National Self-determination Quotes

#1. When we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the rule of law.

Ronald Reagan

#2. Let us put an end to self-inflicted wounds. Let us remember that our national unity is a most priceless asset. Let us deny our adversaries the satisfaction of using Vietnam to pit Americans against Americans.

Gerald R. Ford

#3. Any people has a right to self-determination, and now in Europe the process of diluting national sovereignty in the framework of a united Europe is more accepted.

Vladimir Putin

#4. The objects and the flavor of our national nostalgia are not random. They draw on the memories of a particular group of Americans who have exercised an extraordinary power over the nation's self-image.

Yuval Levin

#5. Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing head-on the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming.

John McCain

#6. New Labour was the most short-sighted, self-serving, incompetent, useless, and ineffective government that Britain has ever known. Make no mistake, Labour's economic policies were a national security liability.

Liam Fox

#7. We are suffering a national defeat comparable to any lost military campaign, and what is more, it is self- inflicted? It is about time that we pulled our fingers out? The rest of the world most certainly does not owe us a living.

Prince Philip

#8. As the spiritual leader of six million people, the Dalai Lama can be credited with a significant renunciation of the authority of tradition - of the conventional politics of national self-interest as well as of religion.

Pankaj Mishra

#9. If the new government rejects our urgent appeal, we will, next year, in solidarity with our people, intensify our struggle for self-determination, our struggle for national liberation to establish self-government in our homeland.

Velupillai Prabhakaran

#10. I speak of honor-your honor to God-your honor to country-your honor to self. I sincerely believe it to be the cure to most of our ills, both on a national or individual basis.

Ezra Taft Benson

#11. But what must be the character of that policy, which aims at national prosperity through the impoverishment of a large proportion of the home producers, with a view to supply foreigners at a cheaper rate, and give them all the benifet of the national privation and self denial?

Jean-Baptiste Say

#12. Hopefully, you will glimpse something of your own life's journey and with Elemental's Power of Illuminated Love, possibly recognize and celebrate something you had not been able to recognize or celebrate before.

Luther E. Vann

#13. There is no calamity which a great nation can invite which equals that which follows a supine submission to wrong and injustice and the consequent loss of national self-respect and honor, beneath which are shielded and defended a people's safety and greatness.

Eldridge Cleaver

#14. This economic boycott is our means of self-defense. President Roosevelt has advocated its use in the National Recovery Administration.

Samuel Untermyer

#15. In several short years, Obama has fundamentally shifted the balance away from the individual and toward government, and has altered the national psyche from self-reliance to ever-growing reliance on government.

Monica Crowley

#16. This clutching hold of the E.U. is a sign of a lack of national self-confidence - which is not healthy.

Nigel Lawson

#17. For those who share my view that the Jews as a people have a right to self-determination, Zionism as a national movement of the Jewish people is the embodiment of this very right, which its opponents want to deny.

Angela Merkel

#18. Nationalism and extremism ... are spreading today like a cancerous growth in the fabric of people's national self-awareness.

Raisa Gorbacheva

#19. A true libertarian supports free enterprise, opposes big business; supports local self-government, opposes the nation-state; supports the National Rifle Association, opposes the Pentagon.

Edward Abbey

#20. What is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest.

Evan Bayh

#21. National politics and elections are dominated by emotions, by lack of self-confidence, by fear of the other, by insecurity, by infection of the body politic by the virus of victimhood.

Tariq Ramadan

#22. I'd actually love to think that I could trust Kerry on national security. But the only way I could do that, at this point, would be via self-delusion.

Glenn Reynolds

#23. A sense of messianic purpose makes the national interest almost indistinguishable from the political interests of the president.

Ron Suskind

#24. Nothing short of self-respect and that justice which is essential to a national character ought to involve us in war.

George Washington

#25. Snowden was extremely good at digital self-defense. When he was employed by the C.I.A. and N.S.A., one of his jobs was to teach U.S. national security officials and C.I.A. employees how to protect their data in high-threat digital environments.

Luke Harding

#26. I am determined to seek self-sufficiency in energy as an urgent national priority. My goal is to make America independent of foreign energy sources by 1985.

Gerald R. Ford

#27. Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one's own people.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

#28. No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

Christopher Dawson

#29. Brazilians need to work on their own national pride. I always think that they suffer from national low-self esteem. It's a lesser-developed country, and they have struggled so much. Sometimes they have an attitude that, if it's Brazilian, it can't be good.

