Quotes about north
page 5

John A. Macdonald photo

“He hoped that Britain and Canada would have "a healthy and cordial alliance. Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation, a subordinate but still a powerful people to stand by her in North America in peace or in war."”

John A. Macdonald (1815–1891) 1st Prime Minister of Canada

1865, quoted on page 394 of Canadian Constitutional Development: Shown by Selected Speeches and Dispatches, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes https://books.google.ca/books?id=LRukOUFKGnkC&pg=PA394 published 1907
Dated

“North Korea fears an improvement in relations.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Chad O'Carroll (2012)

Henry Clay photo
Khalil Gibran photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Jesse Ventura photo
Howard Dean photo

“Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma And Arizona.. And North Dakota And New Mexico! We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington D. C. to take back the White House! Yeah!!!”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

From his concession speech on the eve of the January 2004 Iowa Caucuses, the "Dean Scream" incident
Variant: Not only are we going to New Hampshire, Tom Harkin, we're going to South Carolina and Oklahoma And Arizona.. And North Dakota And New Mexico! We're going to California and Texas and New York! And we're going to South Dakota and Oregon and Washington and Michigan! And then we're going to Washington D. C. to take back the White House! Yeah!!!

John Hodgman photo
Andrei Lankov photo

“[T]here has been little, if any, doubt that nothing short of a massive regime collapse, or (even more violent and bloody) full-scale war, will ever produce a non-nuclear North Korea. The regime is run by cold-minded and rational people who cannot afford to be emotional…”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

"After the Pyongyang debacle, it’s not clear where U.S. policy goes from here" https://www.nknews.org/2018/07/after-the-pyongyang-debacle-where-can-u-s-policy-go-from-here/ (9 July 2018), NK News

Robert W. Service photo
Ron Paul photo
William Perry photo
David Dixon Porter photo
Brooks D. Simpson photo
Hugo Chávez photo

“I hereby accuse the North American empire of being the biggest menace to our planet.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez speaking in October 2005 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1534596/The-wisdom-of-Chavez.html
2005

Christopher Hitchens photo

“Ronald Reagan claimed that the Russian language had no word for "freedom." (The word is "svoboda"; it's quite well attested in Russian literature)… said that intercontinental ballistic missiles (not that there are any non-ballistic missiles—a corruption of language that isn't his fault) could be recalled once launched… said that he sought a "Star Wars" defense only in order to share the technology with the tyrants of the U. S. S. R… professed to be annoyed when people called it "Star Wars," even though he had ended his speech on the subject with the lame quip, "May the force be with you"… used to alarm his Soviet counterparts by saying that surely they'd both unite against an invasion from Mars… used to alarm other constituencies by speaking freely about the "End Times" foreshadowed in the Bible. In the Oval Office, Ronald Reagan told Yitzhak Shamir and Simon Wiesenthal, on two separate occasions, that he himself had assisted personally at the liberation of the Nazi death camps.There was more to Ronald Reagan than that. Reagan announced that apartheid South Africa had "stood beside us in every war we've ever fought," when the South African leadership had been on the other side in the most recent world war… allowed Alexander Haig to greenlight the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, fired him when that went too far and led to mayhem in Beirut, then ran away from Lebanon altogether when the Marine barracks were bombed, and then unbelievably accused Tip O'Neill and the Democrats of "scuttling.".. sold heavy weapons to the Iranian mullahs and lied about it, saying that all the weapons he hadn't sold them (and hadn't traded for hostages in any case) would, all the same, have fit on a small truck… then diverted the profits of this criminal trade to an illegal war in Nicaragua and lied unceasingly about that, too… then modestly let his underlings maintain that he was too dense to understand the connection between the two impeachable crimes. He then switched without any apparent strain to a policy of backing Saddam Hussein against Iran. (If Margaret Thatcher's intelligence services had not bugged Oliver North in London and become infuriated because all European nations were boycotting Iran at Reagan's request, we might still not know about this.) One could go on… This was a man never short of a cheap jibe or the sort of falsehood that would, however laughable, buy him some time.”

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

2000s, 2004

Ramsay MacDonald photo

“He had been across the veldt, he had seen the battlefields, the still open trenches, and it all came to Chinese labour. They were told it was going to release the slaves, the Uitlanders, to open up South Africa to a great flood of white emigrants. They were told it was going to plant the Union Jack upon the land of the free. But the echoes of the muskets had hardly died out on the battlefields, the ink on the treaty was hardly dry, before the men who plotted the war began to plot to bring in Chinese slaves. (Cheers.) They could talk about their gold; their gold is tainted. (Hear, hear.) They could talk about employing white men; it was not true, and even if it were true, was he going to stand and see his white brothers degraded to the position of yellow slave drivers? No, he was not. (Loud and continued cheers.) These patriots! These miserable patriots! If they had had the custodianship of the opinions of the country 75 years ago, slavery in the colonies would have continued. When the north was fighting the south for the liberty of men, these men would have counted their guineas, would have told them how many white men had plied the lash in the southern states, and they would have said that for miserable cash, miserable trash, the great name of the country required to be bought and sold. Thank God there were no twentieth century Unionist imperialists in office then.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Loud cheers.
Leicester Daily Mercury (6 January 1906)
1900s

