by the demands of life, and that one must find, therefore, one's own moral center and move through the world hoping that this center will guide one aright. I consider that I have many responsibilities, but none greater than this: to last, as Hemingway says, and get my work done.
I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Love, Life, People, World

“A country cannot subsist well without liberty, nor liberty without virtue.”

Daniel Webster (1782–1852) Leading American senator and statesman. January 18, 1782 – October 24, 1852. Served as the Secretary of Sta…

“He’s body slammed enough people to start a new country. And there could be a neighbouring city for the people he’s punched in the throat”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Alice in Zombieland

People

“The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border? There is a brotherhood among all men. This must be recognized if life is to remain. We must learn the love of man.”

Pablo Casals (1876–1973) Catalan cellist and conductor

As quoted in Joys and Sorrows : Reflections‎ by Pablo Casals as told to Albert E. Kahn (1974) by Albert E. Kahn

Love, Life, Men, Learning

“I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1963, Speech at Amherst College

Wisdom, Beauty, Nature, Past

“God is at home. We are in the far country.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

God, Home

“In the end we had the pieces of the puzzle, but no matter how we put them together, gaps remained, oddly shaped emptinesses mapped by what surrounded them, like countries we couldn't name.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and glorious it is to die for our country. ~ Horace in Odes, Book 3, Ode 2, Line 13, as translated in The Works of Horace by J. C. Elgood
Notes on the Next War (1935)

War, Dogs

“A country that does not know how to read and write is easy to deceive.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Reading

“Splendid to arrive alone in a foreign country and feel the assault of difference. Here they are all along, busy with living; they don't talk or look like me. The rhythm of their day is entirely different; I am foreign.”

Frances Mayes book Under the Tuscan Sun

Source: Under the Tuscan Sun

Feeling, Business

“That’s what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It’s a petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion’s not about being holy… Just holier-than-thous.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

War, Religion

“I'll pray that you grow up a brave man in a brave country. I will pray you find a way to be useful.

I'll pray, and then I'll sleep.”

Marilynne Robinson Gilead

Source: Gilead

Way, Sleep

“If they [presidents] can't do it to their wives, they do it to their country.”

Mel Brooks (1926) American director, writer, actor, and producer

The 2,000 Year Old Man (and sequels)

“Way out in the country tonight he could smell the pumpkins ripening toward the knife and the triangle eye and the singeing candle.”

Ray Bradbury book Dandelion Wine

Source: Dandelion Wine

Way, Singing

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D. C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb book The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

Source: The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

“Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.”

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995) French philosopher

“Every thinking person fears nuclear war and every technological nation plans for it. Everyone knows it's madness, and every country has an excuse.”

Carl Sagan book Cosmos

17 min 40 sec
Source: Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), Who Speaks for Earth? [Episode 13]

War, Fear, Thinking, Personality

“She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. "You're lost!" "You're angry!" "You're in the wrong school!" "You're in the wrong country!" "You're on the wrong planet!”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

School

“Trying to predict the future is like trying to drive down a country road at night with no lights while looking out the back window.”

Peter F. Drucker (1909–2005) American business consultant

Light, Future, Night

“In many respects, the United States is a great country. Freedom of speech is protected more than in any other country. It is also a very free society. In America, the professor talks to the mechanic. They are in the same category.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Freedom

“You can cover a great deal of country in books.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Books

“It's a shame that we have to choose between two such second-rate countries as the USSR and the USA.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Lucky One

Source: The Lucky One

Love, Decision, Time, Heart

“The way I see it, anyone who's proud of their country is either a thug or just hasn't read enough history yet.”

Richard K. Morgan (1965) British writer

Source: Thirteen

Way, History, Reading

“A guitar twanged from the far-off radio. Country music. Damn. They'd resorted to torture already.”

