National Character Quotes

“Your pride for your country should not come after your country becomes great; your country becomes great because of your pride in it.”
― Idowu Koyenikan

“Englishmen are so odd. They are like a nest of Chinese boxes. It takes a very long time to get to the centre of them. When one gets there the result is unrewarding, but the process is instructive and entertaining.”
― Ian Fleming, Casino Royale

“We were all involved in the death of John Kennedy. We tolerated hate; we tolerated the sick stimulation of violence in all walks of life; and we tolerated the differential application of law, which said that a man's life was sacred only if we agreed with his views. This may explain the cascading grief that flooded the country in late November. We mourned a man who had become the pride of the nation, but we grieved as well for ourselves because we knew we were sick.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., Why We Can't Wait

“What constitutes the character of a nation is the character of many individual human beings; every national character is in essence, simply human nature. All the worlds nations, therefore, have a great deal in common with one another. The foundation of any national character is human nature. The foundation of national character is simply a particular colouring taken on by human nature, a particular crystallisation of it.”
― Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook

“Communication between people of different nationalities enriches human society and makes it more colourful.. Imagine our Russian intellectuals, the kind, merry, perceptive old women in our villages, our elderly workers, our young lads, our little girls being free to enter the melting pot of ordinary human intercourse with the people of North and South America, of China, France, India, Britain and the Congo. What a rich variety of customs, fashion, cuisine and labour would then be revealed! what a wonderful human community would then come into being, emerging out of so many peculiarities of national characters and ways of life. And the beggarliness, blindness and inhumanity of narrow nationalism and hostility between states would be clearly demonstrated.”
― Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook

“qYour pride for your country should not come after your country becomes great; your country becomes great because of your pride in it.”
― Idowu Koyenikan, Wealth for all Africans: How Every African Can Live the Life of Their Dreams

“... history - the lamp which illumines national character...”
― Lawrence Durrell, Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

“We can view politics as an art form, since political action shapes human beings destiny to be an ambassador of goodwill and humanitarian activities. Alternatively, we can perceive politics as a crime because it can give vent to collective passions of hatred and barbarism. Americans must decide whether to muster our collective political powers to end warfare and curb corporate exploitation of natural resources or pursue nationalism and perpetuate barbarous ruination of the environment. The outcome of these decisive challenges will alter our national consciousness.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“In Rome, instead, it is clear: people know that most of the time they can get away, not with murder, of course, but with many other misdemeanors. The result? Ignoring the rules has become a quasi national habit.”
― Sari Gilbert, My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City

“In Italy, most laws are honored more in the breach than the observance. “Fatta la legge, trovato l’inganno”, goes one saying that means, “pass a law and we’ll find a way to get around it”. You don’t have to spend much time in Rome to realize that stop signs, and even red lights, are often disregarded, as are those reading “no parking or standing”, and even “one way”.”
― Sari Gilbert, My Home Sweet Rome: Living (and loving) in Italy's Eternal City

“America has many faults, one of the worst being that Americans always want answers to everything, and when you tell them there aren't any, are very upset. But when they are in a tough spot they do look forward...”
― W.H. Auden

“Passing to historical nations, we must first point out that in relation to them the word race cannot and should not be used at all. We do not know of any historical nation that can be regarded as racially pure; each of them is the product of an extremely lengthy and intense process of interbreeding and intermingling of different ethnic elements.

Now try, after this, to determine the influence of “race” on the history of the ideologies of any nation! At a first glance it seems that nothing could be simpler and more correct than the idea that natural environment influences national temperament and, through temperament, the history of the nation’s intellectual and aesthetic development. But if Labriola had only recalled the history of his own country, he would have been convinced of the erroneousness of this idea. The modern Italians are surrounded by the same natural environment as that in which the ancient Romans lived, yet how unlike is the “temperament” of our modern tributaries of Menelik to the temperament of the stern conquerors of Carthage! If we were to undertake to explain the history of Italian art, for example, by the Italian temperament, we should very soon be confronted by the baffling question why this temperament, for its part, varied so profoundly at different times and in different parts of the Apennine Peninsula.”
― Georgi Plekhanov, The Materialist Conception of History

“Późno i lekką ręką przyjęty chrzest był pierwszym poważnym przejawem ukraińskiego charakteru - niezbyt się przeciwstawialiśmy, ale chrześcijańska forma nie naruszyła naszej pogańskiej esencji. Dwuwiara - pokojowe współistnienie chrześcijańskiej formy z pogańskim jądrem - stała się podstawą naszej egzystencji.”
― Taras Prokhasko, W gazetach tego nie napiszą

“Deutsche Charaktere. Das ist die schon hundertmal hergeleierte Klage der allgemeinen Bibliothek, über der einem fast alle Gedult ausgehen mögte. Ich frage gleich: Was ist ein deutscher Charakter? Was? Nicht wahr, Tabakrauchen und Ehrlichkeit? O Ihr einfältigen Tröpfe. Hört seid so gut und sagt mir, was ist es für Wetter in Amerika? Soll ichs statt eurer sagen? Gut. Es blitzt, es hagelt, es ist dreckig, es ist schwül, es ist nicht auszustehn, es schneit, friert, wehet und die Sonne scheint.”
― Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Lichtenberg Schriften und Briefe Band 1

“The world credits and honors you because of your leaders' honesty, credibility, and role in neutral diplomatic politics and the inclusion of human rights; it doesn't lie in your religious values, cultural values, or political system; it entirely depends on your national character.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“I do believe in the existence of something which may roughly be named "national character." It must not, however, be misunderstood in a naturalistic sense. It belongs to the socio-cultural, not to the biological sphere. National character may be identified with the specific "way of life," with the complex of cultural values, patterns of behaviour, and system of institutions which are peculiar to each country. The national character is formed historically, and it is possible to determine the factors that have entered into its make-up. Once crystallized, it is likely to show considerable stability and an ability to reject, or assimilate, disruptive influences. Of great importance is the fact that a national character, or cultural type, is not something unique and original, but rather an individual combination of traits which are widespread through the world, and common to a number of peoples.”
― Ivan L. Rudnytsky, Essays in Modern Ukrainian History

“Мы, беларусы, хітрыя — чорта абдурым.”
― Якуб Колас, На ростанях