Eric Foner photo
Robert Louis Stevenson photo
Hillary Clinton photo

“Mexico is such an important problem. The Mexican government's policies are pushing migration north… There isn't any sensible approach except to do what we need to do simultaneously. Secure our border — with technology, personnel, physical barriers if necessary in some places. We need to have tough employer sanctions, incentivize Mexico to do more.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Council on Foreign Relations speech in 2006 ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uXJ1mgkyF0), quoted in "Hillary Clinton In 2006: ‘Secure Our Border With… Physical Barriers’" http://www.westernjournalism.com/hillary-clinton-in-2006-secure-our-border-with-physical-barriers/ by Gerry Urbanek, Western Journalism (10 June 2016).
Senate years (2001 – January 19, 2007)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Ulysses S. Grant photo
Glen Cook photo
Nathanael Greene photo
Steve Jobs photo

“Our friends up north spend over five billion dollars on research and development and all they seem to do is copy Google and Apple.”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

On Microsoft, at the Worldwide Developer's Conference (August 2006)
2000s

Horace Mann photo

“We put things in order — God does the rest. Lay an iron bar east and west, it is not magnetized. Lay it north and south and it is.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards

Mohammed VI of Morocco photo

“Is it reasonable to think that Morocco respects human rights in the north of the country and transgresses them in the south?”

Mohammed VI of Morocco (1963) King of Morocco

Original French: En effet, est-il raisonnable de penser que le Maroc respecte les droits de l'Homme dans le nord du pays et les transgresse dans le sud ?
Televised speech–6 November 2013 http://www.maroc.ma/fr/discours-royaux/discours-de-sm-le-roi-loccasion-du-38eme-anniversaire-de-la-marche-verte

Alexander H. Stephens photo

“As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln’s inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry.”

Alexander H. Stephens (1812–1883) Vice President of the Confederate States (in office from 1861 to 1865)

The Cornerstone Speech (1861)

Thaddeus Stevens photo
Bill Bryson photo
Richard Nixon photo
Thomas C. Schelling photo
Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston photo
Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein photo

“I want to impose on everyone that the bad times are over, they are finished! Our mandate from the Prime Minister is to destroy the Axis forces in North Africa…It can be done, and it will be done!”

Bernard Montgomery, 1st Viscount Montgomery of Alamein (1887–1976) British Army officer, Commander of Allied forces at the Battle of El Alamein

Said to his troops in North Africa, promising the swift defeat of Rommel[citation needed]

Dave Attell photo
Louis Riel photo
Boris Johnson photo
Duarte Pacheco Pereira photo

“Most fortunate Prince, we have known and seen how in the third year of your reign in the year of Our Lord 1498, in which your Highness ordered us to discover the Western region, a very large landmass with many large islands adjacent, extending 700 North of the Equator, and located beyond the greatness of the Ocean, has been discovered and navigated; this distant land is densely populated and extends 28º degrees on the other side of the Equator towards the Antarctic Pole. Such is its greatness and length that on either side its end has not been seen or known, so that it is certain that it goes round the whole globe.”

Duarte Pacheco Pereira (1460–1533) Portuguese explorer

Bemauenturado Príncipe, temos sabido e visto como no terceiro anno de vosso Reinado do hanno de nosso senhor de 1498, donde nos vossa alteza mandou descobrir a parte oucidental, passando alem ha grandeza do mar oceano, onde he achada a navegada hûa tão grande terra firme, com muitas e grandes ilhas ajacentes a ella, que se estende a setente graaos de ladeza da linha equinoçial contra ho pollo artico e posto que seja asaz fora, he grandemente pouorada, e do mesmo circulo equinocial torna outra vez e vay alem em vinte e oito graaos e meo de ladeza contra ho pollo antartico, e tanto se dilata sua grandeza e corre com muita longura, que de hûa parte nem da outra foy visto nem sabido ho fim e cabo della; pello qual segundo ha hordem que leua, he certo que vay en cercoyto por toda a Redondeza.
Esmeraldo de situ orbis [published between 1506 and 1508], Part I, ch. I, translated and edited by George Herbert Tinley Kimble, London: 1937, p. 12; Duarte Pacheco Pereira was most likely referring to the coast of Brazil.
Variant translations:
Your Highness sent us to discover towards the west, across the broad expansion of the ocean sea where there is found and sailed a very large mainland with many and large adjacent islands, which extends to 70°N of the equator to … 28º 50S.
As quoted in Diffie, Davison, Winius, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire (1977), p. 451
In the third year of your reign, in the year of grace of 1498, Your Highness ordered me that I went on a discovery expedition, in the areas of the west, crossing the entire extension of the ocean sea, where there was found and rounded a great firm land...
As quoted in Silva Pinto Sagres (2002), p. 313

