Quotes about land
page 11

David Lloyd George photo
Arthur O'Shaughnessy photo
Lin Yutang photo

“A man may own a thousand acres of land, and yet he still sleeps upon a bed of five feet.”

Source: The Importance of Living (1937), p. 38 (Chinese saying)

Phillis Wheatley photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Arthur Young photo
Robert Bloomfield photo
Philo photo
Taliesin photo

“We do not go to mission lands to 'bring Jesus Christ' as much as to uncover him where he already is.”

Catherine Doherty (1896–1985) Religious order founder; Servant of God

Sobornost (1977)

Robert Stanley Weir photo
William Wordsworth photo

“I travelled among unknown men,
In lands beyond the sea;
Nor, England! did I know till then
What love I bore to thee.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

I Travelled Among Unknown Men, st. 1 (1799).

Francis Parkman photo
Nicholas Murray Butler photo
Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Glenn Beck photo
Han-shan photo
Luis de Góngora photo

“Let merchants traverse seas and lands,
For silver mines and golden sands;
Whilst I beside some shadowy rill,
Just where its bubbling fountain swells,
Do sit and gather stones and shells,
And hear the tale the blackbird tells.”

Luis de Góngora (1561–1627) Spanish Baroque lyric poet

Busque muy en hora buena
el mercader nuevos soles;
yo conchas y caracoles
entre la menuda arena,
escuchando a Filomena
sobre el chopo de la fuente.
Letrillas, "Andeme yo caliente", line 24, cited from Robert Jammes (ed.) Letrillas (Madrid: Castalia, 1980) p. 116. Translation from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Poets and Poetry of Europe (New York: C. S. Francis, 1855) p. 695

Shimon Peres photo
Pat Conroy photo

“Here is how my father appeared to me as a boy. He came from a race of giants and demi-gods from a mythical land known as Chicago. He married the most beautiful girl ever to come crawling out of the poor and lowborn south, and there were times when I thought we were being raised by Zeus and Athena. After Happy Hour my father would drive his car home at a hundred miles an hour to see his wife and seven children. He would get out of his car, a strapping flight jacketed matinee idol, and walk toward his house, his knuckles dragging along the ground, his shoes stepping on and killing small animals in his slouching amble toward the home place. My sister, Carol, stationed at the door, would call out, "Godzilla's home!" and we seven children would scamper toward the door to watch his entry. The door would be flung open and the strongest Marine aviator on earth would shout, "Stand by for a fighter pilot!" He would then line his seven kids up against the wall and say, "Who's the greatest of them all?" "You are, O Great Santini, you are." "Who knows all, sees all, and hears all?" "You do, O Great Santini, you do."”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

We were not in the middle of a normal childhood, yet none of us were sure since it was the only childhood we would ever have. For all we knew other men were coming home and shouting to their families, "Stand by for a pharmacist," or "Stand by for a chiropractor".
Eulogy for a Fighter Pilot (1998)

Alexander Maclaren photo
John Coleridge, 1st Baron Coleridge photo
Stig Dagerman photo
Nick Drake photo
Anton Chekhov photo

“In order to cultivate yourself and to drop no lower than the level of the milieu in which you have landed, it is not enough to read Pickwick and memorize a monologue from Faust…. You need to work continually day and night, to read ceaselessly, to study, to exercise your will…. Each hour is precious.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to his brother, N.P. Chekhov (March 1886)
Original: Чтобы воспитаться и не стоять ниже уровня среды, в которую попал, недостаточно прочесть только Пикквика и вызубрить монолог из «Фауста». <…> Тут нужны беспрерывный дневной и ночной труд, вечное чтение, штудировка, воля… Тут дорог каждый час…

Corneliu Zelea Codreanu photo
Richard Feynman photo
Taliesin photo

“I adore the sovereign lord of the royal land -
May his dominion extend over the reaches of the cosmos!”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Spoils of Annwn

José Rizal photo
Heber J. Grant photo

“No matter in what land we may dwell the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ makes us brothers and sisters, interested in each other, eager to understand and know each other.”

