Quotes about homeland
page 16

M. S. Swaminathan photo

“Developing countries can leapfrog several stages in the development process through the application of bio-technology in agriculture”

M. S. Swaminathan (1925) Indian scientist

From [Prasad, Jagdish, Prasad, Arbind, Development Planning for Agriculture: Policies, Economic Implications, Inputs, Production and Marketing, http://books.google.com/books?id=d_eGATn4SHIC&pg=PA93, 1994, Mittal Publications, 978-81-7099-569-2, 93–]

Donald J. Trump photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden photo
Robert Mugabe photo

“Stay with us, please remain in this country and constitute a nation based on national unity.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

BBC News 'On This Day' http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/january/27/newsid_2506000/2506219.stm
A plea to the white population of Zimbabwe in a speech at a ZANU-PF rally, 27 January 1980.
1980s

John Howard photo

“I don't think it is wrong, racist, immoral or anything, for a country to say 'we will decide what the cultural identity and the cultural destiny of this country will be and nobody else.”

John Howard (1939) 25th Prime Minister of Australia

Quoted in "Howard reasserts right to decide cultural identity," The Age, 20 September 1988.

Ezra Miller photo
Frederick Douglass photo

“Happily for the country, happily for you and for me, the judgment of James Buchanan, the patrician, was not the judgment of Abraham Lincoln, the plebeian. He brought his strong common sense, sharpened in the school of adversity, to bear upon the question. He did not hesitate, he did not doubt, he did not falter; but at once resolved that at whatever peril, at whatever cost, the union of the States should be preserved. A patriot himself, his faith was strong and unwavering in the patriotism of his countrymen. Timid men said before Mister Lincoln’s inauguration, that we have seen the last president of the United States. A voice in influential quarters said, 'Let the Union slide'. Some said that a Union maintained by the sword was worthless. Others said a rebellion of eight million cannot be suppressed; but in the midst of all this tumult and timidity, and against all this, Abraham Lincoln was clear in his duty, and had an oath in heaven. He calmly and bravely heard the voice of doubt and fear all around him; but he had an oath in heaven, and there was not power enough on earth to make this honest boatman, backwoodsman, and broad-handed splitter of rails evade or violate that sacred oath. He had not been schooled in the ethics of slavery; his plain life had favored his love of truth. He had not been taught that treason and perjury were the proof of honor and honesty. His moral training was against his saying one thing when he meant another. The trust that Abraham Lincoln had in himself and in the people was surprising and grand, but it was also enlightened and well founded.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

He knew the American people better than they knew themselves, and his truth was based upon this knowledge.
1870s, Oratory in Memory of Abraham Lincoln (1876)

Jakaya Kikwete photo
Gustav Stresemann photo

“We agree to recognise Lithuanian independence on condition that the desire of the Lithuanians for a military convention and a customs, monetary and postal union with Germany, communicated to us some time ago by a Lithuanian delegation, still remains. For to be candid, the idea of full independence for these peripheral countries seems to me to be purely theoretical and impracticable…The whole development of world politics shows that we have not only great and powerful individual countries like Germany on the one hand and Britain and France on the other, but associations of States fighting against each other…I do not believe in Wilson's universal League of Nations, I think that after the peace it will burst like a soap bubble. Great and powerful complexes of nations with hundreds of millions of inhabitants, armies of millions of men and exports amounting to thousands of millions, will be confronting each other. In the circumstances such small fractional nationalities will not be able to exist in complete independence, without seeking to lean on one side or the other. Just as there is no independent Belgium in the sense that it gravitates towards one side or the other, so it is not possible to conceive of a completely independent Lithuania, Balticum or Poland without that provisio.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

A. James Gregor photo
Enoch Powell photo
Thomas Robert Malthus photo

“The transfer of three shillings and sixpence a day to every labourer would not increase the quantity of meat in the country. There is not at present enough for all to have a decent share. What would then be the consequence?”

Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) British political economist

Source: An Essay on The Principle of Population (First Edition 1798, unrevised), Chapter V, paragraph 3, lines 5-8

Dennis Miller photo
John Dryden photo

“Thespis, the first professor of our art,
At country wakes sung ballads from a cart.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Prologue to Lee's Sophonisba.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Stephen Harper photo
Edward Heath photo

“If there are any who believe that immigrants to this country, most of whom have already become British citizens, could be forcibly deported because they are coloured people…then that I must repudiate, absolutely and completely.”

Edward Heath (1916–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1970–1974)

Speech to Conservative Party Conference (12 October 1968), quoted in John Campbell, Edward Heath (London: Jonathan Cape, 1993), p. 245.
Leader of the Opposition

James Cromwell photo
Sacha Baron Cohen photo

“War! Huh? What is it good for? Well, for start? It sorts out who is the strongest out of the two countries. Also, you get to see some amazing explosions. But, there is some people out there who not only don't enjoy the war, but they try to spoil the fun for everyone else. And those chickens is called the 'U. N.”

Sacha Baron Cohen (1971) English stand-up comedian, writer, actor, and voice actor

Me went to New York to meet these player-haters.
As quoted in "War" http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=aV3ncKB8a4s (28 February 2003), Da Ali G Show http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0508528/?ref_=ttep_ep2.

Albert Lutuli photo
Samuel P. Huntington photo
Michelle Obama photo
Antonin Scalia photo
Harriet Beecher Stowe photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Eugène Delacroix photo

“I have started work on a modern subject, a scene on the barricades… I may not have fought for my country but at least I shall have painted for her.. [quote is referring to his famous painting 'Liberty Leading the People', 1830]”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Quote in an unpublished letter to Delacroix' brother, 18 October 1830, but mentioned by M. Sérullaz; as quoted in Eugene Delacroix – selected letters 1813 – 1863, ed. and translation Jean Stewart, art Works MFA publications, Museum of Fine Art Boston, 2001, p. 13
1815 - 1830

Stanley Baldwin photo
George W. Bush photo
Arthur Ponsonby photo
Francis Escudero photo

“All such shenanigans bring up the cost of doing business in this country.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Speech: The Socio-Economic Peace Program of Senator Francis Escudero

John McCain photo
Francis Escudero photo

“Let the sacrifices of our heroes serve as an example and inspire us to come together, and teach us that our personal interests and well-being should always give way to the collective good of the Filipino people and the betterment of the country we all love.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

The Official Website of the Senate of the Philippines http://www.senate.gov.ph/press_release/2009/0405_escudero3.asp
2009, Statement: A Call for Heroism

“The hills and rivers of the lowland country
You have made your battle ground.
How do you suppose the people who live there
Will procure firewood and hay?
Do not let me hear you talking together
About titles and promotions;
For a single general’s reputation
Is made out of ten thousand corpses.”

Ts'ao Sung (830–901)

As translated by Arthur Waley in A Hundred and Seventy Chinese Poems http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42290/42290-h/42290-h.htm (London: Constable & Co., Ltd., 1918)
Variant translations:
Rich hills and fields that war despoiled.
Their people how could they live?
Sing me no more of epics—some Man gained
Eternal fame on skeletons.
Shi ci yi xuan: Poems from China (1950), p. 35
A Protest in the Sixth Year of Qianfu (A.D. 879)

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor photo
Anke Engelke photo

“Tonight, nobody could vote for their own country, but it is good to be able to vote and it is good to have a choice. Good luck on your journey, Azerbaijan. Europe is watching you!”

Anke Engelke (1965) German actress

"Heute Abend konnte niemand für sein eigenes Land abstimmen. Aber es ist gut wählen zu können, und es ist gut eine Wahl zu haben. Viel Glück auf Deiner Reise, Aserbaidschan. Europa beobachtet Dich!"
Anke Engelke's jab at Azerbaijan's dictatorship, while actually announcing the German vote in the 2012 Eurovision Song Contest. Transmitted live on TV to 120 million viewers, including the Azerbaijan state TV. (May 26th, 2012).

David Petraeus photo

“Syria has allowed its soil to be transited by foreign fighters who have come from a variety of source countries in the Gulf area and in the — in North African countries.
There are some signs that that may have been reduced somewhat in the last couple of months. We need to watch that a bit and see if that is the case.”

David Petraeus (1952) retired American military officer and public official

As quoted in "Ranking House Committee Members Grill Crocker and Petraeus on U.S. Progress in Iraq" in The Washington Post (10 September 2007) http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/documents/ranking_committee_members_grill_petraeus_crocker_10.html

Samuel Butler photo

“Morality is the custom of one’s country and the current feeling of one’s peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Cannibalism
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912), Part II - Elementary Morality

Allen West (politician) photo
Henry James photo
Noam Chomsky photo

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

John Muir photo

“In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

"From Fort Independence to Yosemite", San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin (part 6 of the 11 part series "Summering in the Sierra") dated September 1875, published 15 September 1875; reprinted in John Muir: Summering in the Sierra, edited by Robert Engberg (University of Wisconsin Press, 1984) page 113
1870s

Vinod Rai photo
Bernard Lewis photo
Tom Clancy photo
Theresa May photo

“We need a bold, new, positive vision for the future of our country – a vision of a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us.”

Theresa May (1956) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech declaring bid for the Conservative Party leadership http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-mays-tory-leadership-launch-statement-full-text-a7111026.html (30 June 2016)
Variant: We have a mission to make Britain a country that works not for the privileged and not for the few but for every one of our citizens.

Kurt Schwitters photo
Marcus Terentius Varro photo

“It was divine nature which gave us the country, and man's skill that built the cities.”
Divina Natura dedit agros, ars humana ædificavit urbes.

Marcus Terentius Varro (-116–-27 BC) ancient latin scholar

Marcus Porcius Cato on Agriculture : Marcus Terentius Varro on Agriculture. W.D. Hooper & H.B. Ash. (translation). Harvard University Press, 1993. Bk. 3, ch. 1
De Re Rustica

Stephen Harper photo

“Canada is a vast and empty country.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

2006 Leaders' Debate, December 15, 2005.
2005

Eric Hoffer photo
Peter Kenneth photo

“I will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime. I will drastically reduce crime throughout the country within the first three years of my administration.”

