Compatriots Quotes & Sayings

The perpetually indignant elites inhabited a self-contained echo chamber of boardrooms, golf clubs, dinner parties and private media. They thought they were Venezuela. They could not see how their hysterics repelled and radicalised less-privileged compatriots. Thus they kept lunging and, in election after election, would keep losing. — Rory Carroll

The west has decided to channel money and effort into studying other customs and practices, but no one has really given other people the chance to study western customs and practices, except at schools maintained by white expatriates, or by allowing the rich from other cultures to study in Oxford or Paris. What happens then is that they return home to organise fundamentalist movements, because they feel solidarity with those of their compatriots who lack the opportunity for such education. — Umberto Eco

An outdated view still prevails that a low-carbon lifestyle requires immense personal suffering and sacrifice. In my view, nothing could be further from the truth. All the evidence shows that people who do not drive, do not fly on planes, do shop locally, do grow their own food, and do get to know other members of their community have a much higher quality of life than their compatriots who still persist in making the ultimate sacrifice of wasting their lives commuting to work in cars. — Mark Lynas

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people's constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to. — Clifford Geertz

This is how I see humanity. When enemies come to your country, destroy the countryside and your village, kill your countrymen, your comrades and the defenseless wounded, you have to kill them and defend your compatriots; that is true humanity. — Tom Mangold

There had been a time, until 1422, when a number of both Gaelic and Anglo-Irish students attended Oxford and Cambridge in England. But fellow students had complained that Irish living together in large numbers sooner or later got noisy and violent and there was no handling them. Accordingly, the universities imposed a quota system on Irishman, and decreed that those admitted must be scattered around among non-compatriots: exclusively Irish halls of residence were banned. — Emily Hahn

All my compatriots are asses compared to me. — Paul Cezanne

He [Hugo Chavez] put poverty at the heart of political debate. Rightly so, given the country's immense inequality and poverty. He invested heavily in social programs such as literacy, health clinics, and education. He promoted Venezuela's indigenous culture and urged compatriots to take pride in its pre-Columbian history. He called time on the US treating Latin America as its backyard. — Rory Carroll

The part that wasn't a jackpot was his baseball mound of red pubic hair that looked like it had literally been attached with a glue gun. I couldn't believe how much there was, and wondered how he had never heard of scissors, or
more appropriate for that kind of growth
hedge trimmers. I didn't understand what porn he was watching to not be aware of the trimming that was happening all across the world among his compatriots. I'm not a finicky person when it comes to pubic hair maintenance and I certainly don't expect men to shave it all off, leaving themselves to look like a hairless cat. That's even creepier then than seeing what Austin had, which could really only be compared to one thing: A clown in a leg lock. — Chelsea Handler

Unlike his compatriots - many of whom were still, in their mid-twenties, adolescent posturers, doomed to futility - he had an engaging earnestness about him. Unlike them, he realized his incompleteness as a person and strove to overcome that.
One of the ways in which he did that was by reading. He didn't read much, or too widely, but attentively, looking for instruction, hints for self-improvement, and he read serious books. — Pankaj Mishra

A person does not lightly elect to oppose his society. One would much rather be at home among one's compatriots than be mocked and detested by them. And there is a level on which the mockery of people, even their hatred, is moving, because it is so blind: It is terrible to watch people cling to their captivity and insist on their own destruction. — James Baldwin

Not because Socrates said so, ... I look upon all men as my compatriots. — Michel De Montaigne

The Igbo culture, being receptive to change, individualistic, and highly competitive, gave the Igbo man an unquestioned advantage over his compatriots in securing credentials for advancement in Nigerian colonial society. Unlike the Hausa/Fulani he was unhindered by a wary religion, and unlike the Yoruba he was unhampered by traditional hierarchies. This kind of creature, fearing no god or man, was custom-made to grasp the opportunities, such as they were, of the white man's dispensations. And — Chinua Achebe

Compassion makes no distinction between friends and enemies, neighbors and outsiders, compatriots and foreigners. Compassion is the gate to human community. — Joan D. Chittister

British rule also left its mark on Hong Kong in a more important and sustainable way. It led to the rise of a people that remains quintessentially Chinese and yet share a way of life, core values and an outlook that resemble at least as much, if not more, that of the average New Yorker or Londoner, rather than that of their compatriots in China. — Steve Tsang

In all my life and in the future, I will always be a faithful and loyal servant to all of my compatriots. — Norodom Sihamoni

