First National Quotes & Sayings

Cyclists thus found their hobby not as pleasant as it could be, to say the least, and the League of American Wheelmen committed to doing something about it. A year after Fisher opened his store, the league launched a magazine, Good Roads, that became an influential mouthpiece for road improvement. Its articles were widely reprinted, which attracted members who didn't even own bikes; at the group's peak, Fisher and more than 102,000 others were on the rolls, and the Good Roads Movement was too big for politicians to ignore. Yes, the demand for roads was pedal-powered, and a national cause even before the first practical American car rolled out of a Chicopee, Massachusetts, shop in 1893. A few months ahead of the Duryea Motor Wagon's debut, Congress authorized the secretary of agriculture to "make inquiry regarding public roads" and to investigate how they might be improved. — Earl Swift

I went to my first national convention in 1976, when my family supported [Ronald] Reagan over [Gerald] Ford, so we've always been Republicans, but we've always wanted the Republican Party to be the party of fiscally conservative, limited-government types. And I think, sometimes, we haven't done that as well. — Rand Paul

I believe tha t the two most important focal points for all of humanity in the twenty-first century are the Earth and the human brain. The Earth's health is the only standard that is all-encompassing enough to overcome the ethnic, cultural, religious, and national tensions that are rending the world asunder. Only the Earth can become the central azis around twhich world peace can be spun, for no religion is more compelling, no single nation larger, and no peoples older than the Earth herself — Ilchi Lee

That I am a national figure because I was the first person in 192 years to be at once a congressman, black, and a woman proves, I would think, that our society is not yet either just or free. — Shirley Chisholm

In all this talk about giving birth, I never hear anyone mention that the last time the World Health Organization ranked national health-care systems, France's was first, while America's was thirty-seventh. Instead, we Anglos focus on how the French system is overmedicalized and hostile to the "natural." Pregnant Message members fret that French doctors will induce labor, force them to have epidurals, then secretly bottle-feed their newborns so they won't be able to breast-feed. — Pamela Druckerman

A lot of people don't know the first time I was ever on national television I was a 'Soul Train' dancer. — Nick Cannon

I began to study again, and now for the first time really achieved an understanding of the content of the Jew Karl Marx's life effort. Only now did his Capital become really intelligible to me, and also the struggle of the Social Democracy against the national economy, which aims only to prepare the ground for the domination of truly international finance and stock exchange capital. — Adolf Hitler

No nation is better than its sacred book. In that book are expressed its highest ideals of life, and no nation rises above those ideals. No nation has a sacred book to be compared with ours. This American nation from its first settlement at Jamestown to the present hour is based upon and permeated by the principles of the Bible. The more this Bible enters into our national life the grander and purer and better will that life become. — David Josiah Brewer

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it. — Henry Miller

We have reached a pivotal time in Indigenous affairs when for the first time, national attention is being paid to the horror of Indigenous family violence in this country. For the first time, an Australian Prime Minister has held a summit in the national capital to listen to concerns and ideas on this issue from a group of Indigenous leaders. — Jackie Huggins

Nixon did not anticipate the extent to which Kissinger, whom he barely knew when he appointed him national-security adviser in 1969, would be envious and high-strung - a maintenance project of the first order. — Robert Dallek

There is nothing antithetical in American history, culture, or traditions to teamwork. Teams were important in America's history - wagon trains conquered the West, men working together on the assembly line in American industry conquered the world, a successful national strategy and a lot of teamwork put an American on the moon first (and thus fare, last). But American mythology extols only the individual ... In America, halls of fame exist for almost every conceivable activity, but nowhere do Americans raise monuments in praise of teamwork. — Lester Thurow

The first revolution is to transform the status of evaluation from untouchable to respectable , i.e., from the days a century ago when the value-free doctrine held that there could be no place for the serious treatment of evaluation within the sciences (or in the company of other respectable disciplines like history, jurisprudence, mathematics, etc.) to the days when even the National Academy of Sciences is doing evaluations at the request of Congress without protest from leading scientific and other professional organizations, and everyone will have good reasons for this acceptance. — Michael Scriven

I started at a 'learn to swim' scheme when I was about five-years-old. I did it to learn water safety, but it was fun and I loved the water. I went to a club, moved up through the ranks and got better and better before taking part in my first national championships. — Liam Tancock

