Quotes about homeland (8819 quotes, page 39)

“I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is that Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defense made of his.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

" Galloway v the US Senate: transcript of statement http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1616578,00.html", The Times, May 18, 2005
Testimony before the US Senate on May 17, 2005.

War , Suffering , Time

“Monday was a dark day in American history. Tuning in to see the results of a much-maligned summit between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, Americans were treated to one of the most disgusting sights imaginable: the chief executive of the United States of America licking the boots of a murderous dictator. … He stood on the world stage and sided with a man who has murdered dissidents and interfered with global democracy multiple times, and cast his lot with him over the country he’s supposed to serve. Donald Trump aided and abetted a foreign adversary.”

Jared Yates Sexton (1981)

About the 2018 Russia–United States summit, That was treason, Donald Trump. We all saw it https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-that-was-treason-donald-trump-we-all-saw-it/ (July 16, 2018), The Globe and Mail.

World , Democracy , Imagination , Time

“The argument that the countries use for the sheer increase in Muslim doctors is the sheer increase in the Muslim population. In for example Birmingham, England where a lot of these guys came from, where one of these plots was hatched, it's up to 30% of the population. Maybe that's the problem?”

Neil Cavuto (1958) American television presenter

"Universal Healthcare: Terrorist Recruitment Tool" http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/07/06/universal-healthcare-terrorist-recruitment-tool/, crooksandliars.com, (July 6, 2007).

Guy , Problem

“They want to do all of their investigations. I don’t know. All of the thinking that goes into it. But we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term. I hope they’re not looking at this politically. I do think we ought it to the American people to call it what it is.”

Dana Perino (1972) Former White House Press Secretary

Fox News’ Hannity, November 24, 2009 http://thinkprogress.org/2009/11/25/perino-terror-attack-bush/

People , Hope , Thinking

“That was a decisive moment in Lincoln’s career, and that’s the situation he faced when he got up to give his “House Divided” speech on June 16th of 1858. It was a crisis of his own career. It was also, in my opinion, the gravest crisis this country has ever faced, because the greatest danger to the future of the country came not, I think, from the pro-slavery argument, but from the morally neutral argument of Douglas. And that’s a long story and you’ll find it all spelled out in great detail in my book, which I hope you will read with great care.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Books , Hope , Thinking , Decision

“Cholera and the Thug were born in the same country and in the same year. India is their native land.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

“It would be tedious to dwell upon every striking mark of national decline: some, however, will press themselves forward to particular notice; and amongst them are: that Italian-like effeminacy, which has, at last, descended to the yeomanry of the country, who are now found turning up their silly eyes in ecstacy at a music-meeting, while they should be cheering the hounds, or measuring their strength at the ring; the discouragement of all the athletic sports and modes of strife amongst the common people, and the consequent and fearful increase of those cuttings and stabbings, those assassin-like ways of taking vengeance, formerly heard of in England only as the vices of the most base and cowardly foreigners, but now become so frequent amongst ourselves as to render necessary a law to punish such practices with death; the prevalence and encouragement of a hypocritical religion, a canting morality, and an affected humanity; the daily increasing poverty of the national church, and the daily increasing disposition still to fleece the more than half-shorne clergy, who are compelled to be, in various ways, the mere dependants of the upstarts of trade; the almost entire extinction of the ancient country gentry, whose estates are swallowed up by loan-jobbers, contractors, and nabobs, who, for the far greater part not Englishmen themselves, exercise in England that sort of insolent sway, which, by the means of taxes raised from English labour, they have been enabled to exercise over the slaves of India or elsewhere; the bestowing of honours upon the mere possessors of wealth, without any regard to birth, character, or talents, or to the manner in which that wealth has been acquired; the familiar intercourse of but too many of the ancient nobility with persons of low birth and servile occupations, with exchange and insurance-brokers, loan and lottery contractors, agents and usurers, in short, with all the Jew-like race of money-changers.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (27 October 1804).

Death , Money , People , Fear

“When [Nigel Farage] was treated in the way he was in Edinburgh Alex Salmond had the opportunity to be statesman like. To deplore what had happened. To say everyone was welcome in Scotland, everyone with an elected position, everyone who had following in Scotland had a right to speak and be heard. But he didn't. It's not just people with a percentage of the vote who have the right to speak. All of us have the right to speak. What happened to Farage looked ugly in the rest of the country and the rest of the world. And the SNP I fear will take you down a road where grudge is everything.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

The Express http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/407371/Question-Time-Nigel-Farage-blasts-Alex-Salmond-for-not-condeming-hostile-Edinburgh-scenes During an interview on Question time with Nigel Farage condemning the hostility shown by the Scottish people June 14, 2013

People , World , Fear , Way

“My name eet is Roberto Enricque Clemente Walker. I no use Enricque—spell him E–n–r–i–c–q–u–e —and I no use Walker. Him make too long for name. Just Roberto Clemente, thas all. This Enricque is middle name. Walker eet is my mother's name. In Puerto Rico, people she use father's and mother's name. I use Roberto Clemente in thees country.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Sidelight on Sports: A Baseball Star is Born" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=d5dRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=52sDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1293%2C4057980 by Al Abrams, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (June 7, 1955), p. 20
Comment: 1994 interview with Vera Clemente https://www.google.com/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=%22Roberto+Enrique+Clemente%22+intitle:Remember+intitle:Roberto&num=10 confirms that Enrique was Clemente's middle name; the discrepancy in spelling is presumably due to a misunderstanding by the non-Spanish-speaking Abrams, mistaking the word "Si" for the letter c.
Other, <big><big>1950s</big></big>, <big>1955</big>

People

“I want to quote this— "On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and to my country and obey Scout law", on and on and on and on. I mean, God's in the first 10 words. So – why did you have to tell them you were an atheist if you didn't have any trouble reading the oath? Why didn't you just shut up?”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2002-10-30
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television
to atheist Eagle Scout Darrel Lambert

God , Law , Quotes , Reading

“The whole subject of the liquidity trap has a sort of Alice-through-the-looking glass quality. Virtues like saving, or a central bank known to be strongly committed to price stability, become vices; to get out of the trap a country must loosen its belt, persuade its citizens to forget about the future, and convince the private sector that the government and central bank aren’t as serious and austere as they seem.”

Paul Krugman (1953) American economist

"Thinking About the Liquidity Trap", Journal of the Japanese and International Economies (2000)

Future , Forgetting

“The reason that Syria is facing this crisis is not because of any bad thing which Syria has done or any weaknesses within its democracy, or within its economy, or within its human rights record - and there are weaknesses in all three of these. The reason why Syria is being threatened is not because of anything bad which she did, but because of the good which she is doing. That's the reason why Syria is being threatened - because she will not betray the Palestinian resistance, because she will not betray the Lebanese resistance, Hizbullah, because she will not sign a shameful surrender-peace with General Sharon, and above all - more than any of these others - because Syria will not allow her country to be used as a military base for America to crush the resistance in Iraq. These are the reasons why Syria is being targeted by these imperial powers.”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

MemriTV http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP102405
Speech at the University of Damascus, televised on Al-Jazeera TV on November 13, 2005