Heber J. Grant (1856–1945) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Grant (1932) "Christmas Greetings from the First Presidency," Improvement Era Dec. 1932, 67.; Cited in " Heber J. Grant, Served 1918–1945 http://www.lds.org/churchhistory/presidents/controllers/potcController.jsp?leader=7&topic=quotes" on ids.org

“The peaceful Indian Mussalman, descended beyond doubt from Hindu ancestors, was dressed up in the garb of a foreign barbarian, as a breaker of temples and as an eater of beef and declared to be a military colonist in the land he had lived for about thirty of forty centuries.”

Mohammad Habib (1895–1971) Indian historian

Source: Attributed in [Nizami, K. A., w:K. A. Nizami, Politics and Society during the Early Medieval Period: Collected Works of Professor Mohammad Habib, 1974, 12]. Later quoted in [Eaton, Richard M., Temple Desecration And Indo-Muslim States, Journal of Islamic Studies, 2000, 11, 3, 283–319, https://www.jstor.org/stable/26198197, 0955-2340] Which was later quoted in [Hirst, Jacqueline Suthren, w:Jacqueline Suthren Hirst, Zavos, John, Religious Traditions in Modern South Asia, Routledge, 978-1-136-62667-8, 239, https://books.google.com/books?id=voGoAgAAQBAJ&pg=PT239, 2013] note: Attributed
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Mohammad Habib / Attributed

Benjamín Netanyahu photo

“As Hamas's charter makes clear, Hamas's immediate goal is to destroy Israel. But Hamas has a broader objective. They also want a caliphate. Hamas shares the global ambitions of its fellow militant Islamists. That’s why its supporters wildly cheered in the streets of Gaza as thousands of Americans were murdered on 9/11. And that's why its leaders condemned the United States for killing Osama bin Laden, whom they praised as a holy warrior.So when it comes to their ultimate goals, Hamas is ISIS and ISIS is Hamas. And what they share in common, all militant Islamists share in common. Boko Haram in Nigeria; Ash-Shabab in Somalia; Hezbollah in Lebanon; An-Nusrah in Syria; The Mahdi Army in Iraq; And the Al-Qaeda branches in Yemen, Libya, the Philippines, India and elsewhere. Some are radical Sunnis, some are radical Shi'ites. Some want to restore a pre-medieval caliphate from the 7th century. Others want to trigger the apocalyptic return of an imam from the 9th century. They operate in different lands, they target different victims and they even kill each other in their quest for supremacy. But they all share a fanatic ideology. They all seek to create ever expanding enclaves of militant Islam where there is no freedom and no tolerance – Where women are treated as chattel, Christians are decimated, and minorities are subjugated, sometimes given the stark choice: convert or die. For them, anyone can be an infidel, including fellow Muslims. Ladies and Gentlemen, Militant Islam's ambition to dominate the world seems mad. But so too did the global ambitions of another fanatic ideology that swept to power eight decades ago. The Nazis believed in a master race. The militant Islamists believe in a master faith. They just disagree about who among them will be the master… of the master faith. That's what they truly disagree about. Therefore, the question before us is whether militant Islam will have the power to realize its unbridled ambitions.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Speech at the United Nations General Assembly (September 2014), New York City, New York.
As quoted in The Jerusalem Post https://web.archive.org/save/http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Full-text-of-Prime-Minister-Netanyahus-UN-speech-376626.
2010s, 2014

Siddharth Katragadda photo
Grant MacEwan photo

“I believe instinctively in a God for whom I am prepared to search.

I believe it is an offence against the God of Nature for me to accept any hand-me-down, man-defined religion or creed without the test of reason. I believe no man dead or alive knows more about God than I can know by searching.

I believe that the God of Nature must be without prejudice, with exactly the same concern for all of His children, and that the human invokes no more, no less of fatherly love than the beaver or the sparrow.

