France has neither winter, summer, nor morals—apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.
—Mark Twain, 1879Quotes
Other nations use “force”; we Britons alone use “might.”
—Evelyn Waugh, 1938If you wish to avoid foreign collision, you had better abandon the ocean.
—Henry Clay, 1812If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world, and that his heart is no island cut off from other lands, but a continent that joins to them.
—Francis Bacon, 1625All men naturally hate each other. We have used concupiscence as best we can to make it serve the common good, but this is mere sham and a false image of charity, for essentially it is just hate.
—Blaise Pascal, c. 1655Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
—George W. Bush, 2004The misfortune of the man of color is having been enslaved. The misfortune and inhumanity of the white man are having killed man somewhere.
—Frantz Fanon, 1952We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.
—Oscar Wilde, 1887Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764I do desire we may be better strangers.
—William Shakespeare, 1600No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909