We must strive to form a comprehensive sublime nationalism whose first principal is national geographic unity and must strengthen this unity with deeds not with words. — Ameen Rihani

The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life. — Adolf Hitler

Joe Louis and I were the first modern national sports figures who were black ... But neither of us could do national advertising because the South wouldn't buy it. That was the social stigma we lived under. — Jesse Owens

As a first-generation "Asian American woman," for one thing, I knew there was no such thing as an "Asian American woman." Within this homogenizing labeling of an exotica, I knew there were entire racial/national/cultural/sexual-preferenced groups, many of whom find each other as alien as mainstream America apparently finds me. — Shirley Geok-lin Lim

My first book was called 'Buried Dreams,' about a serial-killer, which was probably about ten years ahead of the serial-killer curve. It was a national bestseller, but it was three years of living in the sewer of this guy's mind. — Tim Cahill

National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane. — J. F. C. Fuller

My first jobs were all civil service. At 14, I worked for the Canadian National Railways. At 16, I worked for the Canadian Penitentiary Service. — Dan Aykroyd

There were colored and white waiting rooms everywhere, from doctor's offices to the bus stations, as people may already know. But there were actually colored windows at the post office in, for example, Pensacola, Florida. And there were white and colored telephone booths in Oklahoma. And there were separate windows where white people and black people would go to get their license plates in Indianola, Mississippi. And there were even separate tellers to make your deposits at the First National Bank in Atlanta. — Isabel Wilkerson

Soon, a national and international feminist movement was challenging the idea that what happened to men was political but what happened to women was cultural; that the first could be changed but the second could not. - Gloria Steinem — Jay Allison

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, opposition to state terror and aggression and torture and so on was zero. That was a horrible time: the massive Kennedy terror operation against Cuba, the first attacks on Vietnam in 1962, the imposition of national security states in South America. — Noam Chomsky

National security is the first duty of government but we are also committed to reversing the substantial erosion of civil liberties. — Theresa May

The past was a consumable, subject to the national preference for familiar products. And history, in America, is a dish best served plain. The first course could include a dollop of Italian in 1492, but not Spanish spice or French sauce or too much Indian corn. Nothing too filling or fancy ahead of the turkey and pumpkin pie, just the way Grandma used to cook it. — Tony Horwitz

When 'The Washington Post' ran the first national story about FBI profiling in 1984, no one outside of law enforcement recognized the term. — Ronald Kessler

My national identity is first American. My religious identity is first Muslim. — Dalia Mogahed

There are fifty American states, but they add up to one nation in a way the twenty-eight sovereign states of the European Union never can. Most of the EU states have a national identity far stronger, more defined, than any American state. It is easy to find a French person who is French first, European second, or one who pays little allegiance to the idea of Europe, but an American identifies with their Union in a way few Europeans do theirs. This is explained by the geography, and the history of the unification of the United States. — Tim Marshall

During the first six years of my life, Hungary was one of the most important components of the Habsburg dynasty's vast Austro-Hungarian Empire, but after World War I it became an independent national entity. — Georg Solti

National security - the military is the first thing we should spend money on. You have to fully fund that first. And then you should be paying for everything else. — Marco Rubio

It is the press, above all, which wages a positively fanatical and slanderous struggle, tearing down everything which can be regarded as a support of national independence, cultural elevation, and the economic independence of the nation. — Adolf Hitler

National Defense A strong USA defense brought down the Soviet Union. It was Ronald Reagan - first in a speech at Notre Dame University in May 1981, then his 'Evil Empire' speech of March 1983 - who most eloquently declared communism's imminent demise. Reagan was right. And even Soviet officials attribute Ronald Reagan's rhetoric and foreign policy to bringing down that 'evil empire.' By Christmas Day, 1990, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Liberals wished it were other things. — Rush Limbaugh

The mountains loomed over the valley like a psychical presence, a source and mirror of nervous influences, emotions, subtle and unlabeled aspirations; no man could ignore that presence; in an underground poker game, in the vaults of the First National Bank, in the secret chambers of The Factory, in the backroom of the realtor's office during the composition of an intricate swindle, in the heart of a sexual embrace, the emanations of mountain and sky imprinted some analogue of their nature on the evolution and shape of every soul. — Edward Abbey