Only with the honour thus acquired can we earn the respect of our other compatriots as well. — Janos Kadar

Witness two scenes. In one, an angry, bitter man beats another man to death in an alley in the Gadrobi District. In the other, a man of vast wealth conspires with equally wealthy compatriots to raise yet again the price of grain, making the cost of simple bread so prohibitive that families starve, are led into lives of crime, and die young. Are both acts of violence? — Steven Erikson

On the spur of the hill stood the ruins of an old brewery. The roof had long since disappeared and the rain had beaten the stone floors smooth and yellow. Some enterprising Englishman had spent a lifetime here making beer for his thirsty compatriots down in the plains. Now, moss and ferns grew from the walls. — Ruskin Bond

But he isn't dead?' 'No, he isn't, as you can very well see. Instead of striking him between the sixth and seventh left rib, as your compatriots usually do, you must have struck higher or lower; and these lawyers, you know, are not easy to kill off. — Alexandre Dumas

My line is probably a little more conservative than some of my compatriots in the business. But again, I think it's all - like, it just - it comes down to me knowing who I am and knowing how I want to be seen in the world, how I want to discuss things. — John Legend

While it was irrational to bristle at the company of compatriots, one of the traits that Americans seem to share is a common dislike of running into one another in foreign countries. Perhaps it was having that mirror held up, reflecting an image so often loud, aggressive, and overweight. Irina didn't have a big problem with being American herself (everyone has to come from somewhere, and you don't get to choose), although, a second-generation Russian on her mother's side, she had always presumed her nationality to have an opt-out clause. Maybe she — Lionel Shriver

Not because Socrates said so, but because it is in truth my own disposition - and perchance to some excess - I look upon all men as my compatriots, and embrace a Pole as a Frenchman, making less account of the national than of the universal and common bond. — Michel De Montaigne

When I told him about Jordan, out flashed pictures of his grandkids. This was how I was introduced to the secret society of grans. We're instant compatriots. If you want to break the ice with someone who's in the society, all you have to do is ask, "So how old is yours? — Lesley Stahl

The need of politeness is at its maximum in speaking with foreigners, and is so irksome as to be paralysing to those who are only accustomed to compatriots. — Bertrand Russell

I started asking the big questions that I had asked in college, that my compatriots the Greek philosophers had asked, like 'what is a good life?' Socrates famously said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' I started asking these questions from the starting point of 'what is success?' — Arianna Huffington

I believe that international support through critical funds, together with the determination of my compatriots, Malawi can be a model country for meeting global health targets and get on with the business of African-driven global economic growth. — Joyce Banda

Doors were both the bane and the blessing of existence. When they worked the way you wanted, when you wanted, you could ask no more of life. Most of the time, however, the evil blasted things were clearly possessed by the devil and intent on nothing but murdering you and your compatriots by stubbornly refusing to open, or close, or whatever it was you needed them to do. — Evan Currie

Huck is initially taken in by these two rogues, in the same manner that many Americans have been conned by progressives. The progressive scams, however, have endured for a while. Huck, however, is a quick learner. He soon figures out what his high-titled compatriots are up to. "It didn't take me long to make up my mind that these liars warn't no kings or dukes either, but just low-down humbugs and frauds."10 Assessing the pitches that progressives have been putting forward for at least the past seven years, from the reparations pitch to the inequality pitch to the "you didn't build that" pitch to the Lucky Luciano pitch, it is difficult to come to a different conclusion. — Dinesh D'Souza

The war, as I felt it and a lot of my compatriots felt it, was a creative act. — Lawrence Halprin

Hong Kong compatriots will surely display great love for the motherland and for Hong Kong and take it as their utmost honor to maintain long-term prosperity and stability in Hong Kong and safeguard the fundamental interests of the country, — Jiang Zemin

It's probably your fiercest critics - not your compatriots - who have the sharpest, most resonant insights. — Umair Haque

Successful American presidents project a populist image. They do not place themselves above their compatriots but strive whenever possible to show qualities typical of "average" Americans. If they have an intellectual bent, they do their best to hide it. To be likable, smiling, and unpretentious is all-important, to express the values of middle America an essential prerequisite for greatness. — Fredrik Logevall