Harry V. Jaffa photo
Curtis LeMay photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Amir Taheri photo
Hans Reichenbach photo
Harry V. Jaffa photo
Fabian Picardo photo

“What we have seen this weekend is sabre-rattling of the sort that we haven't seen for some time. The things that Mr García-Margallo has said are more reminiscent of the type of statement you'd hear from North Korea than from an EU partner.”

Fabian Picardo (1972) Gibraltarian politician and barrister

[5 August 2013, Gibraltar chief minister accuses Spain of sabre-rattling, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/05/gibraltar-chief-minister-spain-sabre-rattling, The Guardian, 22 March 2014]
On the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation's comments about closing Spanish airspace to flights heading to Gibraltar.
2013

Theodor Mommsen photo

“It is a dreadful picture—this picture of Italy under the rule of the oligarchy. There was nothing to bridge over or soften the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world of the rich. The more clearly and painfully this contrast was felt on both sides—the giddier the height to which riches rose, the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned—the more frequently, amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard, were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again from the top to the bottom. The wider the chasm by which the two worlds were externally divided, the more completely they coincided in the like annihilation of family life—which is yet the germ and core of all nationality—in the like laziness and luxury, the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence, the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property. Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy, and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly with awful silence. It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a— hypocritically whitewashed—moral and political corruption of the nation. All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man, be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again similar fruits to reap.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

Italy under the Oligarchy
The History of Rome - Volume 4: Part 2

Hebe de Bonafini photo

“Verbitsky is a servant of the United States. He receives a salary form the Ford Foundation, and in addition to being a Jew, is totally pro-North American.”

Hebe de Bonafini (1928) President of the Association of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo

Source: Old Ideas in New Discourses: "The War Against Terrorism" and Collective Memory in Uruguay and Argentina http://essays.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/marchesi.htm Ser judío http://www.pagina12.com.ar/2001/01-10/01-10-28/pag15.htm, Página/12, 2001).

Mark Steyn photo
Thomas M. Disch photo

“Boz, who had no patience with Science, always confused north and south.”

Thomas M. Disch (1940–2008) Novelist, short story writer, poet

Emancipation: A Romance of the Times to Come (1971)

Mark Satin photo

“North Korea kept harassing the South, and one day they just clicked: Tell me that isn't a stalker's dream writ geopolitical.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Confederation Again (July 2018)

“North Korea is looking more and more like a poor man's version of South Korea.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with Colin Marshall (February 2015)

Babe Ruth photo
Daniel Hannan photo
James A. Michener photo

“The difference between East Germans and North Koreans is day and night.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

2010s, Interview with the Reuters War College (April 2017)

Tanith Lee photo
Sarah Chang photo
William Lloyd Garrison photo

“The compact which exists between the North and the South is a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Resolution adopted by the Antislavery Society (27 January 1843); referencing Isaiah 28:15: "We have made a covenant with death, and with hell are we at agreement".

Bernard Cornwell photo

“What we should have done, lads, is gone north.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 290
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Rifles (1988)

Rose Wilder Lane photo

“We joined long wagon trains moving south; we met hundreds of wagons going north; the roads east and west were crawling lines of families traveling under canvas, looking for work, for another foothold somewhere on the land…. The country was ruined, the whole world was ruined; nothing like this had ever happened before. There was no hope, but everyone felt the courage of despair.”

Rose Wilder Lane (1886–1968) American journalist

Written in 1935, recalling her family’s migration from drought-stricken South Dakota to the Missouri Ozarks in 1894; the 650-mile trip had taken them six weeks.
As quoted in The Ghost in the Little House, ch. 1, by William V. Holtz (1993).

Jerry Goldsmith photo
Margaret Sanger photo
Jacques Chirac photo

“Translation:Our house is burning and we look elsewhere. Nature mutilated, overexploited is not able to recover and we refuse to admit it. From North to South, it suffers from ill-development, and we are indifferent. Earth and humanity are in great peril and we are accountable.”