I'm enthralled by the national yearning that the Russians had during the 50s and 60s. The whole century was pretty rough for them. They suffered genocide, war, poverty, and half the population was sent to labor camps. But they were determined to get into space first. — George Meyer

National differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world-market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.
The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilized countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.
In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end. — Karl Marx

To date, [Wynton] Marsalis has received a total of nine Grammy Awards; a Pulitzer Prize (the first ever awarded to a jazz musician) ... and twenty-nine honorary degrees, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton and Yale; the National Medal of Arts; and numerous awards from other countries. — Randy Sandke

In 1837, New York University erected a Gothic Revival building on the northeast corner of the parade grounds at Washington Square, constructed from stones cut by convicts at Sing Sing, the maximum-security prison located about thirty miles up the river in Ossining, New York. The indignant stonecutters of New York's Stonecutters Guild promptly organized New York's first mass labor demonstration in Washington Square, which continued for days. To complete its construction, NYU was forced to call in the 27th Regiment of the National Guard to clear the demonstrators from the site. — James Roman

He learned that America differed from Russia in that its government existed under the form of a democracy. The officials who ruled it, and got all the graft, had to be elected first; and so there were two rival sets of grafters, known as political parties, and the one got the office which bought the most votes. Now and then, the election was very close, and that was the time the poor man came in. In the stockyards this was only in national and state elections, for in local elections the Democratic Party always carried everything. — Upton Sinclair

The statesman will soon find himself thwarted in some way or other, will deduce from this opposition a menace first to his plans, then to national prestige, and finally to the existence of the state itself - and so, regarding his country as the party attacked, will engage in a war of defence. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Yellowstone, a place so special and awe-inspiring that after exploring it in 1871, the Hayden Expedition conceived of the original concept of the world's first national park - a set-aside of 2. 2 million acres containing more than ten thousand thermal features, canyons, waterfalls, and wildlife - so no man or corporation could ever own it. — C.J. Box

The first trailblazer was Ivy Lee. He is often considered the founder of modern public relations and the originator of corporate crisis communications.* In 1914 he went to work for the Rockefeller interests after coal miners striking at one of the mines they controlled in Ludlow, Colorado, were massacred by the National Guard. Between nineteen and twenty-five people were killed, including two women and eleven children. Lee's press releases claimed that their deaths were the result of an overturned camp stove. Ivy Lee was one of the first members of the Council on Foreign Relations when it was founded just after World War I; he was thus co-opted into America's foreign policy establishment. Shortly before he died in 1934, Congress began investigating his public relations work on behalf of the notorious German chemical monopoly I.G. Farben, which helped fund Hitler's rise to power and would later develop the poison gas used in the Nazi death camps. — Anonymous

First, this law - the National Defense Education Act - ended years and years of debate about one controversial question: 'Shall the Federal Government, with all its massive resources, get directly involved in aiding American education?' The answer this law gave was a loud 'Yes!' - and thus we paved the way for a new era of support for education in America. This law, in fact, helped make possible more than 50 new education laws passed in my administration. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Although Herbert Hoover in many ways prefigured him, it was Franklin D. Roosevelt who first tried to create an explicit corporate state in America with his National Recovery Administration (NRA). With its fascist-style Blue Eagle emblem, the NRA coordinated big business and labor in a central plan, and outlawed competition. The NRA even employed vigilante groups to spy on smaller businesses and report if they violated the plan. Just as in Mussolini's Italy, the beneficiaries of the U.S. corporate state were - in addition to the government itself - established economic interest groups. NRA cheerleaders included the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Bar Association, the United Mine Workers, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, and - above all - Gerard Swope of General Electric, who helped draft the NRA act. Only — Ludwig Von Mises

Since 1775, when the first Continental Congress called for a national day of prayer, there have been such events called for by almost every President. I saw the figures - 34 out of 44 Presidents have called for a national day of prayer. Some of those who didn't have died in office. — James Dobson

We English majors ... need to promote public libraries as a tool in the war against terror. How many readers of Edith Wharton have engaged in terroristic acts? I challenge you to name one ... Do we need to wait until our cities lie in smoking ruins before we wake up to the fact that a first-class public library is a vital link in national defense? — Garrison Keillor

