Country quotes
20.3K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside country — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"New York has her wilderness within her own borders; and though the sailors of Europe are familiar with the soundings of her Hudson, and Fulton long since invented the steamboat on its waters, an Indian is still necessary to guide her scientific men to its headwaters in the Adirondack country."
"When a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army."
"True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism."
"You can't tell me you can make any system or country work with low wages and high prices, and high wages with high prices don't mean anything when the prices eat up the wages and don't leave anything over."
"When you see big people, they expect them to wobble or something. The whole feeling of bigger people in this country is so negative. This works for me."
"If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration."
"Where do real conversations about citizenship occur? In our schools. Think about the things you learned in first grade. "My Country 'Tis of Thee," "I pledge allegiance to the flag," "America the Beautiful.""
"No politician has ever yet been able to rule his country, nor has any country ever yet been able to face the world, upon the principles of the Sermon on the Mount."
"I have seen white settlers in Africa who had sworn that they would never sit down to table with those "smelly blacks" sit down quite happily with half-nude tribesmen once a country achieves independence. It is the context of power which changes behavior and transmutes antipathy into sympathy."
"I think every child in every country, not just South Africa, every year should go to a national park, and it should be part of their basic curriculum."
"People look at things differently. Imagine going to a village in Southern Sudan and try to explain to someone there the concept of life insurance or retirement. Go to Vietnam and say retirement. Retirement in another country is your body is too racked with pain and your hands are too arthritic from the life in the rice patty fields, so you can't work anymore. So you move in with your son and his new wife takes care of you because that's how families work there."
"Politics is a thing that I follow because it determines what is going on in my country, but I vote and deal with politicians with a great degree of jaundiced eye."
"The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country."
"God was left out of the Constitution but was furnished a front seat on the coins of the country."
"I like country music. I'm not going to lie. I'm from the South, and I grew up on it. My dad was a country singer-songwriter, so it's in my blood, and I love it."
"The feel of the place was deep, the prehistoric heartbeat of the rocks complicating the music, the people bright, all different kinds of dancers, smilers, swayers, swirlers, smokers, beer-drinking boppers, tripsters, spinners. I looked back at the crowd...and saw the show for a moment as a jewel...like a gem in a bracelet: an ornament on the body of the country, glittering in the coming darkness."
"Electing a black man named Barack Obama President in the same country that elected George W. Bush - twice! - is as far-fetched as a hustler from Marcy performing at that President's inauguration. But it happened."
"At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Let them eat cake"."
"In developing countries the situation could be even worse because developing countries do not have to count their emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Private companies from industrialized nations will seek cheap carbon credits for their country in the developing world."
"It is important to understand, not intellectually but actually in your daily life, how you have built images about your wife, your husband, your neighbor, your child, your country, your leaders, your politicians, your gods-you have nothing but images. The images create the space between you and what you observe and in that space there is conflict, so what we are going to find out now together is whether it is possible to be free of the space we create, not only outside ourselves but in ourselves, the space which divides people in all their relationships."