Notre maison brûle et nous regardons ailleurs. La nature, mutilée, surexploitée, ne parvient plus à se reconstituer et nous refusons de l'admettre. L'humanité souffre. Elle souffre de mal-développement, au nord comme au sud, et nous sommes indifférents. La terre et l'humanité sont en péril et nous en sommes tous responsables.
Statement at the earth summit in Johannesburg Elysee.fr http://www.elysee.fr/elysee/francais/interventions/discours_et_declarations/2002/septembre/discours_de_m_jacques_chirac_president_de_la_republique_devant_l_assemblee_pleniere_du_sommet_mondial_du_developpement_durable.1217.html dated sept 2nd 2002

Antonio Negri photo
Sima Qian photo

“I myself have travelled west as far as K'ung-t'ung, north past Cho-lu, east to the sea, and in the south I have sailed the Yellow and Huai Rivers. The elders and old men of these various lands frequently pointed out to me the places where the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun had lived, and in these places the manners and customs seemed quite different. In general those of their accounts which do not differ from the ancient texts seem to be near to the truth.”

translation by Burton Watson
I once traveled west to Mount K’ung-t'ung and passed Cho-lu [Mountain] in the north; to the east I drifted along the coast, and to the south I floated over the Huai River and the Chiang. Wherever I went, all of the village elders would point out for me sites of The Huang-ti, Yao and Shun. The traditions were certainly very different from each other. In sum, [those accounts of the elders] which were not far from the ancient-text versions [of the classics], tend to be plausible.
translated by Tsai-fa Cheng, Zongli Lu, William H. Nienhauser, Jr., and Robert Reynolds, in The Grand Scribe’s Records, edited by William H. Nienhauser, Jr.
五帝本紀 https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/%E5%8F%B2%E8%A8%98/%E5%8D%B7001
Records of the Grand Historian

Peter Atkins photo
Andrei Lankov photo

“Right now, no sane and unbiased person would be so stupid as to doubt that the North Korean state is very repressive.”

Andrei Lankov (1963) Russian academic

The Folly of an Inter-Korean Confederation (October 2015)

“Eventually, I'd like one monitor at the North Pole, one at the South, and two at the equator, big monitors switching images back and forth.”

Ira Schneider (1939) American artist

Ira Schneider (1969), Arts Magazine, Vol. 44, p. 22

Amir Taheri photo

“It might come as a surprise to many, but the truth is that Islam today no longer has a living and evolving theology. In fact, with few exceptions, Islam’s last genuine theologians belong to the early part of the 19th century. Go to any mosque anywhere, whether it is in New York or Mecca, and you are more likely to hear a political sermon rather than a theological reflection. In the highly politicized version of Islam promoted by Da’esh, al Qaeda, the Khomeinists in Iran, the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram in Nigeria, God plays a cameo role at best. Deprived of its theological moorings, today’s Islam is a wayward vessel under the captaincy of ambitious adventurers leading it into sectarian feuds, wars and terrorism. Many, especially Muslims in Europe and North America, use it as a shibboleth defining identity and even ethnicity. A glance at Islam’s history in the past 200 years highlights the rapid fading of theologians. Today, Western scholars speak of Wahhabism as if that meant a theological school. In truth, Muhammad Abdul-Wahhabi was a political figure. His supposedly theological writings consist of nine pages denouncing worship at shrines of saints. Nineteenth-century “reformers” such as Jamaleddin Assadabadi and Rashid Rada were also more interested in politics than theology. The late Ayatollah Khomeini, sometimes regarded as a theologian, was in fact a politician wearing clerical costume. His grandson has collected more than 100,000 pages of his writings and speeches and poetry. Of these, only 11 pages, commenting on the first and shortest verse of the Koran, could be regarded as dabbling in theology, albeit not with great success.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

"The mad dream of a dead empire that unites Islamic rebels" http://nypost.com/2014/06/14/the-mad-dream-of-a-dead-empire-that-unites-islamic-rebels/, New York Post (June 14, 2014).
New York Post

Angela Davis photo
Frederick Douglass photo
Vincent Massey photo

“In fact, in the far North one sees the northern lights facing south!”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Annual Dinner of the Canadian Press, Toronto, April 18, 1956
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Bernard Cornwell photo
J. B. Bury photo
William Gibson photo

“It had much more to do with my wanting to be with hippy girls and have lots of hashish than it did with my sympathy for the plight of the North Vietnamese people under US imperialism. Much more, much more to do with hippy girls and hashish.”

William Gibson (1948) American-Canadian speculative fiction novelist and founder of the cyberpunk subgenre

On dodging the draft and moving to Toronto
No Maps for These Territories (2000)

Sergey Lavrov photo
Dan Aykroyd photo

“Well, the common enemy in North America is the Western consumer. The consumer has driven oil up to $50.00 a barrel so we have to have these wars. I think it's incumbent upon us to.”

Dan Aykroyd (1952) Canadian film actor

Response to question from reporters as to who are the enemy in the above comment.
[PEOPLE:Aykroyd a man of the world, but which one?, STEVE, EDDY, Orange County Register, Santa Ana, Calif., December 2, 2004]

Ernst Gombrich photo
Rosa Luxemburg photo
Tom Baker photo
Henry L. Benning photo