The Democratic Party had failed (in 1983)
'to remember waht got us this far and how we got here
moral indignation, decent instincts, a sense of shared sacrifice and mutual responsibility, and a set of national priorities that emphasized what we had in common.. The Party that was the engine of the national interest
molding our pluralistic interest into a compelling new social contract that served the nation well for fifty years
became perceived as little more than the broker of narrow special interests. Instead of thinking of ourselves as Americans first, Democrats second, and members of interest groups third, we have begun to think in terms of special interests first and the greater interest second.. We have let our opponents set the agenda and define what is at stake.
p. 140 — Joe Biden

I've been a Republican since age 13, when we got our first television set, and I saw the Republican National Convention on television. And President Eisenhower was talking about personal responsibility, about opening the door for opportunity and that people could really take care of themselves without a lot of government intrusions. — Lionel Sosa

Burlesque had stock routines and it was no big deal if one comic had the same act as another. But no one expected interchangeable burlesque routines to find a home on a national broadcast. Other comedy teams like Wheeler & Woolsey and Howard & George had done versions of "Who's on First?" prior to Bud and Lou, but Abbott & Costello now got all the credit. — Kliph Nesteroff

The first time I came to London on my own, I was 15. I was absolutely oblivious to so many things. I had no expectations, no fears. I just came to do a National Youth Theatre season one summer. It was just brilliant. — Gina McKee

Government in our democracy, state and national, must be neutral in matters of religious theory, doctrine, and practice. It may not be hostile to any religion or to the advocacy of no-religion; and it may not aid, foster, or promote one religion or religious theory against another or even against the militant opposite. The First Amendment mandates governmental neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.
[Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97, 1968.] — Abe Fortas

I was the candidate first time a Green or any progressive third party has ever been in a national televised debate. I was in five of them. And the response from the public was overwhelming. — Peter Camejo

She pressed buttons and waited for answering beeps, and then she said, "I want the personnel jacket for U.S. Army Private First Class Wiley, first name unknown, currently four months absent without leave from an air defense unit in Germany. To me in Hamburg, seriously fast." Then she clicked off. The National Security Council. The keys to the kingdom. There was a knock at the door. For — Lee Child

In Hamburg on 30 April 1945, hearing of Hitler's death, which she believed to have been caused by his having poisoned himself, Luise Solmitz at last felt free to release the hatred that she had been building up for him over the previous months. He was, she wrote in her diary, 'the shabbiest failure in world history'. He was 'uncompromising, unbridled, irresponsible', qualities that had at first brought him success but then led to catastrophe. 'National — Richard J. Evans

When the morning skies grow red And o'er us their radiance shed, Thou, O Lord, appeareth in their light. When the Alps glow bright with splendor, Pray to God, to Him surrender, For you feel and understand, For you feel and understand, That he dwelleth in this land. That he dwelleth in this land. - FIRST VERSE OF THE "SCHWEIZERPSALM," THE SWISS NATIONAL ANTHEM — Jill Alexander Essbaum

[Voltaire] theoretically prefers a republic, but he knows its flaws: it permits factions which, if they do not bring on civil war, at least destroy national unity; it is suited only to small states protected by geographic situation, and as yet unspoiled and untorn with wealth; in general "men are rarely worthy to govern themselves." Republics are transient at best; they are the first form of society, arising from the union of families; the American Indians lived in tribal republics, and Africa is full of such democracies. but differentiation of economic status puts an end to these egalitarian governments; and differentiation is the inevitable accompaniment of development. — Will Durant

My mom had told me the stories about the first few years she'd lived here. The way she told it, she was such a criminal even the most God-fearing church ladies got bored of reporting on her; she did the marketing on Sunday, dropped by any church she liked or none at all, was a feminist (which Mrs. Asher sometimes confused with communist), a Democrat (which Mrs. Lincoln pointed out practically had "demon" in the word itself), and worst of all, a vegetarian (which ruled out any dinner invitations from Mrs. Snow). Beyond that, beyond not being a member of the right church or the DAR or the National Rifle Association, was the fact that my mom was an outsider. — Kami Garcia

My very first magazine cover was the National Enquirer. — Carrie Underwood

It was a constitutional convention for the female half of the country. After all, we had been excluded from the first one. — Gloria Steinem

On the Ridgeway path, aged nine or ten, was where for the first time I realized the power a person might feel by aligning themselves to deep history. Only much later did I understand these intimations of history had their own, darker, history. The chalk country-cult rested on a presumption of organic connections to a landscape, a sense of belonging sanctified through an appeal to your own imagined lineage. That chalk downloads held their national, as well as natural, histories. And it was much later, too, that I realized that these myths hurt. That they work to wipe away other cultures, other histories, other ways of loving, working and being in a landscape. How they tiptoe towards darkness. — Helen Macdonald

