Quotes About The National Interest

#1. For German Social Democracy, Europe is vital to the national interest.

Martin Schulz

#2. For the past 15 years or so, British governments have tried to persuade the rest of us that the best judges of the national interest are ... businessmen. This may be a ridiculous statement, but
ominously
fewer and fewer people laugh at it.

Neal Ascherson

#3. The problem we have had on the budget all along is a lack of adult supervision on the part of the White House. You can't blame members of Congress for looking out for their parochial interests. It is the president's responsibility to look out for the national interest.

Bruce Bartlett

#4. I would dodge, not lie, in the national interest.

Larry Speakes

#5. If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.

Jimmy Breslin

#6. As members of Congress, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and bear true faith and allegiance to the United States, not the Republican or Democratic party. I have been willing to stand up to my own leadership when it's in the national interest.

Jackie Speier

#7. The Constitution was the expression not only of a political faith, but also of political fears. It was wrought both as the organ of the national interest and as the bulwark of certain individual and local rights.

Herbert Croly

#8. Republican voters believe we should have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest. They don't believe we should enter into - commit the United States to further globalist policies that diminish the sovereignty and freedom of American to act in its own interest.

Jeff Sessions

#9. I will not stand idly when anyone gets in the way of the national interest and tries to block the national vision. From where I sit, I can tell you, a president is always as strong as she wants to be.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

#10. Pakistan has made no mention of ending our tests. We have a missile program, and it is in the national interest whatever we want to do.

Ayub Khan

#11. Real government is about looking beyond the vested to the national interest, setting up the necessary conditions to enable the next, more enabled and more empowered generation to achieve a country as prosperous, a people as content, as ours deserve to be.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

#12. The masters represent "the national interest," like those who applauded themselves for leading the country to war "after the utmost deliberation by the more thoughtful members of the community" had reached its "moral verdict.

Noam Chomsky

#13. The limitations imposed by democratic political practices makes it difficult to conduct our foreign affairs in the national interest.

Dean Acheson

#14. The statesman must think in terms of the national interest, conceived as power among other powers. The popular mind, unaware of the fine distinctions of the statesman's thinking, reasons more often than not in the simple moralistic and legalistic terms of absolute good and absolute evil.

Hans Morgenthau

#15. 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

#16. When my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the
same.

John F. Kennedy

#17. The national interest is predetermined by geopolitics or the history of a country. Important political leaders never just followed their interests - they were concerned about the interests of their people.

Joseph Nye

#18. It's time to put the national interest before the interests of Wall Street.

Martin O'Malley

#19. It is both a right and a responsibility of a democratic society to manage immigration so that it serves the national interest.

Barbara Jordan

#20. People in Parliament occupy themselves with private animosities and petty quarrels, and think little of the national interest. It is impossible to credit the serene indifference with which they consider events outside their own country.

William III Of England

#21. Party is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.

Edmund Burke

#22. There exists a shadowy Government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of the national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.

Daniel Inouye

#23. Legislators consistently put the political imperative before the national interest.

Doug Bandow

#24. Newspapers can make their own judgment in terms of who they support in a general election. Our responsibility is to make a considered judgment about where the national interest lies.

Douglas Alexander

#25. A wartime Minister of Information is compelled, in the national interest, to such continuous acts of duplicity that even his natural hair must grow to resemble a wig.

Claud Cockburn

#26. I wanted to put the national interest before my personal interests.

Michael Gove

#27. Monopolizing the right to speak authoritatively about "security" in name of everyone - the ability to evoke the "national interest" or a universal "we" - is at the crux of the practice of power.

Gearoid O Tuathail

#28. Congress has the responsibility to ensure that any international trade agreement entered into by the United States must serve the national interest, not merely the interests of those crafting the proposal in secret.

Jeff Sessions

#29. A president is supposed to calm the American people with sober decision-making in the national interest.

Monica Crowley

#30. The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn't make it.

Henry A. Kissinger

#31. I'm not against free trade but I'm against free trade deals that are negotiated badly, that actually compromise jobs, manufacturing jobs, compromise the national interest.

Nick Xenophon

#32. Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.

Thomas Sowell

#33. What governments and people don't realise is that sometimes the collective interest - the international interest - is also the national interest.

Kofi Annan

#34. The purpose of privilege is not to place parliamentarians above the law, but rather to allow them to carry out their duties independently and effectively, in the national interest.

John Allen Fraser

#35. My fundamental interests are to preserve the good name and standing of this Australian Labor Party and to act in the national interest on behalf of the Australian Government.

Kevin Rudd

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

Ron Suskind

#37. It is in the national interest to have the Flying Kangaroo. It's in the interests of our tourism industry. It's in the interests of jobs here in Australia.