Peace , Democracy

“That is to say, within less than twenty years after the Constitution was formed, and in obedience to that general opinion of the time which condemned slavery as a sin in morals and a blunder in economy, eight of the States had abolished it by law — four of them having already done so when the instrument was framed; and Mr. Douglas might as justly quote the fact that there were slaves in New York up to 1827 as proof that the public opinion of the State sanctioned slavery, as to try to make an argument of the fact that there were slave laws upon the statute-books of the original States. He forgets that there was not in all the colonial legislation of America one single law which recognized the rightfulness of slavery in the abstract; that in 1774 Virginia stigmatized the slave-trade as 'wicked, cruel, and unnatural'; that in the same year Congress protested against it 'under the sacred ties of virtue, honor, and love of country'; that in 1775 the same Congress denied that God intended one man to own another as a slave; that the new Discipline of the Methodist Church, in 1784, and the Pastoral Letter of the Presbyterian Church, in 1788, denounced slavery; that abolition societies existed in slave States, and that it was hardly the interest even of the cotton-growing States, where it took a slave a day to clean a pound of cotton, to uphold the system. Mr. Douglas incessantly forgets to tell us that Jefferson, in his address to the Virginia Legislature of 1774, says that 'the abolition of domestic slavery is the greatest object of desire in these colonies, where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state'; and while he constantly remembers to remind us that the Jeffersonian prohibition of slavery in the territories was lost in 1784, he forgets to add that it was lost, not by a majority of votes — for there were sixteen in its favor to seven against it — but because the sixteen votes did not represent two thirds of the States; and he also incessantly forgets to tell us that this Jeffersonian prohibition was restored by the Congress of 1785, and erected into the famous Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was re-enacted by the first Congress of the United States and approved by the first President.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1850s, The Present Aspect of the Slavery Question (1859)

Love , God , Books , Law

“For God’s sake, reform and improve the politics of our country.”

Zakir Hussain (politician) (1897–1969) 3rd President of India

At the basic Education Conference in 1940, p. 203.
Quest for Truth (1999)

God

“Ours is a new land. It has had an almost unbelievable task to perform, and has performed it well. We have been called to fit the institutions of ancient civilization to the conditions of a new country. In that task the leaders of the Nation have been supported by a deep devotion to the essentials of freedom. At the bottom of the national character has been a strain of religious earnestness and moral determination which has never failed to give color and quality to our institutions. Because our history shows us these things, we dare make honest appraisal of our shortcomings. We have not failed. We have succeeded. Because we have been privileged to rely upon generations of men and women ready to serve and to sacrifice, we have magnificently succeeded.”

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

1920s, The Reign of Law (1925)

Women , Men , Color , History

“Behold you, then, my dear friend, at the head of a great army, establishing the liberties of your country against a foreign enemy. May heaven favor your cause, and make you the channel through which it may pour its favors. While you are exterminating the monster aristocracy, and pulling out the teeth and fangs of its associate, monarchy, a contrary tendency is discovered in some here. A sect has shown itself among us, who declare they espoused our new Constitution, not as a good and sufficient thing in itself, but only as a step to an English constitution, the only thing good and sufficient in itself, in their eye. It is happy for us that these are preachers without followers, and that our people are firm and constant in their republican purity. You will wonder to be told that it is from the eastward chiefly that these champions for a king, lords and commons come. They get some important associates from New York, and are puffed up by a tribe of agitators which have been hatched in a bed of corruption made up after the model of their beloved England. Too many of these stock-jobbers and king-jobbers have come into our legislature, or rather too many of our legislature have become stock-jobbers and king-jobbers. However, the voice of the people is beginning to make itself heard, and will probably cleanse their seats at the ensuing election.”

James Madison (1751–1836) 4th president of the United States (1809 to 1817)

Letter to Gilbert du Motier, marquis de Lafayette (16 June 1792)
1790s

People , Happiness

“In the rich countries, depending on the species, 80 to 95 percent of the animals we eat are “produced” in industrial breeding operations where their short lives are an uninterrupted continuity of pain. All of that becomes possible the moment we begin to regard other living beings as objects for consumption or reserves of meat that we can deal with however we please.”

Matthieu Ricard (1946) French writer and Buddhist monk

Source: A Plea for the Animals (2014), Chapter 4, p. 74

Pain , Animals , Dependency

“[The Baroness was] a citizen of terror, a contemporary without a country.”

Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) German poet

Djuna Barnes quoted in Irene Gammel, Baroness Elsa: Gender, Dada and Everyday Modernity, p 17.
About

“The word Imperialism still has to many people in this country a rather sinister meaning. They associate it—wrongly in my view and in your view—the idea of exploitation, of riding roughshod over the world, of jingoism and of selfishness in public policy. It was not that to Lord Milner, and it is not that to us. It is rather this—the spreading throughout such parts of the world as we control, or in which we have influence, of all those ideas of law, order, and justice which we believe to be peculiar to our own race. It is to help people who belong to a backward civilisation, wisely to raise them in the scale of civilisation—an extraordinarily difficult task, and one which needs wisdom for its consummation. There is no country in the world upon whom that task has been imposed to the same degree as our own country, and it is undoubtedly by the way in which we fulfil that task that we shall be judged at the bar of history, not perhaps to-day, but by those who come after us of our own blood.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Oxford (15 May 1925), quoted in On England, and Other Addresses (1926), pp. 185-186.
1925

Wisdom , People , World , Justice

“At fifteen years of age, when first my parents settled down in London (temporarily as they thought) I had never been in England, never had an English friend or English governess, or English tuition of any sort or kind. I did not speak one word of English. Then how did it all come about? Neo-Victorians and Neo-Georgians will put it down to destiny; others to predestination. I, in my humble way, put it down to the Will of God. And looking back on my long life and its many changes I can trace the links of my chain of life that began on the great plains of Hungary, continued through the heart of London, and find me now at this hour of writing this book in Monte Carlo jotting down all that I can remember of those links which led me one by one to the conception of my first literary work. If any one of those links had not been, if any turn of event in my life had been different, I would probably have ended my days in the country of my birth and known nothing of the happiness which comes from love, from the affection of friends (such as one meets in England) and from success in the work to which I devoted so many years of my life.”

Emma Orczy (1865–1947) Hungarian-British author of "The Scarlet Pimpernel"

Source: Links in the Chain of Life (1947), Ch. 1

Love , Life , God , Books

“International court. America has been one of the foremost nations in advocating tribunals for the settlement of international disputes of a justiciable character. Our representatives took a leading in those conferences which resulted in the establishment of e ague Tribunal, and later in providing for a Permanent Court of International Justice. I believe it would be for the advantage of this country and helpful to the stability of other nations for us to adhere to the protocol establishing, that court upon the conditions stated in the recommendation which is now before the Senate, and further that our country shall not be bound by advisory opinions which may be, rendered by the court upon questions which we have not voluntarily submitted for its judgment. This court would provide a practical and convenient tribunal before which we could go voluntarily, but to which we could not be summoned, for a determination of justiciable questions when they fail to be resolved by diplomatic negotiations.”

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

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Justice , Question , Help

“Any discussion of Muslim intellectual life in the twentieth century must take into account the defining context of modernisation, with its dislocating effects on structural, economic, societal, political and cultural realities in Muslim countries.”

Suha Taji-Farouki (1950) British Islamic scholar

Modern Muslim Intellectuals and the Qur'an, OUP, Oxford 2004

Life , Reality

“There is no doubt that to-day feeling in totalitarian countries is, or they would like it to be, one of contempt for democracy. Whether it is the feeling of the fox which has lost its brush for his brother who has not I do not know, but it exists. Coupled with that is the idea that a democracy qua democracy must be a kind of decadent country in which there is no order, where industrial trouble is the order of the day, and where the people can never keep to a fixed purpose. There is a great deal that is ridiculous in that, but it is a dangerous belief for any country to have of another. There is in the world another feeling. I think you will find this in America, in France, and throughout all our Dominions. It is a sympathy with, and an admiration for, this country in the way she came through the great storm, the blizzard, some years ago, and the way in which she is progressing, as they believe, with so little industrial strife. They feel that that is a great thing which marks off our country from other countries to-day. Except for those who love industrial strife for its own sake, and they are but a few, it indeed is the greatest testimony to my mind that democracy is really functioning when her children can see her through these difficulties, some of which are very real, and settle them—a far harder thing than to fight.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1937/may/05/supply in the House of Commons (5 May 1937).
1937

Love , Children , People , World

“How far our position is a minority one will differ from person to person here. If we are against factory farms, we are morally condemning widespread and perfectly legal practices involving perhaps the majority of the human community. If we are vegetarians, we hold a position which is very much a minority one. If we are pretty radical anti-vivisectionists, we also hold what seems to be a minority position, involving as it does a radical criticism of the law and the establishment of this country.”