When I first made the team I didn't even know there was a national team. So to meit was all new. When I got asked to go on the trip to China I was 16. I said, 'well you know what I have to ask my parents.' So I called home and I am like, 'Mom and Dad can I go to China?' They were like 'sure.' — Kristine Lilly

A strengthened national spirit can provide the motive power to rise our people from the depths and ... pour new life and vigor in the national system.
The reinvigoration of the national spirit must take place in the grass roots, in every city, town and barrio in the Philippines, and it must start among our own people ... To be a worthy citizen of the world one must first prove himself to be a good Filipino. — Carlos P. Romulo

At first, Uniqlo was a casual chain on the back streets of Hiroshima. Then ... we became a national brand in Japan. So, the next step is to become a global brand. — Tadashi Yanai

The driving aesthetic of military style is uniformity. Whence the word uniform. From first inspection to Arlington National Cemetery, soldiers look like those around them: same hat, same boots, identical white grave marker. They are discouraged from looking unique, because that would encourage them to feel unique, to feel like an individual. The problem with individuals is that they think for themselves and of themselves, rather than for and of their unit. They're the lone goldfish on the old Pepperidge Farm bags, swimming the other way. They're a problem. — Mary Roach

national press. He called them by their first names, invited them — Doris Kearns Goodwin

In the national debate about a serious issue, it is the expression of the minority's viewpoint that most demands the protection of the First Amendment. Whatever the better policy may be, a full and frank discussion of the costs and benefits of the attempt to prohibit the use of marijuana is far wiser than suppression of speech because it is unpopular. — John Paul Stevens

It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now. Hunger is here and now. Racial tension is here and now. Pollution is here and now. These are the things that scream for a response. And if we don't listen to that scream - and if we don't respond to it - we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us - or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
[from a Commencement Address at the University of Southern California; March 17, 1970] — Rod Serling

These stupid biases and discrimination are the reason our country is so screwed up. It's Tamil first, Indian later. Punjabi first, Indian later. It has to end. National anthem, national currency, national teams - still, we won't marry our children outside our state. How can this intolerance be good for our country? — Chetan Bhagat

"Repeat that?"
"It's National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Didn't you know?"
"Somehow I missed the memo."
"You mean, 'Somehow I missed the memo, arrr!'"
"Precisely. Arr. So, Mrs. Jack ... Er, is that still your name? Or, I tremble to ask, have you adopted a pirate identity?"
"Arr, matey, of course I have! It's ... " She pulled an eggplant from the grocery bag. "Captain Eggplantier." She needed to stop speaking the first words that popped into her mind.
"Captain Eggplanteir." He sounded very doubtful.
"That's right. A family name. It's Belgian. — Shannon Hale

Actions, such as the designation of National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, spring from First Lady Michelle Obama's leadership of efforts to end childhood obesity within this generation. — Richard Carmona

When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there. — Sam Abell

The compulsory transfer of the [Palestinian] Arabs from the valleys of the proposed Jewish state could give us something which we never had, even when we stood on our own during the days of the first and second Temples ... We are given an opportunity which we never dared to dream of in our wildest imaginings. This is MORE than a state, government and sovereignty
this is national consolidation in a free homeland. — David

Passive commerce ... should thus ... [compel us] to content ourselves with the first price of our commodities, and to see the profits of our trade snatched from us, to enrich our enemies and persecutors. That unequalled spirit of enterprise ... an inexhaustible mine of national wealth, would be stifled and lost; and poverty and disgrace would overspread a country, which, with wisdom, might make herself the admiration and envy of the world. — Alexander Hamilton

I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries. — Pablo Casals

We have to be bold in our national ambitions. First, we must win the fight against poverty within the next decade. Second, we must improve moral standards in government and society to provide a strong foundation for good governance. Third, we must change the character of our politics to promote fertile ground for reforms. — Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

The origin of the political relations between the United States and France is coeval with the first years of our independence. The memory of it is interwoven with that of our arduous struggle for national existence. Weakened as it has occasionally been since that time, it can by us never be forgotten, and we should hail with exultation the moment which should indicate a recollection equally friendly in spirit on the part of France. — John Quincy Adams