Amy Irving

#30. As a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and associated forces, in response to the 9/11 attacks, and we may also use force consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.

John O. Brennan

#31. The basis of successful relief in national distress is to mobilize and organize the infinite number of agencies of self help in the community. That has been the American way.

Herbert Hoover

#32. The political restructuring we pursue in China is aimed at advancing the self-improvement and development of the socialist political system. We will continue to expand people's democracy and build a socialist country under the rule of law in keeping with China's national conditions.

Hu Jintao

#33. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, which is a pity because this week the National Association of Beholders wrote to tell me that I've got a face like a rucksack full of dented bells.

Charlie Brooker

#34. Inflammatory passion and selfish interest characterizes most men, whereas ambition characterizes men who pursue and hold national office. Such men rise from the people through a process of self-selection, since politics is a dirty business that discourages all but the most ambitious.

Tom Cotton

#35. Our mission is not to impose our peculiar institutions upon other nations by physical force or diplomatic treachery but rather by internal peace and prosperity to solve the problem of self-government and reconcile democratic freedom with national stability.

Benjamin Harrison

#36. The Hebrew Bible is the supreme example of that rarest of phenomena, a national literature of self-criticism. Other ancient civilisations recorded their victories. The Israelites recorded their failures. It is what the Mosaic and prophetic books are about.

Jonathan Sacks

#37. Lies can be verbal or nonverbal, kindhearted or self-serving, devious or bald-faced; they can be lies of omission or lies of commission; they can be lies that undermine national security or lies that make a child feel better. And each type might involve a unique neural pathway.

Robin Marantz Henig

#38. I had been elected to the National Academy of Design in New York, and one of the requirements was that you give a portrait, a self-portrait of yourself.

Jamie Wyeth

#39. If the government announced that it was going to allocate a vast tranche of education funding purely to the pupils at the best public schools, there would be a national outcry - and yet this is precisely what the Olympics represents in terms of sports funding.

Will Self

#40. I called it a baptism in flaming ink that forced me to shed my shyness about recognizing myself as a poet and to accept the fact that life had never given me any choice in the matter. And then I had to discover exactly what that meant.

Aberjhani

#41. National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.

Richard Rorty

#42. I think we can really use magic in a way never attempted before to inspire these children, help rally their self-confidence and even help them develop social skills. This is a national effort, not just here in Las Vegas. I know we can give them a true passion.

Criss Angel

#43. Our grandfathers lived in a world of largely self-sufficient, inward-looking national economies - but our great-great grandfathers lived, as we do, in a world of large-scale international trade and investment, a world destroyed by nationalism.

Paul Krugman

#44. An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the peoples of these two islands, if both independent, the closest possible allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

Eamon De Valera

#45. Mitt Romney's only bottom line is the one at the end of his own bank statement. The problem is that he confuses his own narrow, self-interest - and that of people like him - with the national interest. He thinks as long as we do right by the Mitt Romneys of the world, America will be just fine.

Chuck Schumer

#46. Russian democracy is the power of the Russian people with their own traditions of national self-government, and not the realisation of standards foisted on us from outside.

Vladimir Putin

#47. In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self-defense.

Karl Liebknecht

#48. Behind the deceptive words designed to entice people into supporting violence
words like democracy, freedom, self-defense, national security
there is the reality of enormous wealth in the hands of a few, while billions of people in the world are hungry, sick, homeless.

Howard Zinn

#49. For if humanity has a future on this planet of a hundred million years, it is unthinkable that it should spend those aeons in a ferment of national self-satisfaction and chauvinistic idiocies.

William Golding

#50. Compared with other recent presidents whose stumbles and failures have assaulted the national self-esteem, memories of Kennedy continue to give the country faith that its better days are ahead. That's been reason enough to discount his limitations and remain enamored of his presidential performance.

Robert Dallek

#51. Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties.

H.G.Wells

#52. Economic development is something much wider and deeper than economics, let alone econometrics. Its roots lie outside the economic sphere, in education, organisation, discipline and, beyond that, in political independence and a national consciousness of self-reliance.

E.F. Schumacher

#53. The [National Socialist] Party ... is convinced that our nation can achieve permanent health only from within on the basis of the principle: The common interest before self-interest.

Adolf Hitler