Kelley Armstrong book Stolen

Source: Stolen

Music

“The car suddenly veered off the road and we came to a sliding halt in the gravel. I was hurled against the dashboard. My attorney was slumped over the wheel. “What’s wrong?” I yelled. “We can’t stop here. This is bat country!”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Cars

“There are no borders in this struggle to the death. We cannot be indifferent to what happens anywhere in the world, because a victory by any country over imperialism is our victory, just as any country's defeat is a defeat for all of us.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Afro-Asian Conference (1965)

Death, World, Victory, Indifference

“The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home -- and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries.”

Rolf Potts (1970) American writer

Source: Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Travel, Home

“It is said that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there.”

John Bunyan (1628–1688) English Christian writer and preacher

Tree, Winter

“Men like women who write, even though they don't say so. A writer is a foreign country.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Women, Men

“How dismal it is to see present day Americans yearning for the very orthodoxy that their country was founded to escape.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 40.
Source: A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Heart, Happiness

“Americans continue to rapidly homogenize ourselves into a neutered oblivion. For a country founded on the protection of the unique, we relish our sameness.”

Lewis Black book Nothing's Sacred

Source: Nothing's Sacred

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Imagination

“Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.”

Frank O'Hara book Meditations in an Emergency (book)

Source: Mayakovsky, st. 4, from Meditations in an Emergency (1957).

Beauty, Thinking, Laughter, Tree

“How different each death is, and yet it leads us into the self-same country, that country which we inhabit so rarely, where we see the worthlessness of what we have long pursued and will so soon return to pursuing.”

Iris Murdoch book The Sea, the Sea

Source: The Sea, the Sea

Death

“every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)”

Alexander McCall Smith The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Source: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

Heart, Forgetting

“Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

Understanding

“Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister's eyes,
Into your brother's face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Hope, Sister

“I don't like country music, but I don't mean to denigrate those who do. And for the people who like country music, denigrate means 'put down'.”

Bob Newhart (1929) American stand-up comedian and actor

People, Music

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Vote, v. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.”

Ambrose Bierce book The Devil's Dictionary

The Devil's Dictionary (1911)

Fools

“I think in our desire to create a better America, we have to have civilized debate in this country and not just yelling.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Thinking

“Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread, and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.”

Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) American politician

Universe

“If only I could visit you as a foreigner goes into a new country, learn the language of you, wander past all borders into every private and secret place, I would stay forever. I would become a citizen of you.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: A Wallflower Christmas

Secret, Learning, Past

“When politicians start talking about large groups of their fellow Americans as 'enemies,' it's time for a quiet stir of alertness. Polarizing people is a good way to win an election, and also a good way to wreck a country.”

Molly Ivins (1944–2007) American journalist

People, Way, Time

“There are songs that come free from the blue-eyed grass, from the dust of a thousand country roads. This is one of them.”

Robert James Waller The Bridges of Madison County

Source: The Bridges of Madison County

Grass

“a writer is a foreign country”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

“Health makes good propaganda. “'Proof' that women's activities outside the home are detrimental to the health and welfare of themselves, their families and the country as a whole” lent impetus, writes Ann Oakley, to the nineteenth-century cult of domesticity. The ovaries were seen as collective property rather than the woman's own business, as the face and body outline are seen today. Who can argue with health?”

Naomi Wolf book The Beauty Myth

Source: The Beauty Myth (1991), Chapter 7 : 'Violence', p. 227

Women, Health, Family, Home

“Why was it, Lloyd wondered, that the people who wanted to destroy everything good about their country were the quickest to wave the national flag?”

Ken Follett book Winter of the World

Source: Winter of the World

People

“This will never be a civilized country until we expend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Money, Books

“The colonized is elevated above his jungle status in proportion to his adoption of the mother country's cultural standards.”

Frantz Fanon book Black Skin, White Masks

Source: Black Skin, White Masks

“When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

“This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words."Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria.”

Alistair MacLean book Where Eagles Dare

Source: Where Eagles Dare

Life

“These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) <br class="br">Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Life, Women, Men, People

“Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Chance