First, we must stop issuing drivers' licenses to people in our country illegally. Providing them with forms of government identification makes a mockery of our laws and undermines national security efforts. — Bobby Jindal

Via the mediation of the Enlightenment, this movement had changed from a hobby among a tiny literate elite and their secretaries, an ostentatious amusement among princely and mercantile art patrons and their masterly suppliers (who established a first 'art system'), into a national, a European, indeed a planetary matter. In order to spread from the few to the many, the renaissance had to discard its humanistic exterior and reveal itself as the return of ancient mass culture. The true renaissance question, reformulated in the terminology of practical philosophy - namely, whether other forms of life are possible and permissible for us alongside and after Christianity, especially ones whose patterns are derived from Greek and Roman (perhaps even Egyptian or Indian) antiquity - was no longer a secret discourse or an academic exercise in the nineteenth century, but rather an epochal passion, an inescapable pro nobis. — Peter Sloterdijk

It was at the graduate school at Columbia University that I first met Wesley C. Mitchell, with whom I was associated for many years at the National Bureau of Economic Research and to whom I owe a great intellectual debt. — Simon Kuznets

This is the first national administration we've ever seen where the housewife couldn't afford to buy groceries and the farmer couldn't afford to grow them. — Jimmy Carter

As time goes by, I'm increasingly impressed by how very special and timely it was that we got the degree of national commitment needed to put people on the Moon. For the first time, this nation was united in trying to develop an interplanetary capability. We've been trying to repeat that situation ever since. — Buzz Aldrin

It's good to see so many friends here in the Rose Garden. This is our first event in this beautiful spot, and it's appropriate we talk about policy that will affect people's lives in a positive way in such a beautiful, beautiful part of our national - really, our national park system, my guess is you would want to call it. — George W. Bush

Earth Day is the first holy day which transcends all national borders, yet preserves all geographical integrities, spans mountains and oceans and time belts, and yet brings people all over the world into one resonating accord, is devoted to the preservation of the harmony in nature and yet draws upon the triumphs of technology, the measurement of time, and instantaneous communication through space. — Margaret Mead

Presidents are always also storytellers, purveyors of useful national mythologies. And surprisingly enough, Richard Nixon, this awkward man who didn't even really like people, had not been so bad at this duty - at least in the first four years of his presidency. — Rick Perlstein

Bobby Orr was a star when they played the National Anthem in his first game. — Harry Sinden

1 month ago the American people stopped to remember the third anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq war. We thought first and foremost of the selflessness, patriotism and heroism by our troops, our National Guard and Reserves. — Rosa DeLauro

These are touchy times. National sensitivities are on permanent alert and it's getting harder by the moment to say boo to a goose, lest the goose in question belong to the paranoid majority (goosism under threat), the thin-skinned minority (victims of goosophobia), the militant fringe (Goose Sena), the separatists (Goosistan Liberation Front), the increasingly well organised cohorts of society's historical outcasts (the ungoosables, or Scheduled Geese), or the the devout followers of of that ultimate guru duck, the sainted Mother Goose. Why, after all, would any sensible person wish to say boo in the first place? By constantly throwing dirt, such boxers disqualify themselves from serious consideration (they cook their own goose). — Graham Greene

Born in England during the First World War, of Belgian parents with partly German roots, I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Antwerp, where I had the benefit of a classical education taught in the two national languages of Belgium: French and Dutch. — Christian De Duve

too. -In the Jets Super Bowl III win over the Colts, Matt Snell would put together the first 100 yard rushing game in Super Bowl history when he carried the ball 30 times for 121 yards and a touchdown. -Singer Aaron Neville was the first person to sing the national anthem at two different Super Bowls. He first did it at Super Bowl XXIV in New Orleans and then did it again at Super Bowl XL in Detroit. -Quarterback Joe Namath won the MVP Award of Super Bowl III without even throwing a touchdown pass. -At one point in Super Bowl XLI the Colts called eight straight rushing plays and all of them were hand offs to running back Dominic Rhodes. --Cowboys running back Duane Thomas was the — Mark Peters