Timothy Sprigge (1932–2007) British philosopher

Source: The Animal Welfare Movement and the Foundations of Ethics, p. 87

Law , Communication , Personality

“We had a president, Moi, who was a dictator. He ruled the country with an iron fist, and anyone who dared question his authority was arrested, tortured, jailed or even killed. That meant that people were taught to be smart cowards, stay out of trouble. Being a coward was not an insult. Being a coward was a compliment. We used to be told that a coward goes home to his mother. What that meant: that if you stayed out of trouble you're going to stay alive. I used to question this advice, and eight years ago we had an election in Kenya, and the results were violently disputed. What followed that election was terrible violence, rape, and the killing of over 1,000 people. My work was to document the violence. As a photographer, I took thousands of images, and after two months, the two politicians came together, had a cup of tea, signed a peace agreement, and the country moved on. I was a very disturbed man because I saw the violence firsthand. I saw the killings. I saw the displacement. I met women who had been raped, and it disturbed me, but the country never spoke about it. We pretended. We all became smart cowards. We decided to stay out of trouble and not talk about it.”

Boniface Mwangi (1983) Kenyan photojournalist

The day I stood up alone

Women , People , Peace , Home

“So the real problem in this whole question relates to utilization of national resources for productive and social welfare against the burden of defense expenditure which a country can bear at any particular time.”

Vikram Sarabhai (1919–1971) (1919-1971), Indian physicist

On the issue of priority to internal development vis-a-vis external defense.
The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Post-colonial State

Question , Problem , Time

“While today no foreign invaders threaten our sovereignty, there's another front that is on the line - our economy. Like a pandemic plague, worldwide recession now engulfs all nations. If stable, prosperous democracies are floundering in its wake, what more of developing countries such as ours?”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

2009, Statement: A Call for Heroism

Democracy

“That driving incident, I did it with my dad. I'd sit on his lap and I drive. We're country.”

Britney Spears (1981) American singer, dancer and actress

Matt Lauer interview http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13347509/page/4/, MSNBC (14 June 2006)

“This is organized crime and there is a network all over the country. It's been going on for centuries and is passed down from generation to generation. The mothers teach their daughters… The psychics you see in the storefront who are dressed kind of shabby and don't have that much money actually are the same people who when they drive away go live in a million dollar house on the Intracoastal and they're driving around in a Maserati… It leaves the victims penniless and emotionally broken.”

Bob Nygaard private detective specializing in psychic fraud

Bob Nygaard: Boca Raton private investigator says south Florida is a hotbed for fake fortune tellers https://web.archive.org/web/20160414094952/https://www.wptv.com/news/region-s-palm-beach-county/boca-raton/a-boca-raton-private-investigator-says-south-florida-is-a-hotbed-for-fake-fortune-tellers, WPTV West Palm Beach (14 April 2016)

Money , People , Housing , Daughters

“I beg you not to listen to the experts in this country anymore. The fools disguised in tweed jackets or ascots of the Ivy League campuses. The scholars and the experts and those who have been around in the State Department forever, blahdy blahdy blahdy. They couldn't find their way through an unlocked door at a locksmith shop. They come on TV and they lecture you about how everything is fine and everything is in a box. I have news for you: I believe it was the great philosopher Depeche Mode that said "nothing is impossible."”

Glenn Beck (1964) U.S. talk radio and television host

Life is outside of the box now and if you're inside of the box, you'll suffocate.
2014-12-16
The Glenn Beck Program
http://www.glennbeck.com/2014/12/16/three-unbelievable-news-stories-three-crazy-glenn-predictions-one-must-watch-monologue/, quoted in * 2014-12-17
'I See The Future': Glenn Beck Begs His Audience 'Not To Listen To The Experts In This Country Anymore'
Kyle
Mantyla
RightWingWatch
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/i-see-future-glenn-beck-begs-his-audience-not-listen-experts-country-anymore
2014-12-19
2010s, 2014

Life , Fools , Way , Box

“I am excited that Tanzania is the only country out of 53 African nations to host the relay. This is a rare opportunity for our nation and a challenge for the government and the people to promote sports.”

Ali Mohamed Shein (1948) President of Zanzibar

On the Olympic Torch relay in Dar es Salaam, 2008-04-13 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7345245.stm

People , Sport

“Sell the country, bury bones. What else?”

Halldór Laxness book The Atom Station

the unself-conscious policeman
Atómstöðin (The Atom Station) (1948)

“Vietnam is about halfway around the world from Washington. It's as large as the major European nations, with nearly 130,000 square miles… Its ancient recorded history goes back to 111 B. C… We entered (that country) with considerable ignorance.”

Barry Goldwater (1909–1998) American politician

Goldwater (1988)

World , History

“My son Track…he's gonna be deployed in September to Iraq. Pray… for this country, that our leaders… are sending [U. S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.”

Sarah Palin (1964) American politician

Address to a class of ministry students at the Wasilla Assembly of God church in June 2008; Web Site With Speeches and Sermons From Palin's Former Church Shuts Down as Religious Views of Candidate Face Scrutiny http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/website-with-sp.html; Palin's Church May Have Shaped Controversial Worldview http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/02/palins-church-may-have-sh_n_123205.html
2008

God

“North Korea is the country that the monkeys in The Wizard of Oz came from.”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Red, White, and Screwed (2006)

“In your town, in mine, in Wolverhampton, in Smethwick, in Birmingham, people see with their own eyes what they dread, the transformation during their own lifetime or, if they are already old, during their children's, of towns, cities and areas that they know into alien territory…Of the great multitude, numbering already two million, of West Indians and Asians in England, it is no more true to say that England is their country than it would be to say that the West Indies, or Pakistan, or India are our country. In these great numbers they are, and remain, alien here as we would be in Kingston or in Delhi; indeed, with the growth of concentrated numbers, the alienness grows, not by choice but by necessity. It is a human fact which good will, tolerance, comprehension and all the social virtues do not touch. The process is that of an invasion, not, of course, with the connotation either of violence or a premeditated campaign but in the sense that a people find themselves displaced in the only country that is theirs, by those who do have another country and whose home will continue to be elsewhere for successive generations.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Source: Speech to the Conservative Supper Club in Smethwick (8 September 1971), from Still to Decide (Eliot Right Way Books, 1972), pp. 189-190

Children , People , Home , Sense

“We’re introducing an updated Assault Weapons Ban for one reason: so that after every mass shooting with a military-style assault weapon, the American people will know that a tool to reduce these massacres is sitting in the Senate, ready for debate and a vote. This bill won’t stop every mass shooting, but it will begin removing these weapons of war from our streets. The first Assault Weapons Ban was just starting to show an effect when the NRA stymied its reauthorization in 2004. Yes, it will be a long process to reduce the massive supply of these assault weapons in our country, but we’ve got to start somewhere. To those who say now isn’t the time, they’re right—we should have extended the original ban 13 years ago, before hundreds more Americans were murdered with these weapons of war. To my colleagues in Congress, I say do your job.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

War , People , Time

“This country stands out like a sore thumb trying to impose its European values in Asia as if the good old days when people can shoot aborigines without caring about human rights.”