I like the fact that my compatriots have such vacant and protruding eyes. They fill me with virtuous pride. You can imagine what eyes are like (in the capitalist world). ...such eyes look at you with distrust, reflecting constant worry and torment. That's what they're like in the land of ready cash.
How different from the eyes of my people! Their steady stare is completely devoid of all tension. They harbor no thought - but what power! What spiritual power! Such eyes would not sell you. They couldn't sell anything or buy anything. You could spit in the eyes, and they'd call it God's (divine) dew... — Venedikt Erofeev

That's all it might take. It wasn't death he feared - none of them feared that - but rather failure. But were not the Holy Warriors of Allah those who did the hardest things, and would not his blessings be in proportion to his merit? To be remembered. To be respected by his compatriots. To strike a blow for the cause - even if he managed to do that without recognition, he would go to Allah with peace in his heart. — Tom Clancy

He knew taht many of his compatriots avoided marriage at all costs. They saw matrimony as an annoyance, a wife as another person who would nag and prod. But when he repeated his vows, he heard "as long as we both shall life" and he hoped. — Courtney Milan

Now I want to use money in a good way. I make foundations back home in Russia, I have sponsored vaccinations for more than one million children in my homeland and I have founded scholarships in the names of my great Russian compatriots - Oistrakh, Richter, Gilels, Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Schnittke. — Mstislav Rostropovich

Muhammad was a prince; he rallied his compatriots around him. In a few years, the Muslims conquered half of the world. They plucked more souls from false gods, knocked down more idols, razed more pagan temples in fifteen years than the followers of Moses and Jesus did in fifteen centuries. Muhammad was a great man. He would indeed have been a god, if the revolution that he had performed had not been prepared by the circumstances. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots. — Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

What every man who loves his country hopes for in his inmost heart: the suppression of half his compatriots. — Emile M. Cioran

The two of them, father and son, lived like roommates, stumbling upon each other in their matching peacock robes, bitching over who used up the coffee, but by afternoon they drifted in the pool together, bumping the sides, compatriots in the search for a little passion on earth. They — Jeffrey Eugenides

I cannot get used to the dispassion with which wealthy Greeks contemplate their impoverished compatriots; — Adam Sisman

Like Beji, our country is a nation whose citizens has employed crooked means of survival, lives in the expense of others, cares the least about their compatriots, and are ever more than willing to do anything conceivable to plunge every vulnerable life into a pitch-dark abyss! It is, you will realize, a lovely den of hungry wolves whose ugly claws often extend a cold handshake to every beggar in the next turn... — Levi Cheruo Cheptora

NOT to my contemporaries, not to my compatriots but to
mankind I commit my now completed work in the confidence that it will not be without value for them, even
if this should be late recognised, as is commonly the lot
of what is good. For it cannot have been for the passing
generation, engrossed with the delusion of the moment,
that my mind, almost against my will, has uninterruptedly
stuck to its work through the course of a long life.
preface to the second edition of the world as will and representation — Arthur Schopenhauer

Treville understood admirably well the warfare of that period, when, if you did not live at the enemy's expense, you lived at the expense of your compatriots: his soldiers formed a legion of daredevils, undisciplined for anyone else but him. — Alexandre Dumas

Asiatic youths are flocking to Western colleges for the equipment of modern education. Our insight does not penetrate your culture deeply, but at least we are willing to learn. Some of my compatriots have adopted too much of your customs and too much of your etiquette, in the delusion that the acquisition of stiff collars and tall silk hats comprised the attainment of your civilisation. Pathetic and deplorable as such affectations are, they evince our willingness to approach the West on our knees. — Okakura Kakuzo

With all my heart I beseech and beg my two hundred million female compatriots to assume their responsibility as citizens. Arise! Arise! Chinese women, arise! — Qiu Jin

Israeli Arabs have more political rights than any other Arabs in the Middle East, including their compatriots in the Palestinian Authority. — Jack Schwartz

Thus once more I found confirmed on all sides the simple, clear, important, and practical meaning of the words of Jesus. Once more, in place of an obscure sentence, I had found a clear, precise, important, and practical rule: To make no distinction between compatriots and foreigners, and to abstain from all the results of such distinction, - from hostility towards foreigners, from wars, from all participation in war, from all preparations for war; to establish with all men, of whatever nationality, the same relations granted to compatriots. All this was so simple and so clear, that I — Leo Tolstoy

The men and women of England who abolished slavery, created the educational system, or gave women the vote were not acting on the hypotheses of what the voters wanted. They were afire with faith in what people ought to want and in the end they persuaded their lethargic compatriots to give them enough support to warrant a change. — Geoffrey Vickers

The experience also illuminated another fact: regardless of how you travel, as you get deeper into your thirties you might be the only person your age out on the road at all, whether it's in the hostels with the twentysomethings, or on the fancy cruises with the sixtysomethings. In your fourth decade, your compatriots are mostly at home, working, raising humans, getting husbands through rehab, living for someone besides themselves.