Herr Hitler is the very person he wants to eradicate. He might have started out with good intentions, but he is mentally unbalanced and now almost insane." "Then how come he is loved by the whole nation?" Harold interjected. "His first programs of building the Autobahn, of installing the Reichsarbeitsdienst (national labor service) were almost strokes of genius. This endeared him with our people suffering from unemployment. Then he promised things which he is unable to deliver. His hypnotic power as an orator causes the people to cheer. They don't love him. They are simply mesmerized by a charlatan. — Horst Christian

Our modern Western culture only recognises the first of these, freedom of desires. It then worships such a freedom by enshrining it at the forefront of national constituitions and bills of human rights. One can say that the underlying creed of most Western democracies is to protect their people's freedom to realise their desires, as far as this is possible. It is remarkable that in such countries people do not feel very free. The second kind of freedom, freedom from desires, is celebrated only in some religious communities. It celebrates contentment, peace that is free from desires. — Ajahn Brahm

Greece is internationally famous for three reasons. First it has more islands than people. Second, it used to be a part of Turkey. Third, its national hero, Alexander the Great, was a Yugoslavian. — Fatima Bhutto

All agree that, the first responsibility for the alleviation of poverty and distress and for the care of the victims of the depression rests upon the locality - its individuals, organizations and Government. It rests, first of all, perhaps, upon the private agencies of philanthropy, secondly, other social organizations, and last, but not least, the Church. Yet all agree that to leave to the locality the entire responsibility would result in placing the heaviest burden in most cases upon those who are the least able to bear it. In other words, the communities that have the most difficult problem, like Detroit, would be the communities that would have to bear the heaviest of the burdens. And so the State should step in to equalize the burden by providing for a large portion of the care of the victims of poverty and by providing assistance and guidance for local communities. Above and beyond that duty of the States the national Government has a responsibility. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Finally, in 1888, Cixi approved the Western-style Navy Regulations. It was in endorsing these Regulations that she effectively unveiled China's first national flag. The country had had no national ensign, until its engagement with the West at the beginning of her reign necessitated a triangular-shaped golden yellow flag for the nascent navy. Now she endorsed its change into the internationally standard quadrangular shape. On the flag, named the Yellow Dragon, was a vividly blue, animated dragon, raising its head towards a bright-red globe, the sun. With the birth of this national flag, remarked contemporary Western commentators, 'China proudly took her proper place among the nations. — Jung Chang

But in the 17th century Russian Orthodoxy was gravely weakened by an internal schism. In the 18th, the country was shaken by Peter's forcibly imposed transformations, which favored the economy, the state, and the military at the expense of the religious spirit and national life. And along with this lopsided Petrine enlightenment, Russia felt the first whiff of secularism; its subtle poisons permeated the educated classes in the course of the 19th century and opened the path to Marxism. By the time of the Revolution, faith had virtually disappeared in Russian educated circles; and amongst the uneducated, its health was threatened. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It seems people don't read or listen. Our scholars and our media have been very outspoken. We were the first country in the world to hold a national public awareness campaign against extremism and terrorism. Why would we not want to fight an ideology whose objective is to kill us? — Adel Al-Jubeir

Fraternity means that the father no longer sacrifices the sons; instead the brothers kill one another. Wars between nations have been replaced by civil war. The great settling of accounts, first under national 'pretexts,' led to a rapidly escalating world civil war. — Ernst Junger

Our compulsive hunger always to know first, speak first and decide first has only been amplified by the fact that we can now all participate instantly in a virtual version of a national cocktail-party conversation on Twitter, Facebook and blogs. — John Podhoretz

When I first started comedy, before I kind of gained any national prominence, I - in a weird way - went back to that. Marc Maron had me on WTF making fun of me about that when I first opened for him. I had this very kind of hip-hop bravado to me, and I realized that now I've let some of that go in my stage presence, that maybe that was because I had dropped that completely from my life, and when I got onstage I sort of rekindled it. And I think now that it was perhaps a defense mechanism that was left over from those days, which I think is kind of interesting. — Moshe Kasher

It is ironic-rouse the limpest adjective-that a government as spontaneously tyrannous and callous as ours should, over the years, have come yo care so much about our health as it endlessly tests and retests commercial drugs available in other lands while arresting those who take "hard" drugs on the potential ground that they are bad for the user's health. One is touched by their concern- touched and dubious. After all, these same compassionate guardians of our well-being have sternly, year in and year out, refused to allow us to have what every other First World country simply takes for granted, a national health service. — Gore Vidal