Mahathir bin Mohamad (1925) Prime Minister of Malaysia

on Australia and its perceived political interference in Southeast Asia.
Malaysian Politicians Say the Darndest Things [Vol I]

People

“Students, young people, have the right to join together in order to guide their efforts towards a common goal, and they will use this right. As for their goal, it is simple: for them it is a matter of ensuring that the July revolution is not a lie; every edifice built by the Empire and the Restoration must be overthrown, and since not one single stone of this edifice is yet to fall, they will work indefatigably to demolish and destroy it. We call for the destruction of the university. We call for the destruction of the country’s most odious and harmful monopoly, of that which stifles civilization at its source and which is the cruellest insult inflicted on human intelligence.”

Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805–1881) French socialist and political activist

"Declaration of the Provisional Committee for Schools" (1831)

People , Lie , Intelligence , Effort

“The only platform from which public exposures can be made is an all-Russian newspaper. "Without a political organ, a political movement deserving that name is inconceivable in modern Europe."In this connection Russia must undoubtedly by included in modern Europe. The press has long ago become a power in our country, otherwise the government would not spend tens of thousands of rubles to bribe it, and to subsidize the Katkovs and Meshcherskys. And it is no novelty in autocratic Russia for the underground press to break through the wall of sponsorship and compel the legal and conservative press to speak openly of it.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: What is to be Done? (1902), Chapter Three, Section E, Essential Works of Lenin (1966)

“After settling the affairs of Ajmir, the conqueror marched "towards Dehli (may God preserve its prosperity and perpetuate its splendour!) which is among the chief (mother) cities of Hind. When he arrived at Dehli, he saw " a fortress which in height and strength had not its equal nor second throughout the length and breadth of the seven climes." The army encamped around the fort. " A torrent of blood flowed on the field of battle, and it became evident to the chiefs that if they did not seek for safety from the sword of the king of the earth, and if they should deliver into the hands of Satan the time of option and the reins of good counsel, the condition of Dehli would be like that of Ajmir; so from the dread of kingly punishment, the Rai and mukaddams of that country placed their heads upon the line of slavery, and their feet within the circle of obedience, and made firm the conditions of tribute [mdlguzdrt) and the usages of service.”

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

About the conquest of Delhi. Hasan Nizami. Elliot and Dowson, Vol. II : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 216. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.

God , Time

“The most significant feature of our histories, however, is the religious zeal felt or exhibited by the swordsmen of Islam before and after the “infidels” who resisted “were sent to hell”, the Brahmans massacred or molested or expelled, idols desecrated, temples demolished, and mosques raised in their stead. The prophet of Islam appears in a dream and bids a sultãn to start on the “holy expedition”, leaving no doubt that the “victory of religion” was assured. Amîr Khusrû was very eloquent about the transformation that was taking place. When the hordes of Alãu’d-Dîn Khaljî sacked the temple of Somnath, he exulted, “The sword of Islãm purified the land as the Sun purifies the earth.” His enthusiasm broke all bounds when the same hordes swept over South India: “The tongue of the sword of the Khalifa of the time, which is the tongue of the flame of Islãm, has imparted light to the entire darkness of Hindustãn by the illumination of its guidance… and several capitals of the gods of the Hindus in which Satanism had prevailed since the time of Jinns, have been demolished. All these impurities of infidelity have been cleansed by the Sultãn’s destruction of idol-temples, beginning with his first expedition to Deogîr, so that the flames of the fight of the law illumine all these unholy countries… God be praised!” One wonders whether the poet of Islam is being honoured or slandered when he is presented in our own times as the pioneer of Secularism. Or, perhaps, Secularism in India has a meaning deeper than that we find in the dictionaries or dissertations on political science. We may not be much mistaken if, seeing its studied exercise in blackening everything Hindu and whitewashing everything Islamic, we suspect that this Secularism is nothing more than the good old doctrine of Islam in disguise.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume II (1993)

God , Religion , Law , Dreams

“These are countries that started with higher levels of poverty incidence than our country but have successfully managed to lessen, if not virtually eliminate, extreme poverty.”

Francis Escudero (1969) Filipino politician

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

“The honourable gentleman has alluded to the distresses and financial embarrassments of the country. I should be the last man to speak of those distresses in a slighting manner; but in considering the amount of our burdens, we ought not to forget under what circumstances those difficulties have been incurred. Engaged in an arduous struggle, single-handed and unaided, not only against all the powers of Europe, but with the confederated forces of the civilized world, our object was not merely military glory—not the temptation of territorial acquisition—not even what might be considered a more justifiable object, the assertion of violated rights and the vindication of national honour; but we were contending for our very existence as an independent nation. When the political horizon was thus clouded, when no human foresight could point out from what quarter relief was to be expected, when the utmost effort of national energy was not to despair, I would put to the honourable gentleman whether, if at that period it could have been shown that Europe might be delivered from its thraldom, but that this contingent must be purchased at the price of a long and patient endurance of our domestic burdens, we should not have accepted the conditions with gratitude? I lament as deeply as the honourable gentleman the burdens of the country; but it should be recollected that they were the price which we bad agreed to pay for our freedom and independence.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech in the House of Commons (16 May 1820), quoted in George Henry Francis, Opinions and Policy of the Right Honourable Viscount Palmerston, G.C.B., M.P., &c. as Minister, Diplomatist, and Statesman, During More Than Forty Years of Public Life (London: Colburn and Co., 1852), pp. 15-16.
1820s

World , Effort , Freedom , Despair

“…some one has to speak in favor of the right when so speaking is unpopular. The more unpopular, the greater the necessity; … The Republican party has done much for this country. It has often created and preserved prosperity by fighting crazes. For the first time in its history, it is yielding to one. If it would only say "we have made this prosperity, it is our child, and shall have our protection," and stand to its guns, it will beat Bryanism to death as it always has. But with its leader caring more for popularity than principle, courageous, as he is uninformed, I, myself, am convinced that it will have to go out of power in order that it may return chastened and more trusted than ever.”

George Howard Earle, Jr. (1856–1928) American lawyer

Letter to Samuel W. Pennypacker by George H. Earle, Jr. (16 May 1906)

Death , History , Courage , Time

“You delude yourself that you live in a free country because you never test the boundaries of that freedom.”

Jacob M. Appel book The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up

The Man Who Wouldn't Stand Up (2012)

Freedom

“The government has, in all countries, a vast influence, in determining the character of the national consumption; not only because it absolutely directs the consumption of the state itself, but because a great proportion of the consumption of individuals is gained by its will and example.”

Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) French economist and businessman

Source: A Treatise On Political Economy (Fourth Edition) (1832), Book III, On Consumption, Chapter IV, p. 400

“No one contemplating the present position and looking back at the whole series of vicissitudes which has beset the British economy throughout the past 20 years can find the prospect other than very difficult at present. But I believe that there is also a great opportunity at present. There is certainly no quick, easy road to prosperity for this country, but the changes which must be made are fairly marginal. They must be made with absolute determination, but if they are so made, and accepted by the people, the whole outlook can change. The Government can only provide the right framework. Unless they do that, our national energies will be misdirected, but once they have done it the opportunities for export and growth and efficiency must be seized by everyone. There will still be two years of hard slog ahead. But at the end of it we could have a more securely-based prosperity than we have known for a generation.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1968/jan/17/public-expenditure in the House of Commons as Chancellor of the Exchequer (17 January 1968)
1960s

People , Change , Past

“America took me into her bosom when there was no longer a country worthy of the name, but in my heart I am German – German in my soul.”

Marlene Dietrich (1901–1992) German-American actress and singer

citation needed

Soul , Heart

“I think all that has to be vetted in a way that errs on the side of protecting the American people. If there's a chance that someone may be inclined to be an enemy of the country, then I think you have to err on the side of caution.”