Peter Kenneth (1965) politician

Peter Kenneth, peterkenneth.com, 17 July 2012 http://www.peterkenneth.com,

Ricardo Sanchez photo
Abby Martin photo
Joe Strummer photo
David Lloyd George photo
James Meade photo

“[The same transactions are not always] entered in the same category for receiving and paying country.”

James Meade (1907–1995) British economist

Source: The balance of payments, 1951, p. 18, as cited in: Claude Gnos, ‎Sergio Rossi (2012), Modern Monetary Macroeconomics, p. 268

Frederick Douglass photo

“The ground which a colored man occupies in this country is, every inch of it, sternly disputed.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society annual meeting, New York City (May 1853)
1850s

Edward Heath photo
Alfred de Zayas photo
Jane Austen photo
George W. Bush photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Patrick Buchanan photo

“Democracy is not enough. If the culture dies, the country dies.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

Source: 2000s, State of Emergency (2006)

Sam Manekshaw photo

“The status of the field marshal of the country or the equivalent has to be unique for the nation.”

Sam Manekshaw (1914–2008) First Field marshal of the Indian Army

His remark to A.P.J.Abdul Kalam during a meeting in 2007.[A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Turning Points, http://books.google.com/books?id=HykusumG6YkC&pg=PT26, HarperCollins Publishers, 978-93-5029-543-4, 26–]

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“All my work is in a way founded on Japanese art... Japanese art, in decadence in its own country, takes root again among the French impressionist artists.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, Summer 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 510) p. 32
1880s, 1888

Eugene McCarthy photo

“We do not need presidents who are bigger than the country, but rather ones who speak for it and support it.”

Eugene McCarthy (1916–2005) American politician

The New York Times (11 December 2005)

Richard Cobden photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“We need -- we need somebody -- we need somebody that literally will take this country and make it great again. We can do that.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

Immortal Technique photo
Ilana Mercer photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Brad Paisley photo

“You can blend in in the country;
You can stand out in the fashion world
Being invisible to a white tail and irresistible to a redneck girl.
Camouflage, Camouflage
Oh you're my favorite color Camouflage.”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Camouflage, written by Chris DuBois, Kelley Lovelace, and Brad Paisley.
Song lyrics, This Is Country Music (2011)

Newt Gingrich photo
François Gautier photo

“Being married to a "daughter of India" is a natural complement of my being in this country for 30 years. My roots are very much in this country, even though I remain a Westerner.”

François Gautier (1959) French journalist

On his wife, as quoted in "There is an unconscious militant dislike of the Christian world towards Hindu India" http://www.rediff.com/news/1999/feb/12rajeev.htm, Rediff (12 February 1999)

Hugo Black photo

“The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in holding "unlawful [religious] meetings... to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom...."”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country soon after the establishment of official religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.
Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

Ron Paul photo

“Ron Paul: What's happening is, there's transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy. This comes about because of the monetary system that we have. When you inflate a currency or destroy a currency, the middle class gets wiped out. So the people who get to use the money first which is created by the Federal Reserve system benefit. So the money gravitates to the banks and to Wall Street. That's why you have more billionaires than ever before. Today, this country is in the middle of a recession for a lot of people… As long as we live beyond our means we are destined to live beneath our means. And we have lived beyond our means because we are financing a foreign policy that is so extravagant and beyond what we can control, as well as the spending here at home. And we're depending on the creation of money out of thin air, which is nothing more than debasement of the currency. It's counterfeit… So, if you want a healthy economy, you have to study monetary theory and figure out why it is that we're suffering. And everybody doesn't suffer equally, or this wouldn't be so bad. It's always the poor people -- those who are on retired incomes -- that suffer the most. But the politicians and those who get to use the money first, like the military industrial complex, they make a lot of money and they benefit from it.
John McCain: Everybody is paying taxes and wealth creates wealth. And the fact is that I would commend to your reading, Ron, "Wealth of Nations," because that's what this is all about. A vibrant economy creates wealth. People pay taxes. Revenues are at an all time high.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

GOP debate, Dearborn, Michigan, October 9, 2007 http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071009/NEWS02/71009073
2000s, 2006-2009

Pauline Kael photo
Enoch Powell photo

“Too often today people are ready to tell us: "This is not possible, that is not possible." I say: whatever the true interest of our country calls for is always possible.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Conservative Party conference, 1968 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0t3BTAF0ns
1960s

Anthony Burgess photo
Mengistu Neway photo
Warren Buffett photo

“Upon leaving [the derivatives business], our feelings about the business mirrored a line in a country song: "I liked you better before I got to know you so well."”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

2008 Chairman's Letter
Letters to Shareholders (1957 - 2012)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Pat Condell photo
Saddam Hussein photo
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad photo
Dinesh D'Souza photo
Dmitry Medvedev photo
James Joyce photo
Silvio Berlusconi photo