Suckers. — Kristin Newman

Wicksell's old-fashioned liberalism is reminiscent of John Maynard Keynes' attitude toward conscription during World War I. Keynes opposed conscription, but he was not a pacifist. He opposed conscription because it deprived the citizen of the right to decide for himself whether or not to join in the fight. Keynes was exempt as a civil servant from conscription; so there is no need to question his sincerity. Apparently his belief in the rights of the individual against a majority of his compatriots was very strong indeed. — Mancur Olson

Our freedom is also incomplete, dear compatriots, as long as we are denied our security by criminals who prey on our communities, who rob our businesses and undermine our economy, who ply their destructive trade in drugs in our schools, and who do violence against our women and children. — Nelson Mandela

He was an artist, and she, an anarchist, the destroyer of his beautiful creations. His body tensed, pushing hot adrenaline through his body with irascible rage. His anger gave way to lamentation as his heart wailed for his lost inventions. His mind saw each one desperately screaming for help, their outcries echoing between the orange flames and ashy ruins of their compatriots. — Emmie White

Even if not one migrant turns out to vote, this was a historic debt that Mexico owed its compatriots abroad. This represents a new political space for our migrants, an opportunity to bridge the gap between two societies, those living in Mexico and those living abroad. — Ruben Aguilar

The histories of our two peoples, Palestinian and South African, correspond in such painful and poignant ways, that I intensely feel myself being at home amongst compatriots — Nelson Mandela

The token females of most superhero teams often had to suppress their femininity in order to be taken seriously by their male compatriots. When heroines like Invisible Girl or Wasp do display an interest in traditionally female pursuits like love, fashion or the latest hairstyle, their male teammates chide them for being frivolous females. — Mike Madrid

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country. He will ask rather 'What can I and my compatriots do through government' to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? — Milton Friedman

For generations, Americans who aren't rich have been generous and admiring of their wealthy compatriots - want a country where people who work hard can succeed, where the same rules apply to everyone. They expect to have their own shot at getting rich. But increasingly, they are seeing that the game is rigged. — Dee Dee Myers

compatriots needed to weave into the social fabric bakeries close to home or bread trucks that deliver; like a sort of societal gluten, sources of bread constitute networks of sociability that structure daily life. — Steven Laurence Kaplan

I kiss the soil as if I placed a kiss on the hands of a mother, for the homeland is our earthly mother. I consider it my duty to be with my compatriots in this sublime and difficult moment. — Pope John Paul II

It would be a tragic mistake for us out here to imagine that Bush represents the hearts and the minds of the majority of your countrymen. Many of your black and other compatriots must be just as anguished as we are. — Breyten Breytenbach

Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee. — Xi Jinping

Left and Right are monolithic ideas - colossal, abstract, and, as their religious origins suggest, cosmic. They are part of the darker side of humanity that replaces the specific with the general, the personal with the impersonal. If you wanted to find a way of making certain that people would have as little as possible in common, there would be no better way than to divide them, not into ten or three or four, but into two. Dual division turns the largest possible sections of humanity against one another, often causing neighbors and compatriots to have nothing to say to one another. No regeneration of community can begin without a careful demolition of Left and Right; nor can this tearing down be relinquished to academic abstraction, technical philosophy, government, corporations, or ideology. Nothing can be built without a new politics - least of all with a politics that refers outward to ideas of Heaven and Hell rather than inward to the experience of daily life. — Hugh Graham

I will always stay close to all compatriots, and share together the happiness and suffering. — Norodom Sihamoni

Marshall," he said levelly, "I don't know what you're talking about, but any organization that claims you for a member doesn't get to call itself sinister, whether you're left-handed or not. I would be insulted to be offered membership in such a namby-pamby organization. It would be like the Archbishop of Canterbury calling a select club of his compatriots 'Bad, Bad Bishops'."

Marshall sniggered.

"Watch out for the clergy," Edward said. "They're absolutely wild. Sometimes they have an extra biscuit at tea. — Courtney Milan