Ron DeSantis (1978) Florida politician

Rep. Ron DeSantis on refugee debate: 'Err on side of protecting the American people' http://www.foxnews.com/transcript/2015/11/27/rep-ron-desantis-on-refugee-debate-err-on-side-protecting-american-people.html (November 26, 2015)

People , Way , Thinking , Chance

“We have come here today to honor the memory of Lafayette, because long ago he came to this country as a private citizen at his own expense and joined us in fighting for the maintenance and extension of our institutions. It was not so much to acquire new rights, as to maintain old rights, that the men of that day put their fortunes to the hazard of war. They were resisting usurpations; they were combating unlawful tyrannies. No doubt they wanted to be Americans, but they wanted most of all to be free. They believed in individual liberty, safeguarded by constitutional guarantees. This principle to them was dearer than life itself. What they fought to preserve and extend, we ought to be ready to fight to maintain.”

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

1920s, Ordered Liberty and World Peace (1924)

Life , Men , War , Memory

“We were both hybrids: I by birth, he by education. We had both taken too many steps away from the country that had borne us to belong anywhere with ease.”

John le Carré book The Mission Song

The Mission Song (2006)

Education , Birth

“Make no mistake - Scotland has already changed. And Scotland is continuing to grow and develop as a nation and a society. Last May, the people of Scotland sent out a clear message. They did not just vote for a change of government. They voted for a change in governance. A stronger, more effective, more democratic Scotland. And they expressed their hunger for a higher level of ambition - in our government and in ourselves. In the country we seek to build. And in our image and standing abroad. These are profound and permanent changes.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008)

Hunger , People , Change

“They asked John McCain for his birth certificate. They've asked others for their birth certificate. They asked Bush for his birth certificate, by the way. I just found out over the weekend. And they would ask me for my birth certificate and by the way, it's sitting on the top of my desk. They give you a certificate of live birth, which anybody can get, just walk into the hospital, and you get a certificate of live birth. It's not even signed by people. Now, this guy either has a birth certificate or he doesn't. And I didn't think this was such a big deal, but I will tell you, it's turning out to be a very big deal because people now are calling me from all over saying, please don't give up on this issue. If you weren't born in this country, you cannot be president.”

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

About Barack Obama's birth certificate. ** * Fox & Friends
Television
Fox News
2011-03-28
About Barack Obama's birth certificate. * Fox Goes Birther: Trump Tells Unquestioning Co-hosts, "I'm Starting To Wonder...Whether Or Not <nowiki>[Obama]</nowiki> Was Born In This Country"
Media Matters for America
2011-03-28
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201103280006
2011-03-30
2010s, 2011

People , Way , Guy , Birth

“I want to say to the elite of this country—the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton and I accuse you in Kosovo of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don't have the courage to look at the world you have created.”

Newt Gingrich (1943) Professor, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives

1999-05-12
Gingrich blasts administration, media and Hollywood on Kosovo and Littleton
Karla
Crosswhite-Chigbue
CNN
http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/05/12/gingrich/
regarding the 1999 Columbine High School massacre and Kosovo War
1990s

World , Courage

“When a Secretary of State illegally stores her emails on a private server, deletes 33,000 of them so the authorities can't see her crime, puts our country at risk, lies about it in every different form and faces no consequence – I know that corruption has reached a level like never before.”

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

2010s, 2016, July, 2016 Republican National Convention (21 July 2016)

“Across the history of life on Earth, animals and birds of many species have routinely colonized new country. That's enough a marker of adaptive success that biologists apply the term "cosmopolitan" to species that are especially flexible regarding… habitats… Evolving in America, the ancestors of horses spread across Asia, Europe, and Africa, where they became zebras and quaggas. Bovine evolution in Southeast Asia eventually brought bison to North America… But the range expansion of a wild animal [i. e., the coyote] for thousands of miles in every direction, often through dense settlements of humans who in recent history have been committed to that animal's eradication, is truly remarkable. A suite of factors must be involved.”

Dan Flores (1948) American historian

Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History (2016)

Life , History , Bird , Success

“The warfare in Syria is a follow-on to the attacks on Iraq and Libya. We may recall General Wesley Clark’s claim in March 2007 that shortly after 9/11 a Pentagon official had shown him a Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz list of seven Middle East and North African countries that were scheduled for attack and regime change. Iraq and Libya, both on that list, have been attacked and transformed into U. S.-destroyed states with new or unsettled leadership. The United States has been supporting regime change forces in Syria as far back as 2011, but the job has not been completed, in part because of Russian support for president Assad. Truce efforts by the U. S. and Russia have regularly broken down because the U. S. still aims at regime change and supports the rebel forces that Russia targets, many or most of which are Al Qaeda- or ISIS-related and whose victory would mean another Libya-like failed state.”

Edward S. Herman (1925–2017) American journalist

Herman, “U.S. Political and Moral Disarray”, Z Magazine, December 2016, pp. 15-17.
2010s

Support , Effort , Change , Victory

“During the past three decades numerous empirical studies of economic behavior have been carried out and their theoretical foundation has been clarified. There was a rapid development and articulation of data, theory, and methodology. A new discipline of behavioral economics was emerging [which] consists of the empirical investigations of the behavior of businessmen and consumers in one country in one time. Generalizations about economic behavior emerge gradually by comparing behavior observed under different circumstances.”

George Katona (1901–1981) American psychologist

George Katona, and James N. Morgan (1980). Essays on behavioral economics. Univ of Michigan Survey Research. p. 3

Behavior , Study , Time , Past

“As I travel around the country I am seeing something new emerging across regional Australia. It is a new way of doing things, taking the great traditions that made the bush what it is today and blending it with the new. There's innovation, new technology and new potential, it's almost as if there's a quiet revolution going on….. some people call it the new bush.”

Lee Kernaghan (1964) Australian country music singer-songwriter

People , Way , Travel

“To make a law final, so as not to be reached by Congress, is, by mere legislation, to fasten a new provision on the Constitution. Nay, more; it gives to the law a character which the very Constitution docs not possess. The wise fathers did not treat the country as a Chinese foot, never to grow after infancy; but, anticipating Progress, they declared expressly that their great Act is not final. According to the Constitution itself, there is not one of its existing provisions — not even that with regard to fugitives from labor — which may not at all times be reached by amendment, and thus be drawn into debate. This is rational and just. Sir, nothing from man's hands, nor law, nor constitution, can be final. Truth alone is final.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," speech in the Senate (July 27, 1852)

Truth , Law , Time

“I will dispense for now from discussion of the moral character of the president's Charlottesville statements. Whether he intended to or not, what he communicated caused racists to rejoice, minorities to weep, and the vast heart of America to mourn. His apologists strain to explain that he didn't mean what we heard. But what we heard is now the reality, and unless it is addressed by the president as such, with unprecedented candor and strength, there may commence an unraveling of our national fabric.The leaders of our branches of military service have spoken immediately and forcefully, repudiating the implications of the president's words. Why? In part because the morale and commitment of our forces-made up and sustained by men and women of all races--could be in the balance. Our allies around the world are stunned and our enemies celebrate; America's ability to help secure a peaceful and prosperous world is diminished. And who would want to come to the aid of a country they perceive as racist if ever the need were to arise, as it did after 9/11?In homes across the nation, children are asking their parents what this means. Jews, blacks, Hispanics, Muslims are as much a part of America as whites and Protestants. But today they wonder. Where might this lead? To bitterness and tears, or perhaps to anger and violence?The potential consequences are severe in the extreme. Accordingly, the president must take remedial action in the extreme. He should address the American people, acknowledge that he was wrong, apologize. State forcefully and unequivocally that racists are 100% to blame for the murder and violence in Charlottesville. Testify that there is no conceivable comparison or moral equivalency between the Nazis--who brutally murdered millions of Jews and who hundreds of thousands of Americans gave their lives to defeat--and the counter-protestors who were outraged to see fools parading the Nazi flag, Nazi armband and Nazi salute. And once and for all, he must definitively repudiate the support of David Duke and his ilk and call for every American to banish racists and haters from any and every association.This is a defining moment for President Trump. But much more than that, it is a moment that will define America in the hearts of our children. They are watching, our soldiers are watching, the world is watching. Mr. President, act now for the good of the country.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

Facebook statement https://www.facebook.com/mittromney/posts/10154652303536121 (18 August 2017)
2017

Women , Men , Children , People

“All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe.”