I believe I am an integral part of the environment and, as a good subject, I must establish an enduring relationship with my surroundings. My dependence upon the land is fundamental.

I believe destructive waste and greedy exploitation are sins.

I believe the biggest challenge is in being a helper rather than a destroyer of the treasures in Nature's storehouse, a conserver, a husbandman and partner in caring for the Vineyard.

I accept, with apologies to Albert Schweitzer, "a Reverence for Life" and all that is of the Great Spirit's creation.

I believe mortality is not complete until the individual holds all of the Great Spirit's creatures in brotherhood and has compassion for all. A fundamental concept of Good consists of working to preserve all creatures with feeling and the will to live.

I am prepared to stand before my Maker, the Ruler of the entire Universe, with no other plea than that I have tried to leave things in His Vineyard better than I found them.”

Grant MacEwan (1902–2000) Alberta politician, Mayor of Calgary, Lieutenant Governor of Alberta

[Will The Real Alberta Please Stand Up, University of Alberta Press, 2010, 185–186, Geo Takach] The MacEwan Creed, 1969 http://www.macewan.ca/web/services/ims/client/upload/ACF16FF.pdf.

James A. Garfield photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo

“It would have to be considered from the Imperial point of view whether the system of reciprocal tariffs would really bind the mother country more closely with her colonies than was now the case…how Great Britain might have annually to submit to the pressure of various colonies who were discontented with the tariff as then modified and wanted it modified still further. If they considered Great Britain as a target at which all these proposals for modification and rectification would be addressed, he thought it would occur to their Chamber that it would not altogether add to the harmony of those relations to have these shifting tariffs existing between Great Britain and her colonies. (Cheers)…He thought we should have some form of direct representation from the colonies to guide us and advise us with regard to this question of tariffs…Under a system of free trade every branch of industry did not prosper. He was interested in the landed industry (hear), and he did not know that the land industry had prospered particularly under free trade…he thought it could not be denied that under a system of free trade large tracts of country had been turned out of cultivation, that our own food supply had been diminished, and that the population which had been reared in the rural districts had ceased to be reared in those districts…he was not a person who believed that free trade was part of the Sermon on the Mount, and that we ought to receive it in all its rigidity as a divinely-appointed dispensation.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Speech to the Burnley chamber of commerce (19 May 1903) in the aftermath of Joseph Chamberlain's speech advocating Imperial Preference tariffs on imports, as reported in The Times (20 May 1903), p. 12. The Times reported Rosebery's speech in third person.

William Ewart Gladstone photo
Chinua Achebe photo
Richard von Mises photo
Harry Johnston photo
Edward Carpenter photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
John Bright photo
Susan Cooper photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Billy Collins photo
Ray Comfort photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Talib Kweli photo
Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Calvin Coolidge photo

“The magnitude of the service which you rendered to your country and to humanity is beyond estimation. Sharp outlines here and there we know, but the whole account of the World War would be on a scale so stupendous that it could never be recorded. In the victory which was finally gained by you and your foreign comrades, you represented on the battle field the united efforts of our whole people. You were there as the result of a great resurgence of the old American spirit, which manifested itself in a thousand ways, by the pouring out of vast sums of money in credits and charities, by the organization and quickening of every hand in our extended industries, by the expansion of agriculture until it met the demands of famishing continents, by the manufacture of an unending stream of munitions and supplies, by the creation of vast fleets of war and transport ships, and, finally, when the tide of battle was turning against our associates, by bringing into action a great armed force on sea and land of a character that the world had never seen before, which, when it finally took its place in the line, never ceased to advance, carrying the cause of liberty to a triumphant conclusion. You reaffirmed the position of this Nation in the estimation of mankind. You saved civilization from a gigantic reverse. Nobody says now that Americans can not fight.”

