Scotland quotes
256 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"I have travelled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all!"
"Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind."
"Remember, the Arctic didn't have any ice. And the Northwest Passage was wide open. They were raising grapes in Scotland for God sakes, had a huge winery. Iceland was a farming community. As some of the glaciers retreated they found villages that were covered with ice."
"God help England if she had no Scots to think for her."
"Touch his head, and he will bargain and argue with you to the last; Touch his heart, and he falls upon your breast."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside scotland — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Scotland is the country above all others that I have seen, in which a man of imagination may carve out his own pleasures; there are so many inhabited solitudes."
"The English are not happy unless they are miserable, the Irish are not at peace unless they are at war, and the Scots are not at home unless they are abroad."
"Beautiful, Glorious Scotland, has spoilt me for every other country."
"The mark of a Scot of all classes [is that] he ... remembers and cherishes the memory of his forebears, good or bad; and there burns alive in him a sense of identity with the dead even to the twentieth generation."
"It was here in Edinburgh that in the 1980s I joined with many others to protest against Margaret Thatcher as she arrived to address the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland."
"My point is there's a hidden Scotland in anyone who speaks the Northern Ireland speech. It's a terrific complicating factor, not just in Northern Ireland, but Ireland generally."
"I am more afraid of making a fault in my Latin than of the Kings of Spain, France, Scotland, the whole House of Guise, and all of their confederates."
"I look upon Switzerland as an inferior sort of Scotland."
"We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation."
"The noblest prospect which a Scotchman ever sees is the high road that leads him to England."
"A Scotchman must be a very sturdy moralist who does not love Scotland better than truth."
"Up in the north of Scotland, a lot of the villages are completely Viking names. A lot of Vikings came down and settled in Scotland and in Ireland. And a lot of them didn't, but they took plenty of us with them - mostly the chicks."
"Needless to say, they refused to submit to the Empire, conducting such a persistent guerrilla war that the Romans gave up hope of conquering Scotland, and the Wee Free Men remained both wee and free."
"In Scotland I'm just like a lot of other guys, but in America I'm seen as a very strong, masculine guy."
"The Scots are poor, cries surly English pride; True is the charge, nor by themselves denied. Are they not then in strictest reason clear, Who wisely come to mend their fortunes here?"
"I fell in love with Scotland and made good friends here, so I stayed after graduating with Honours in Chemistry."
"I want to look beyond the legends, to find the real story of Scotland. And it's every bit as thrilling."
"There are no crimes and no criminals in these days. What is the use of having brains in our profession? I know well that I have it in me to make my name famous. No man lives or has ever lived who has brought the same amount of study and of natural talent to the detection of crime which I have done. And what is the result? There is no crime to detect, or, at most, some bungling villainy with a motive so transparent that even a Scotland Yard official can see through it."
"Although, okay, in Scotland, the boys wear the skirts. But as far as pop culture, women were on the forefront of the unisex movement and I'm grateful to you."
"We Slovenians are even better misers than you Scottish. You know how Scotland began? One of us Slovenians was spending too much money, so we put him on a boat and he landed in Scotland."