Anthony Albanese

#38. Our system provides for a winner to take office on January 20th, and he is expected to take command of the ship of state. Failure to do so, characterized by hesitation and indecision, will harm the national interest.

Richard V. Allen

#39. They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.

Henry A. Kissinger

#40. If a State has reliable scientific information that demonstrates that a warning is needed for a particular food, then in the interest of public health, it should share that information with the FDA and petition for a new national standard.

Nathan Deal

#41. We do not deny any nation's legitimate interest in security. But protecting the security of one nation by robbing another of its national independence and national traditions is not legitimate. In the long run, it is not even secure.

Ronald Reagan

#42. Tackling deprivation around the world is a moral imperative and firmly in Britain's national interest.

Andrew Mitchell

#43. I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.

Winston S. Churchill

#44. Our foreign policy needs to support our energy, economic, defense and domestic policies. It all falls within the arch of national interest. There will be windows of opportunity, but they will open and close quickly.

Chuck Hagel

#45. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interest, where any chosen emphasis supports some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial, or national or sexual.

Howard Zinn

#46. Britain could make her own way in the world, outside the EU, if we chose to do so. So could any other Member State. But the question we will have to ask ourselves is this: is that the very best future for our country? We will have to weigh carefully where our true national interest lies.

David Cameron

#47. The history and national interest of Rwanda and the Rwandan people dictate our national orientation.

Paul Kagame

#48. We pay a price when special interests win out over the collective national interest.

Chris Christie

#49. Judo should be free as art and science from any external influences, political, national, racial, and financial or any other organized interest. And all things connected with it should be directed to its ultimate object, the benefit of Humanity

Kano Jigoro

#50. The National Enquirer is complete garbage, it is total lies, it was planted by Donald Trump's henchmen, and I don't think the people of Wisconsin or the people of America have any interest in tabloid trash.

Ted Cruz

#51. In FY 2006, interest payments alone on the national debt cost us $406 billion ... What a waste ... That $406 billion is pathetically squandered on interest, just because we lacked the discipline to pay our bills when due.

Bill Press

#52. I believe that we need to set conditions to close the detention facility at Guantanamo. This includes retaining the option to transfer detainees from this facility elsewhere ... It is in the U.S.'s national security interest to do so.

Pete Visclosky

#53. In the process of ego, in the process of lobbying and in the process of just criticising for stake of criticism or in the process of politicising, don't commit national crime. Don't prevent exploration in the country. Let us move ahead more aggressively; it is in the best interest of the country.

Veerappa Moily

#54. Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood.

Dick Morris

#55. 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

#56. Our national debt after all is an internal debt owed not only by the Nation but to the Nation. If our children have to pay interest on it they will pay that interest to themselves. A reasonable internal debt will not impoverish our children or put the Nation into bankruptcy.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

#57. New York is essentially national in interest, position, pursuits. No one thinks of the place as belonging to a particular state, but to the United States.

James F. Cooper

#58. My prevailing interest has been in the world as a whole, and in the place of a person in a larger setting than one defined by national boundaries.

John Hersey

#59. Israel is the historical definition of the specific nature of the religious consciousness, save only that here this consciousness was circumscribed by the limits of a particular, national interest. Hence, we need only let these limits fall, and we have the Christian religion.

Ludwig Feuerbach

#60. We do foreign assistance for altruistic reasons, certainly for humanitarian reasons, of course. But the main reason we do foreign assistance is we do it in the American national interest.

Roger Wicker

#61. Only a war that serves no conceivable national interest gets the New York Time's endorsement. Liberals warm to the idea of American mothers weeping for their sons, but only if their deaths will not make America any safer.

Ann Coulter

#62. My agency in promoting the passage of the National Banking Act was the greatest mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly which affects every interest in the country

Salmon P. Chase

#63. I really don't have a lot of interest in national politics, and it's because I'm a skeptic. I think you can accomplish a lot more locally. I don't want to spin the wheels and not get anything done.

Ron Conway

#64. The Primrose Way. National problems had ceased to interest the citizens. Local problems left them cold. Their minds were riveted to the exclusion of all else on the problem of how to secure seats.

P.G. Wodehouse

#65. Business cycles lengthened greatly during the 20th century, as central banks learned to manage national economies by raising and lowering interest rates.

Alex Berenson

#66. I recognise that fishing is perhaps not the most high-employment industry in this country, but it's a symbol of what we lost when we entered the E.U.: control over national resources that, if we retained them, we could have husbanded in our interest and, indeed, in the interest of others.