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

1920s, Toleration and Liberalism (1925)

Joe Hill photo

“Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

"The Preacher and the Slave" http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Preacher_and_the_Slave (1911)

Oliver Goldsmith photo
Henry David Thoreau photo
Ai Weiwei photo

“A land that rejects the truth, barricades itself against change and lacks the spirit of freedom is hopeless.”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2000-09, Ai Weiwei, Nursing Head Wound, Sharpens Criticism, 2009

William March photo
Benjamin Franklin photo

“There is a great danger for the United States of America. This great danger is the Jew. Gentlemen, in whatever country Jews have settled in any great number, they have lowered its moral tone; depreciated its commercial integrity; have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated; have sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion, have built up a state within a state; and when opposed have tried to strangle that country to death financially.
If you do not exclude them from the United States in the Constitution, in less than 200 years they will have swarmed here in such great numbers that they will dominate and devour the land, and change our form of government.
If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish them substance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude the Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves. Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics, let them be born where they will or how many generations they are away from Asia, they will never be otherwise.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Claimed by American Fascist William Dudley Pelley in Liberation (February 3, 1934) to have appeared in notes taken at the Constitutional Convention by Charles Cotesworth Pinckney; reported as debunked in Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, & Misleading Attributions (1989), p. 26-27, noting that historian Charles A. Beard conducted a thorough investigation of the attribution and found it to be false. The quote appears in no source prior to Pelley's publication, contains anachronisms, and contradicts Franklin's own financial support of the construction of a synagogue in Philadelphia. Many variations of the above have been made, including adding to "the Christian religion" the phrase "upon which this nation was founded, by objecting to its restrictions"; adding to "strangle that country to death financially" the phrase "as in the case of Spain and Portugal". See Michael Feldberg, "The Myth of Ben Franklin's Anti-Semitism, in Blessings of Freedom: Chapters in American Jewish History (2003), p. 134.
Misattributed

Jeremiah O'Donovan Rossa photo
Julie Gold photo
Walter Scott photo
W.E.B. Du Bois photo

“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.”

Source: The Souls of Black Folk (1903), Ch. I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings

Nur Muhammad Taraki photo
Gleb Pavlovsky photo

“Today Putin's system of power and Russia — are the same. Putin accustoms the world to the fact disguisting for it, the world, the fact of existence of strong national Russia, "Putin's Russia". Russia without Putin is geopolitically impossible today, it would be just no one's land. All other details should be considered in this context.”

Gleb Pavlovsky (1951) Russian political scientist

"Сегодня система власти Путина и Россия — это одно и то же. Путин приучает мир к отвратительному для него, мира, факту существования сильной национальной России, «путинской России». Россия без Путина сегодня геополитически невозможна, это будет просто ничья территория. Все остальные детали стоит рассматривать в этом контексте."

Enoch Powell photo
Emma Goldman photo

“The indvidual whose vision encompasses the whole world feels nowhere so hedged in as and out of touch with his surroundings as in his native land.”

Emma Goldman (1868–1940) anarchist known for her political activism, writing, and speeches

As quoted in [Robert Andrews, The New Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, https://books.google.com/books?id=VK0vR4fsaigC&pg=PT657, 30 October 2003, Penguin Books Limited, 978-0-14-196531-4, 657]
The Individual, Society and the State (1940)

Barbara Hepworth photo
Joseph Arch photo
Thomas Wolfe photo
Lord Dunsany photo
Abraham photo
Ta-Nehisi Coates photo
William Alcott photo
Robert Stanley Weir photo
Thomas Gray photo

“The applause of list'ning senates to command,
The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land,
And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 16
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=elcc (written 1750, publ. 1751)

Harold Wilson photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Cristoforo Colombo photo
Hillary Clinton photo
Horace photo

“In vain did Nature's wife command
Divide the waters from the land,
If daring ships and men profane,
Invade th' inviolable main.”

Nequiquam deus abscidit Prudens Oceano dissociabili Terras, si tamen impiae Non tangenda rates transiliunt vada.