Laura Bush (1946) First Lady of the United States from 2001 to 2009

Remarks at UN General Assembly High Level Meeting on HIV/AIDS (June 2, 2006)

Women , People , Education , Girl

“We're all so clogged with dead ideas
passed from generation to generation
that even the best of us don't know the way out
We invented the Revolution
but we don't know how to run it
Look everyone wants to keep something from the past
a souvenir of the old regime
This man decides to keep a painting
This one keeps his mistress
He [pointing] keeps his garden
He [pointing] keeps his estate
He keeps his country house
He keeps his factories
This man couldn't part with his shipyards
This one kept his army
and that one keeps his king”

Peter Weiss Marat/Sade

Marat, act 1, scene 15 (p. 34)
Marat/Sade (1963)

Way , Idea , Past , Parting

“Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that 'all men are created equal' and 'endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights', they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this nation was built. The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity, any more than they lost their humanity, because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”

Clarence Thomas (1948) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Obergefell v. Hodges http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf (26 June 2015), pp. 16-17.
2010s

Men , God

“Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

Religion

“We have seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions – forgetting the image of God we should see in each other. We’ve seen nationalism distorted into nativism – forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade – forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. We have seen the return of isolationist sentiments – forgetting that American security is directly threatened by the chaos and despair of distant places, where threats such as terrorism, infectious disease, criminal gangs and drug trafficking tend to emerge. In all these ways, we need to recall and recover our own identity. Americans have a great advantage: To renew our country, we only need to remember our values.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2010s, 2017, Speech at "Spirit of Liberty: At Home, In the World" event (2017)

God , Disease , Way , Confidence

“We learn with concern, that not only a spirit of tumult and disorder has shown itself in acts of insurrection, which required the interposition of a military force in support of the civil magistrate, but that the industry employed to excite discontent has appeared to proceed from a design to attempt, in concert with persons in foreign countries, the destruction of our happy constitution, and the subversion of all order of government.”

William Pitt the Younger (1759–1806) British politician

Address in Reply, 13 December 1792. Parl Hist xxx, 6.
"The Great Melody", biography of Burke by Conor Cruise O'Brien, p. 493.

Support , Learning , Appearance , Personality

“One of our primary tasks is to foster in people a desire to attain lofty social goals, to foster in them ideological conviction and a truly creative attitude to work. This is a very important area of struggle for communism, and the economic as well as the socio-political development of the country will be increasingly dependent on our successes in this area.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Cited in Triumph of Lenin's Ideas http://leninist.biz/en/1978/TOLI198/01-Opening.Remarks

People , Communication , Success , Dependency

“[T]he entire country should man up. We are drowning in weenification and snowflakiness. Shall we grow a national pair?”

Jay Nordlinger (1963) American journalist

2010s, The Disinvitation Game, or, Against Weenification (2018)

“But I also see a problem where a lot of people don't believe in the American idea anymore. The condition of your birth doesn't determine the outcome of your life. This is America, you can make it. You work hard, play by the rules, you can rise, you can do well. That's what we're taught, that's what we believe, that's what we think of as America. Problem is, there are just generations of people in this country who do not think that.”

Paul Ryan (1970) American politician

Life , People , Idea , Birth

“This country does not discriminate. No president, no officer in this country should hold office that has any hint of treating people differently because of the color of their skin or where they came from and that kind of thing. We believe in equality and fair treatment and that's the moral principle that we adhere to as a nation.”

Jeff Sessions (1946) Former United States Attorney General

Interview with Matt Murphy http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2016/03/jeff_sessions_on_donald_trump.html (2016)

People , Color

“As Prince Bismarck, in the ’60s, wanted to move the “Acheron” of socialism, … it was of course not love for socialism or knowledge of socialism that led Prince Bismarck to do this. He understood nothing about socialism at that time, and never did understand anything about it down to his death; in fact, he never had any conception of the moving forces of political and social life at all. There probably never lived at any time in any country a “statesman” who was less scientific, who had less knowledge, and who relied so purely on experience and a sort of half-gambler, half-peddler cunning, as Bismarck. Those offers to socialists place in the clearest light the untruthfulness of Prince Bismarck’s claim that he always regarded the social democracy as incompatible with the existence of the state. Bismarck wanted to use socialism for the purpose of breaking up and dissolving the bourgeois liberal opposition, especially the Progressive party. This, in itself, is the most conclusive proof that he had no conception of the real nature of socialism. Of course the fate of the boy magician was repeated. The elemental force which was conjured up grew over the head of the dabbler, and he did not get the best of socialism; socialism got the best of him.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

Love , Life , Death , Fate

“In preparing this record, penned by my own hand, of my life and my participation in our great struggles for national existence, human liberty and political equality, I make no pretence to literary merit. The motive that induces me is not authorship. The import of the subject matter of my narrative is my only claim to attention. The statements of facts are a matter of documentary evidence. The comments are my own and show how I saw the matters treated of, whether others saw them in the same light or not. Respectfully dedicating this work to the millions of armed men and devoted women who participated in the great wars of this country, I leave it as a heritage to my wife and son.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. vi

Life , Women , Men , War

“Many a man, who has gone but a few miles from home, understands human nature better, detects motives and weighs character more sagaciously, than another who has travelled over the known world, and made a name by his reports of different countries. It is force of thought which measures intellectual, and so it is force of principle which measures moral greatness.”

William Ellery Channing (1780–1842) United States Unitarian clergyman

Self-Culture (1838)

World , Travel , Home , Motivation

“The whole country is infested with this meanness and coldness, and no one is allowed to admit it. Only the crazy ones sense that it is wrong- that what is "normal" is not at all normal- and some of them, adults and kids alike, fight back with everything they have.”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part VI: Welcome to the Dollhouse, page 239.
Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005)

Sense , Fight

“.. he brought a sanity of perception and appraisal to his criticism of our prose productions, our plays, our linguistics, and what ever in letters that touches vitally the life of his people. The country has lost a truly great man in the death of Epifanio de los Santos Cristobal. He wrought for himself a destiny of glory which is the glory of his native land.”

Epifanio de los Santos (1871–1928) Filipino politician

Zaide, Gregorio F. 1965. Epifanio de los Santos: Great among the great Filipino scholars. In Great Filipinos in history. 88 p. 581.
BALIW

Life , Death , People

“The United States in general conducts very strict security measures for everyone who wishes to visit it, which has been in place for quite a few years. It’s also important to know that during election campaigns many statements are made and many things are said, however afterwards governing the country would be something different, and will be subject to many factors.”

Abdel Fattah el-Sisi (1954) Current President of Egypt

Remarks by al-Sisi responding to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump proposing to ban Muslim immigration to the US during an interview with CNN's Erin Burnett on 21 September 2016 http://time.com/4502537/egypt-sisi/
2016

“While in the nineteenth century you [Englishmen] have been occupied in consolidating an empire, conquering new countries, and spreading civilization to all parts of the world, you have in true British magnanimity forgotten to confer this blessing upon yourselves.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Preface, p. v.
The Revival of Aristocracy (1906)

World , Parting

“Ludicrous concepts…like the whole idea of a "war on terrorism". You can wage war against another country, or on a national group within your own country, but you can't wage war on an abstract noun. How do you know when you've won? When you've got it removed from the Oxford English Dictionary?”

Terry Jones (1942–2020) Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director and author

The Observer http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,901052,00.html, February 23, 2003.