Michael Gove

#67. In some cases, in order to protect global issues some sacrifice for national interest is worth it in the long run. Global warming, these things, they suffer everybody.

Dalai Lama

#68. What remains constant for me, during the last 15 years, has been the conviction that the cold war was a calamity for the entire world, and that it can be justified by no consideration of theory, nor by any supposed national interest.

Earl Browder

#69. 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

#70. After all, despite the economic advantage to firms that employed child labor, it was in the social interest, as a national policy, to abolish it - removing that advantage for all firms.

Barry Commoner

#71. I still remember vividly watching television coverage of the Democratic National Convention in the summer of 1992 (when he was 17) when Bill Clinton got the nomination. That was certainly a part of my growing interest in politics.

Josh Earnest

#72. What our Republican friends are doing, if we look at what they do and not what they say, they have decided that the most important thing in this country is to increase payments for interest on the national debt.

Tom Allen

#73. The follies that produced the loss of American virtue following Vietnam begin with continuous overreacting, in the invention of endangered national security, the invention of vital interest, the invention of a commitment which rapidly assumed a life of its own .

Barbara W. Tuchman

#74. We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest.

John Adams

#75. The refunding of the national debt at a lower rate of interest should be accomplished without compelling the withdrawal of the national-bank notes, and thus disturbing the business of the country.

James A. Garfield

#76. The reasonableness of the agency of the national courts in cases in which the state tribunals cannot be supposed to be impartial, speaks for itself. No man ought certainly to be a judge in his own cause, or in any cause in respect to which he has the least interest or bias.

Alexander Hamilton

#77. 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

#78. You can't tell me that all the wars we are fighting are in America's national security interest.

Todd Rokita

#79. My interest in science was excited at age nine by an article on astronomy in National Geographic; the author was Donald Menzel of the Harvard Observatory. For the next few years, I regularly made star maps and snuck out at night to make observations from a locust tree in our back yard.

Dudley R. Herschbach

#80. I don't believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans aren't that desperate for victory.

Margaret Chase Smith

#81. The political truths declared in that solemn manner acquire by degrees the character of fundamental maxims of free Government, and as they become incorporated with national sentiment, counteract the impulses of interest and passion.

James Madison

#82. We shouldn't be thinking about individuals or departments. We should be thinking about national interest. Lifting the standard of Pakistan squash is like working towards national interest.

Jahangir Khan

#83. My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it.

Rupert Murdoch

#84. 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

#85. 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

#86. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality.

Karl Marx

#87. In Maine, we are fortunate to have a Clean Elections system that allows legislators to turn down corporate special interest money. At the national level, Congress should follow Maine's example by empowering the voices of small donors.

Chellie Pingree

#88. May it be long before the people of the United States shall cease to take a deep and pervading interest in the Fourth of July, as the birthday of our national life, or the event which then occurred shall be subordinated to any other of our national history.

Samuel Freeman Miller

#89. For the United States, supporting international development is more than just an expression of our compassion. It is a vital investment in the free, prosperous, and peaceful international order that fundamentally serves our national interest.

Condoleezza Rice

#90. I do not think about the national team too much because footballistically it is not of too much interest.

Arsene Wenger

#91. Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?

Shashi Tharoor

#92. I have long argued that paying down the national debt is beneficial for the economy: it keeps interest rates lower than they otherwise would be and frees savings to finance increases in the capital stock, thereby boosting productivity and real incomes.

Alan Greenspan

#93. And now, in the interest of equal time, here is a message from the National Institute of Pancakes: It reads, and I quote, Fuck waffles.

George Carlin

#94. It is of major importance for the future of our country that through his defence and the fact he died without being convicted, Milosevic had managed to defend national and state interest.

Ivica Dacic

#95. Obviously, there has to be a profound change in direction. Otherwise, interest on the national debt will start eating up virtually every penny that we have.

Bobby Scott

#96. Is it in our national interest to overheat the planet? That's the question Obama faces in deciding whether to approve Keystone XL, a 2,000-mile-long pipeline that will bring 500,000 barrels of tar-sand oil from Canada to oil refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

Jeff Goodell

#97. The United States-Israeli relationship is based on the broadest conception of American national interest in which our two nations are bound forever together by common democratic values and traditions. This will never change.

Colin Powell

#98. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges, at the hands of men, who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.

Thomas A. Edison

#99. Finally we are a nation with some conscience. It means alliances are extremely important when they're based on a national interest. We have to have the ability to sustain our presence within those alliances.

Malcolm Wallop

#100. I dare say that a majority of the American people think that having a fair hearing on an issue of importance in our relations with Mexico is extremely important to our national interest, as well as theirs.

William Weld