“Going back to the most ancient times, national well-being, the national prestige depended on territory. The more territory a country had, the more income revenue there was, the more people there were to be mobilized for arms strength. So we had an enormous sense of territorial conflict and territorial integrity, and that was unquestionably a part of the cause of war, coupled with the fact that there was a disposition in that direction by the landed class, a disposition to think of territorial acquisition and territorial defense and to think of the peasantry as a superior form of livestock which could be used for arms purposes.”

—  John Kenneth Galbraith

Booknotes interview (1994)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Going back to the most ancient times, national well-being, the national prestige depended on territory. The more territ…" by John Kenneth Galbraith?
John Kenneth Galbraith photo
John Kenneth Galbraith 207
American economist and diplomat 1908–2006

Related quotes

Abraham Lincoln photo

“A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)
Context: A nation may be said to consist of its territory, its people, and its laws. The territory is the only part which is of certain durability. "One generation passeth away and another generation cometh, but the earth abideth forever." It is of the first importance to duly consider and estimate this ever-enduring part.

Han Kuo-yu photo

“Kaohsiung is opening its arms to all cities, nations and territories of the world.”

Han Kuo-yu (1957) Taiwanese political figure

Han Kuo-yu (2019) cited in " Kaohsiung mayor departs for visit to Malaysia, Singapore http://focustaiwan.tw/news/aipl/201902240005.aspx" on Focus Taiwan, 24 February 2019.
2019

Trường Chinh photo

“If we strive only for national reconstruction but neglect to struggle for sovereignty and territorial integrity, national independence will certainly not be recognized and our country will be reduced to an autonomous state.”

Trường Chinh (1907–1988) former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam (1907-1988)

Source: The August Revolution (1946) (excerpts), p.68

Salmon P. Chase photo

“No more slave States; no slave Territories.”

Salmon P. Chase (1808–1873) Chief Justice of the United States

Platform of the Free Soil National Convention (1848).

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

"Address on University Education" (1876) http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/CE3/Ad-U-Ed.html, delivered at the formal opening of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland, September 12, 1876. Huxley, American Addresses (1877), p. 125. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey used the same words in a commencement address at the Holton-Arms School, Bethesda, Maryland, June 1967; reported in The Washington Post (June 11, 1967), p. K3
1870s
Context: I cannot say that I am in the slightest degree impressed by your bigness, or your material resources, as such. Size is not grandeur, and territory does not make a nation. The great issue, about which hangs true sublimity, and the terror of overhanging fate, is what are you going to do with all these things?

Jean Baudrillard photo

“Animals have no unconscious, because they have a territory. Men have only had an unconscious since they lost a territory.”

Jean Baudrillard book Simulacra and Simulation

Source: Simulacra and Simulation

“Like concepts such as national energy policy or war on drugs, competitiveness covers a lot of territory”

Allen B. Rosenstein (1920–2018) American systems engineers

Allen B. Rosenstein and Phillip Burgess (1988) "U.S. Competitiveness." Bureaucrat. Vol. 17-18. p. 21.

Heydar Aliyev photo

“The Territorial integrity of Azerbaijan is not and will never be the topic of negotiations… Azerbaijan will not retreat from this position in any single step. This means that in territorial integrity of Azerbaijan […] there will be no compromise.”

Heydar Aliyev (1923–2003) Soviet and Azerbaijani politician

http://en.president.az/azerbaijan/karabakh
Quotes on Nagorno Karabakh

Giuseppe Mazzini photo

“Country is not a mere zone of territory. The true country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is the Thought of love, the sense of communion which unites in one all the sons of that territory.”

Giuseppe Mazzini (1805–1872) Italian patriot, politician and philosopher

On the Duties of Man (1844-58)

Ulysses S. Grant photo

“There was no time during the rebellion when I did not think, and often say, that the South was more to be benefited by its defeat than the North. The latter had the people, the institutions, and the territory to make a great and prosperous nation. The former was burdened with an institution abhorrent to all civilized people not brought up under it, and one which degraded labor, kept it in ignorance, and enervated the governing class. With the outside world at war with this institution, they could not have extended their territory. The labor of the country was not skilled, nor allowed to become so. The whites could not toil without becoming degraded, and those who did were denominated 'poor white trash.'”

Ulysses S. Grant (1822–1885) 18th President of the United States

The system of labor would have soon exhausted the soil and left the people poor. The non-slaveholders would have left the country, and the small slaveholder must have sold out to his more fortunate neighbor. Soon the slaves would have outnumbered the masters, and, not being in sympathy with them, would have risen in their might and exterminated them. The war was expensive to the South as well as to the North, both in blood and treasure, but it was worth all it cost.

Ch. 41
1880s, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885)

Related topics