War , Idea

“Widespread ignorance bordering on idiocy is our new national goal. … The ideal citizen of a politically corrupt state, such as the one we now have, is a gullible dolt unable to tell truth from bullshit. An educated, well-informed population, the kind that a functioning democracy requires, would be difficult to lie to, and could not be led by the nose by the various vested interests running amok in this country.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

"Age of Ignorance" New York Review of Books, March 20, 2012 http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2012/03/20/age-of-ignorance/

Truth , Lie , Education , Democracy

“Trägårdh and his collaborator—a well-known Swedish historian and journalist named Henrik Berggre—put together their observations on individualism and formulated something they called “the Swedish theory of love.” The core idea is that authentic love and friendship are possible only between individuals who are independent and equal. This notion represents exactly the values that I grew up with and that I feel are most dear to Finns as well as people from the other Nordic nations, not just Swedes, so I like to call it “the Nordic theory of love.” For the citizens of the Nordic countries, the most important values in life are individual self-sufficiency and independence in relation to other members of the community.”

Anu Partanen (1975) journalist

Prologue
The Nordic Theory of Everything

Love , Life , Friendship , People

“Freedom became one of the beacon lights of my life and it has remained so ever since. Freedom with the passing of years transcended the mere freedom of my country and embraced freedom of man everywhere and from every sort of trammel—above all, it meant freedom of the human personality, freedom of the mind, freedom of the spirit. This freedom has become the passion of my life and I shall not see it compromised for bread, for security, for prosperity, for the glory of the state or for anything else.”

Jayaprakash Narayan

Jayaprakash Narayan, (said at the height of the Emergency when Indira Gandhi stated that ‘food is more important than freedom’), quoted in L.K. Advani, My Country My Life (2008), also quoted at http://www.thestatesman.com/opinion/celebrating-a-legacy-96135.html
Quotes by JP

Life , Freedom , Light , Passion

“The means of existence of our country will break down, once the watergates are open to the foreigners.”

Helmut Kohl (1930–2017) former chancellor of West Germany (1982-1990) and then the united Germany (1990-1998)

Die Existenzgrundlage unseres Landes geht kaputt, wenn erst die Schleusen für die Ausländer geöffnet sind.
Lecture for businessmen from Schwabia (March 1994)

“It is a wake-up call for all of us unless we put our house in order. The people of this country are becoming restless.”

Arun Jaitley (1952–2019) Indian politician

On the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement, as quoted in " India protests swell as anti-graft activist fasts http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE77G0O720110817?sp=true", Reuters (17 August 2011)

People , Housing

“Kindled with his touted (and still touted) ‘brother-hood of mankind,’ Marx said that toward Poland the correct line would be to take "from the western part of Poland anything that can be taken, let the Germans occupy their fortresses under the pretext of 'protection,' use the people for cannon fodder and devour their country.’”

Phillip Abbott Luce (1935–1998)

Source: The Intellectual Student’s Guide to Survival (1968), pp. 75-76

People , Parting

“Let's dispel this fiction once and for all that Barack Obama doesn't know what he's doing. He knows exactly what he's doing; he's undergoing a systematic effort to change this country and make America more like the rest of the world. If I'm elected we'll embrace what makes America the greatest country in the world.”

Marco Rubio (1971) U.S. Senator from state of Florida, United States; politician

At the Republican presidential debate (2016).
2010s, 2016

World , Effort , Change

“Hundreds of thousands of rouble notes are being issued daily by our treasury. This is done, not in order to ﬁll the coffers of the State with practically worthless paper, but with the deliberate intention of destroying the value of money as a means of payment… Experience has taught us it is impossible to root out the evils of capitalism merely by conﬁscation and expropriation… The simplest way to exterminate the very spirit of capitalism is therefore to ﬂood the country with notes of a high face-value without financial guarantees of any sort. …[T]he great illusion of the value and power of money, on which the capitalist state is based will have been definitely destroyed.”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

The Daily Chronicle and New York Times (April 23, 1919), Paul Miliukov, Bolshevism: An International Danger, London: UK, Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2010, pp. 75-76, first published in 1920
1910s

Money , Way , Evil

“You have heard me talk of Logres. It was the old name for this country, thousands of years ago; in the old days when the struggle between good and evil was more bitter and open than it is now. That struggle goes on all round us all the time, like two armies fighting. And sometimes one of them seems to be winning and sometimes the other, but neither has ever triumphed altogether. Nor ever will,” he added softly to himself, “for there is something of each in every man.”

Susan Cooper (1935) English fantasy writer

Source: The Dark Is Rising (1965-1977), Over Sea, Under Stone (1965), Chapter 6 (p. 74)

Evil , Time , Fight

“It is a fit time to go to the drinking,
With the skilful men, about art,
And a hundred knots, the custom of the country,
The shepherd of the districts, support of gates,
Like going without a foot to battle.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Fold of the Bards

Men , Art , Drink , Support

“I have fought a long battle with slavery; and I confess my solicitude when I see any thing that looks like concession to it. It is not enough to show me that a measure is expedient: you must show me also that it is right. Ah, sir, can any thing be expedient which is not right? From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials: it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles. It cannot be found by inserting in your constitution the disfranchisement of a race.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

Final speech in the U.S. Senate on Constitutional Amendment (9 March 1866)

History , Affliction

“Character assassination is at once easier and surer than physical assault; and it involves far less risk for the assassin. It leaves him free to commit the same deed over and over again, and may, indeed, win him the honors of a hero in the country of his victims.”

Alan Barth (1906–1979) American journalist

The Rights of Free Men: An Essential Guide to Civil Liberties (1984).

“After weeks of dancing around the issue, the Obama administration has expressed concern about “heightened military activity” by Russia in Syria. But what if we are facing something more than “heightened military activity?” What if Moscow is preparing to give Syria the full Putin treatment? For years, Russia has been helping Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad cling to a diminishing power structure in a shrinking territorial base without trying to impose an overall strategy. Now, however, there are signs that Russia isn’t content to just support Assad. It wants to control Syria. The Putin treatment is reserved for countries in Russia’s “near neighborhood” that try to break out of Moscow’s orbit and deprive it of strategic assets held for decades. In such cases, unable to restore its past position, Russia tries to create a new situation in which it keeps a sword dangling above the head of the recalcitrant nation. Russia’s military intervenes directly and indirectly, always with help from a segment of the local population concerned. Russia starts by casting itself as protector of an ethnic, linguistic or religious minority that demands its military intervention against a central power vilified with labels such as “fascist” and “terrorist.””

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Putin is turning the Syrian coast into another Crimea http://nypost.com/2015/09/19/putin-is-turning-the-syrian-coast-into-another-crimea/, New York Post (September 19, 2015).
New York Post

Support , Past , Help , Dance

“Are we happy that 99% of all new income is going to the top 1%? Are we happy that one family in this country owns more than the bottom 130 million people?”

