“If it were not for the government, we should have nothing to laugh at in France.”
“How can you govern a country that has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?”
“Frenchmen have an unlimited capacity for gallantry and indulge it on every occasion.”
“The greatest nations have all acted like gangsters and the smallest like prostitutes.”
“China has no income tax, no unemployment and not a single soldier outside its borders.”
“The trees in Siberia are miles apart, that is why the dogs are so fast. [About Russia]”
“France is the country where the money falls apart and you can't tear the toilet paper.”
“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.”
“Switzerland is simply a large, lumpy, solid rock with a thin skin of grass stretched over it.”
“I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.”
“Nationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.”
“France has neither winter nor summer nor morals. Apart from these drawbacks it is a fine country.”
“France is a place where the money falls apart in your hands but you cannot tear the toilet paper.”
“The strength and power of a country depends absolutely on the quantity of good men and women in it.”
“Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.”
“There was never a nation great until it came to the knowledge that it had nowhere in the world to go for help.”
“Nations have always good reasons for being what they are, and the best of all is that they cannot be otherwise.”
“Most nations, as well as people are impossible only in their youth; they become incorrigible as they grow older.”
“I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.”
“The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well ordered homes of the people.”
“Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.”
“Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts -- the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.”
“I do not call the sod under my feet my country; but language -- religion -- government -- blood -- identity in these makes men of one country.”
“States that rise quickly, just as all the other things of nature that are born and grow rapidly, cannot have roots and ramifications; the first bad weather kills them.”
“The policy of Russia is changeless. Its methods, its tactics, its maneuvers may change, but the polar star of its policy, world domination, is a fixed star. [About Russia]”
“God how I hate new countries: They are older than the old, more sophisticated, much more conceited, only young in a certain puerile vanity more like senility than anything.”
“In every particular state of the world, those nations which are strongest tend to prevail over the others; and in certain marked peculiarities the strongest tend to be the best.”
“Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.”
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
“In the true sense one's native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”