– John F. Kennedy

Justice is the bread of the nation, it is always hungry for it.

– Francois R. Chateaubriand

The strength of a nation derives from the integrity of the home.

– Confucius

This will never be a civilized country until we spend more money for books than we do for chewing gum.

– Elbert Hubbard, American Writer (1856-1915)

When Marduk sent me to rule over men, to give the protection of right to the land, I did right and righteousness in … and brought about the well-being of the oppressed.

– Hammurabi’s Code, Babylon, C. 1760 BCE

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

A great city-state is not to be confounded with a populous one.

– Aristotle

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation; indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.

– Winston Churchill

A nation, like a person, has a mind — a mind that must be kept informed and alert, that must know itself, that understands the hopes and needs of its neighbors — all the other nations that live within the narrowing circle of the world.

– Franklin Delano Roosevelt

I am the state.

– Louis XIV of France

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

– Woodrow Wilson

A nation never falls but by suicide.

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

The challenges of change are always hard.  It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future.

– Hillary Clinton

The curse of my nation and myself is that we always think things can be bettered by immediate action of some sort, any sort, rather than no sort.

– Plato

Nothing is more likely to destroy a species or a nation than a determination to survive at all costs.

– C.S. Lewis

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori   (It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.)

– Horace

There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.

– Sun Tzu, Chinese General and Author of the Art of War (C. 500 BCE)

We will not make justices, constables, sheriffs or bailiffs save of such as know the law of the kingdom and mean to observe it well.

– Magna Carta

Each of you, for himself, by himself and on his own responsibility, must speak. And it is a solemn and weighty responsibility, and not lightly to be flung aside at the bullying of pulpit, press, government, or the empty catchphrases of politicians.  Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn’t.  You cannot shirk this and be a man.  To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may.  If you alone of all the nation shall decide one way, and that way be the right way according to your convictions of the right, you have done your duty by yourself and by your country — hold up your head!  You have nothing to be ashamed of.

– Mark Twain

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

– George Bernard Shaw

The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.

– Sigmund Freud

The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.

– G. K. Chesterton

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

– Abraham Lincoln, The Gettysburg Address

The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country’s and ultimately that of the whole of mankind.

– Mahatma Ghandi

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, for our cause it is just,
And this be out motto: —  “In God is our trust!”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

– Francis Scott Key, The Star-Spangled Banner, 1814

The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

– Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls.

– Aristophanes

When humor goes, there goes civilization.

– Erma Bombeck

Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation.

– Oscar Wilde

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

– Winston Churchill

Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective.

– Martin Luther King Jr

Each nation feels superior to other nations. That breeds patriotism — and wars.

– Dale Carnegie

If you want to study the social and political history of modern nations, study hell

– Thomas Merton

Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education… no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

– Abraham Flexner

No nation is permitted to live in ignorance with impunity

– Thomas Jefferson

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

– Winston Churchill

I would rather belong to a poor nation that was free than to a rich nation that had ceased to be in love with liberty.

– Woodrow Wilson

A nation as a society forms a moral person, and every member of it is personally responsible for his society.

– Thomas Jefferson

The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous nation because in the degradation of woman the very fountains of life are poisoned at their source.

– Lucretia Mott

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

– Edward R. Murrow

Bad men cannot make good citizens.  It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

– Patrick Henry

No matter how big a nation is, it is no stronger that its weakest people, and as long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you might otherwise.

– Marian Anderson

A nation’s life is about as long as its reverential memory.

– Whittaker Chambers

No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a part of a continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were….

– John Donne

There is a moral law in this world which has its application both to individuals and organized bodies of men.  You cannot go on violating these laws in the name of your nation, yet enjoy their advantage as individuals.

 – Rabindranath Tagore

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?

– Thomas Jefferson

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin.  But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

– Ernest Hemingway