Bernie Sanders (1941) American politician, senator for Vermont

Late Night with Seth Meyers, (2 June 2015)
2010s, 2015

People , Family , Happiness

“This country is very rich indeed and has enormous resources. If this House and this Government wanted to, resources could be found to provide a house for everybody in this country. There need be nobody sleeping on the streets; there need be no homelessness and no evictions because people cannot meet the kind of rents being demanded. What is required to do that is control on profiteering, and funding for local authorities to enable them to build what is required. It needs a Government determined to put in train the construction of the council houses needed for rent, rather than the pitiful level of 15,000 which have been completed this year. It is with great anger that I ask the House tonight to vote against this disgraceful order, one of the most disgraceful orders I have seen during the time I have been in this House, and one which will cause untold misery throughout this country. It is a disgrace that it should be debated in the middle of the night, when the media are not here to report this travesty of justice.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1989/mar/21/rent-officers in the House of Commons (21 March 1989).
1980s

People , Justice , Sleep , Time

“I must say that when my Southern Christian Leadership Conference began its work in Birmingham, we encountered numerous Negro church reactions that had to be overcome. Negro ministers were among other Negro leaders who felt they were being pulled into something that they had not helped to organize. This is almost always a problem. Negro community unity was the first requisite if our goals were to be realized. I talked with many groups, including one group of 200 ministers, my theme to them being that a minister cannot preach the glories of heaven while ignoring social conditions in his own community that cause men an earthly hell. I stressed that the Negro minister had particular freedom and independence to provide strong, firm leadership, and I asked how the Negro would ever gain freedom without his minister's guidance, support and inspiration. These ministers finally decided to entrust our movement with their support, and as a result, the role of the Negro church today, by and large, is a glorious example in the history of Christendom. For never in Christian history, within a Christian country, have Christian churches been on the receiving end of such naked brutality and violence as we are witnessing here in America today. Not since the days of the Christians in the catacombs has God's house, as a symbol, weathered such attack as the Negro churches.
I shall never forget the grief and bitterness I felt on that terrible September morning when a bomb blew out the lives of those four little, innocent girls sitting in their Sunday-school class in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham. I think of how a woman cried out, crunching through broken glass, "My God, we're not even safe in church!" I think of how that explosion blew the face of Jesus Christ from a stained-glass window. It was symbolic of how sin and evil had blotted out the life of Christ. I can remember thinking that if men were this bestial, was it all worth it? Was there any hope? Was there any way out?… time has healed the wounds -- and buoyed me with the inspiration of another moment which I shall never forget: when I saw with my own eyes over 3000 young Negro boys and girls, totally unarmed, leave Birmingham's 16th Street Baptist Church to march to a prayer meeting -- ready to pit nothing but the power of their bodies and souls against Bull Connor's police dogs, clubs and fire hoses. When they refused Connor's bellowed order to turn back, he whirled and shouted to his men to turn on the hoses. It was one of the most fantastic events of the Birmingham story that these Negroes, many of them on their knees, stared, unafraid and unmoving, at Connor's men with the hose nozzles in their hands. Then, slowly the Negroes stood up and advanced, and Connor's men fell back as though hypnotized, as the Negroes marched on past to hold their prayer meeting. I saw there, I felt there, for the first time, the pride and the power of nonviolence.
Another time I will never forget was one Saturday night, late, when my brother telephoned me in Atlanta from Birmingham -- that city which some call "Bombingham" -- which I had just left. He told me that a bomb had wrecked his home, and that another bomb, positioned to exert its maximum force upon the motel room in which I had been staying, had injured several people. My brother described the terror in the streets as Negroes, furious at the bombings, fought whites. Then, behind his voice, I heard a rising chorus of beautiful singing: "We shall overcome."”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Tears came into my eyes that at such a tragic moment, my race still could sing its hope and faith.
Interview in Playboy (January 1965) https://web.archive.org/web/20080706183244/http://www.playboy.com/arts-entertainment/features/mlk/04.html
1960s

Life , Men , God , People

“I was born in the Realms of Etiquette;
In early years, unprotected and poor.
Alone, I learnt to distinguish between Evil and Good;
Untutored, I toiled at bitter tasks.
The World's Law honours Learning and Fame;
Scholars prize marriages and Caps.
With these fetters I gyved my own hands;
Truly I became a much-deceived man.
At ten years old I learnt to read books;
At fifteen, I knew how to write prose.
At twenty I was made a Bachelor of Arts;
At thirty I became a Censor at the Court.
Above, the duty I owe to Prince and parents;
Below, the ties that bind me to wife and child.
The support of my family, the service of my country—
For these tasks my nature is not apt.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

"Chu Ch'ēn Village" (A.D. 811)
Arthur Waley's translations

Marriage , Books , World , Family

“When I sat on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and listened to American delegations appealing in behalf of kinsman or old home folks across the seas, I caught the aspirations of nationality, and the perfectly natural sympathy among kindred in this republic. But I little realized then how we might rend the concord of American citizenship in our seeking to solve Old World problems. There have come to me, not at all unbecomingly, the expressed anxieties of Americans foreign born who are asking our country's future attitude on territorial awards in the adjustment of peace. They are Americans all, but they have a proper and a natural interest in the fortunes of kinsfolk and native lands. One cannot blame them. If our land is to settle the envies, rivalries, jealousies, and hatreds of all civilization, these adopted sons of the Republic want the settlement favorable to the land from which they came.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, Nationalism and Americanism (1920)

World , Jealousy , Peace , Home

“An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as peas in the same pod.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) 32nd President of the United States

1930s, Fireside Chat in the night before signing the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938)

Sense

“I'll tell you what harms the vast majority of Muslims that love freedom and hate terror: Muslim theocracy does. Muslim intolerance does. Wahabism does. Salafism does. Islamism does. Jihadism does. Sharia law does. The mere conservatism of traditional Islam does. We're not talking about only jihadists hating homosexuals and thinking they should die, we're talking about conservative Muslims. The percentage of British Muslims polled who said that homosexuality was morally acceptable was zero. Do you realize what it takes to say something so controversial in a poll that not even 1% of those polled would agree with it? There's almost no question that extreme that you will ever see in a poll that gets a zero, but ask British Muslims whether homosexuality is morally acceptable, and that's what you get. And the result is more or less the same in dozens of other countries. It's zero in Cameroon, zero in Ethiopia. 1% in Nigeria, 1% in Tanzania, 1% in Mali, 2% in Kenya, 2% in Chad. 1% in Lebanon, 1% in Egypt, 1% in the Palestinian territories, 1% in Iraq, 2% in Jordan, 2% in Tunisia, 1% in Pakistan. But 10% in Bangladesh. Bangladesh: that bright spot in the Muslim world where they are regularly hunting down and butchering secular writers with machetes. The people who suffer under this belief system are Muslims themselves. The next generation of human beings born into a Muslim community who could otherwise have been liberal, tolerant, well-educated, cosmopolitan productive people are to one or another degree being taught to aspire to live in the Middle Ages, or to ruin this world on route to some fictional paradise after death. That's the thing we have to get our heads around. And yes, some of what I just said applies with varying modifications to other religions and other cults. But there is nothing like Islam at this moment for generating this kind of intolerance and chaos. And if only a right wing demagogue will speak honestly about it, then we will elect right wing demagogues in the West more and more in response to it. And that will be the price of political correctness: that's when this check will finally get cashed. That will be the consequence of this persistent failure we see among liberals to speak and think and act with real moral clarity and courage on this issue. The root of this problem is that liberals consistently fail to defend liberal values as universal human values. Their political correctness, their multiculturalism, their moral relativism has led them to rush to the defense of theocrats and to abandon the victims of theocracy and to vilify anyone who calls out this hypocrisy for what it is as a bigot. And to be clear, and this is what liberals can't seem to get, is that speaking honestly about the ideas that inspire Islamism and jihadism, beliefs about martyrdom, and apostasy and blasphemy and paradise and honour and women, is not an expression of hatred for Muslims. It is in fact the only way to support the embattled people in the Muslim community: The reformers and the liberals and the seculars and the free thinkers and the gays and the Shiia in Sunni-majority context and Sufis and Ahmadiyyas, and as Maajid Nawaz said, the minorities within the minority, who are living under the shadow, and sword rather often, under theocracy. […] If you think that speaking honestly about the need for reform within Islam will alienate your allies in the Muslim community, then you don't know who your allies are.”

Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist

Sam Harris, "Waking Up with Sam Harris Podcast #38 — The End of Faith Sessions 2" (15 June 2016) https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/the-end-of-faith-sessions-2
2010s

Love , Death , Women , Hate

Quotes about homeland page 39

Quotes about homeland
page 39