Horace book Odes

Book I, ode iii, line 21 (trans. by John Dryden)
Odes (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)

Henry L. Benning photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Charlie Brooker photo
Jonathan Swift photo

“I always love to begin a journey on Sundays, because I shall have the prayers of the church to preserve all that travel by land, or water.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Polite Conversation (1738), Dialogue 2

Aldo Leopold photo

“Conservation is not merely a thing to be enshrined in outdoor museums, but a way of living on land.”

Aldo Leopold (1887–1948) American writer and scientist

" Game Cropping in Southern Wisconsin http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/AldoLeopold/AldoLeopold-idx?type=turn&id=AldoLeopold.ALReprints&entity=AldoLeopold.ALReprints.p0692&isize=XL", Our Native Landscape; Published by "The Friends of Our Native Landscape," October 1927.
1920s

William Harcourt photo

“…the principle of three acres and a cow, on which the election of 1885 was fought. The principle was that the local authority was to have power to acquire land by compulsion for the benefit of the community, in letting it out or otherwise disposing of it to individuals…It was on this proposal that the great charge of Socialism was made; but we were all Socialists now.”

William Harcourt (1827–1904) British politician

Speech on the Labourers' Allotments Bill (11 August, 1887).
'House Of Commons, Thursday, Aug. 11', The Times (12 August, 1887), p. 6.
Harcourt said "we are all Socialists now" but The Times reported his speech in past tense.

John Adams photo

“There are many other evils in our country which are growing, whereas the practice of slavery is fast diminishing, and threaten to bring punishment on our land more immediately than the oppression of the blacks. That sacred regard to truth in which you and I were educated, and which is certainly taught and enjoined from on high, seems to be vanishing from among us. A general relaxation of education and government, a general debauchery as well as dissipation, produced by pestilential philosophical principles of Epicurus, infinitely more than by shows and theatrical entertainments; these are, in my opinion, more serious and threatening evils than even the slavery of the blacks, hateful as that is. I might even add that I have been informed that the condition of the common sort of white people in some of the Southern States, particularly Virginia, is more oppressed, degraded, and miserable, than that of the negroes. These vices and these miseries deserve the serious and compassionate consideration of friends, as well as the slave trade and the degraded state of the blacks. I wish you success in your benevolent endeavors to relieve the distresses of our fellow creatures, and shall always be ready to cooperate with you as far as my means and opportunities can reasonably be expected to extend.”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1800s, Letter to George Churchman and Jacob Lindley (1801)

Cesar Chavez photo

“Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations.”

Cesar Chavez (1927–1993) American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist

The Plan of Delano (1965)

John Derbyshire photo
Robert Mugabe photo

“We have fought for our land, we have fought for our sovereignty, small as we are we have won our independence and we are prepared to shed our blood…. So, Blair keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe.”

Robert Mugabe (1924–2019) former President of Zimbabwe

Speech at the Earth Summit in Johannesburg (2 September 2002), quoted in John Battersby and Andrew Grice, "Anti-West anger at summit as Mugabe rounds on Blair", The Independent, 3 September 2002, p. 1.
2000s, 2000-2004

“We are all immigrants to this land. It's just that some of us came earlier than others.”

Romeo LeBlanc (1927–2009) Canadian politician

Source: installation speech February 8, 1995

Will Cuppy photo

“I found that I simply couldn't take fantasy seriously, so it became humourous, and continued from there. I turned my home state of Florida into the Land of Xanth.”

Piers Anthony (1934) English-American writer in the science fiction and fantasy genres

As quoted in 100 Most Popular Genre Fiction Authors (2005) by Bernard Alger Drew, p. 11

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt photo

“Today in a land where all women inherit civic responsibility, where professions and business are open to all comers without distinction of sex, leadership through direct influence is woman’s unchallenged heritage.”

Aurelia Henry Reinhardt (1877–1948) American educator and social activist

Speech delivered in 1922 to the American Association of College Women, in [Western Journal of Education, https://books.google.com/books?id=3XovAQAAMAAJ, 3 July 2018, 1922, Harr Wagner Publishing Company, 8]