This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Democratic nations will habitually prefer the useful to the beautiful, and they will require that the beautiful should be useful." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Forms become more necessary as the government becomes more active and powerful, and private persons become more indolent and feeble. By their nature, democratic nations stand more in need of forms than other nations, and respect them less." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"Nations are less disposed to make revolutions in proportion as personal property is augmented and distributed among them and as the number of those possessing it is increased." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"All nations have present, or past, or future reasons for thinking themselves incomparable." - Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
"Growing nations should remember that, in nature, no tree, though placed in the best conditions of light, soil, and plot, can continue to grow and spread indefinitely." - Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
"It must be admitted that liberty is the hardest test that one can inflict on a people. To know how to be free is not given equally to all men and all nations." - Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
"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, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"Among [European governments] under pretense of governing, they have divided their nations into two classes, wolves and sheep." - Thomas Jefferson
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none." - Thomas Jefferson
"So when in this day I see the leaders of nations again talking peace while preparing for war, I take fearful pause." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Sensuality is the vice of young men and of old nations." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
"In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide; and I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on an endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations." - Douglas MacArthur
"How is freedom measured, in individuals as in nations? By the resistance which has to be overcome." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of Government." - Thomas Paine
"Happy nations have no history. History is the study of mankind's misfortunes." - Raymond Queneau
"Nations will rise and fall, but equality remains the ideal. The universal aim is to achieve respect for the entire human race, not for the dominant few." - Carlos Peña Rómulo
"The meaning and purpose of the world remain to a large extent inexplicable. But one thing is clear: the purpose of all events is spiritual. The purpose of existence is that we human beings, all nations and the whole of humanity, should constantly progress toward perfection. If we do this, our finite spirit will be in harmony with the infinite." - Albert Schweitzer
"In the kingdom of God there is no invidious distinction, and therefore this dispensation gathers all men and nations, all races and tribes, the high and the low, and seeks to establish one vast brotherhood among the children of the great God, who hath made of one blood all nations of men." - Keshub Chandra Sen
"Let us remember that no blessing of God is so sweet as life and liberty. Let us remember that the stature of all mankind is diminished so long as nations or parts of nations are still unfree. Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of human degradation, his bonds of poverty – the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual, and intellectual bonds which for too long stunted the development of mankind’s majority." - Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo
"At the present time, global interdependence is celebrated as a self-evident good. The royal road to development, peace, and harmony is thought to be the unrelenting conquest of each nation's market by all other nations." - Herman E. Daly
"What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations." - Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
"We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century." - Albert Camus
"We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century." -
"Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
"Today the nations of the world may be divided into two classes - the nations in which the government fears the people, and the nations in which the people fear the government." - Amos Pinchot, fully Amos Richards Eno Pinchot
"Today the nations of the world may be divided into two classes – the nations in which government fears the people, and the nations in which the people fear the government." - Amos Pinchot, fully Amos Richards Eno Pinchot
"Nations follow their historic interests rather more faithfully than they do their ideologies." - Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
"One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of Divine Will." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men." - Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL
"The world is divided into two groups of nations - those that want to expel the Jews and those that do not want to receive them." - Chaim Weizmann, fully Chaim Azirel Weizmann
"It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Those who visit foreign nations, but who associate only with their own countrymen, change their climate, but not their customs; they see new meridians, but the same men; and with heads as empty as their pockets, return home with traveled bodies, but untraveled minds." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Because it is more difficult to limit wars to a single area, all wars are of concern for all nations. Not only construction, but also destruction may today be global." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations." - David Friedman
"Examine the history of all nations and all centuries and you will always find men subject to three codes: the code of nature, the code of society, and the code of religion; and constrained to infringe upon al three codes in succession, for these codes never were in harmony. the result of this has been that never was in any country... a real man, a real citizen, or a real believer." - Denis Diderot
"Instead of casting away our old prejudices, we cherish them to a very considerable degree, and, more shame to ourselves, we cherish them because they are prejudices; and the longer they have lasted the more we cherish them. We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason, because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages." - Edmund Burke
"Education is the cheap defense of nations." - Edmund Burke
"How many and deep are the divisions between human beings? Not only are there divisions between races, nations, classes and religions but also almost totally incomprehension between sexes, the old and young, the sick and healthy. There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other." - Eric Hoffer
"There is as yet no civilized society, but only a society in the process of becoming civilized. There is as yet no civilized nation, but only nations in the process of becoming civilized. From this standpoint, we can now speak of a collective task of humankind. The task of humanity is to build a genuine civilization." - Felix Adler
"As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality." - George Washington
"Nations rarely pay for services already rendered." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Throughout history the political influence of nations has been roughly correlative to their military power." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger