First World Countries Quotes & Sayings
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Top First World Countries Quotes

I pitied the French for their naivete in believing that they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit. I was maddened by my helplessness before the Auteur's imaginations and machinations. His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

However, in the twenty-first century the majority of both men and women might lose their military and economic value. Gone is the mass conscription of the two world wars. The most advanced armies of the twenty-first century rely far more on cutting-edge technology. Instead of limitless cannon fodder, countries now need only small numbers of highly trained soldiers, even smaller numbers of special forces super-warriors and a handful of experts who know how to produce and use sophisticated technology. Hi-tech forces 'manned' by pilotless drones and cyber-worms are replacing the mass armies of the twentieth century, and generals delegate more and more critical decisions to algorithms. — Yuval Noah Harari

I think it is important first of all that the president of the United States underscores our commitment to partnering with countries around the world, even though we're not intimidated by terrorist organisations. — Barack Obama

I suddenly felt vulnerable. Continuing the journey without Mr. Kadam left me anxious. It felt like the first day of high school all over again-if high school was one of the biggest countries in the world and everyone spoke a different language. — Colleen Houck

The first time I ever saw snow skis was when I was 62 years old and that was 19 years ago and I'm still skiing. So, we'll be skiing with some very close friends of the Carter Center letting them know what the Carter Center is doing around the world. We have programs in over 65 countries. — Jimmy Carter

We have so many opportunities in first world countries. Let's not squander them by focusing on obstacles-real or imaginary! — Catherine DeVrye

The greatest evils since World War II have been Communism and, since the demise of Communism in the Soviet Union and most other Communist countries, violent Islam - or, as it often called, Islamism. Islamism is the belief that Sharia (Islamic law) must be imposed wherever possible on a society, beginning, of course, with Muslim-majority countries. These Islamists are, as the British historian Andrew Roberts has noted, the fourth incarnation of fascism - first there was fascism, then Nazism, then communism, and now Islamism. — Dennis Prager

Nationalist conflicts and ethnic-racial tensions were greatly intensified by the territorial settlement of Europe that followed the First World War. The architects of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, however good their intentions, faced insuperable problems in attempting to satisfy the territorial demands of the new countries formed out of the wreckage of the old empires. Ethnic minorities formed sizeable parts of most of the new states in central, eastern and south-eastern Europe, offering a potential base for serious political disturbance. Almost — Ian Kershaw

Other countries around the world make employees and retirees first in the priority. For example, in Mexico, the bankruptcy laws say if a company wants to go bankrupt ... obligations to employees and retirees will have a first priority. That has an effect on every negotiation that takes place with every company in Mexico. — Elizabeth Warren

Fragments of the natural method must be sought with the greatest care. This is the first and last desideratum among botanists.
Nature makes no jumps.
[Natura non facit saltus]
All taxa show relationships on all sides like the countries on a map of the world. — Carl Linnaeus

(Part of the self-definition of Europe and the neo-European countries is that it, the First World, is where major calamities are history-making, transformative, while in poor, African or Asian countries they are part of a cycle, and therefore something like an aspect of nature.) Nor has AIDS become so publicized because, as some have suggested, in rich countries the illness first afflicted a group of people who were all men, almost all white, many of them educated, articulate, and knowledgeable about how to lobby and organize for public attention and resources devoted to the disease. AIDS occupies such a large part in our awareness because of what it has been taken to represent. It seems the very model of all the catastrophes privileged populations feel await them. What — Susan Sontag

For the first time in history, a private company is organizing a mission to the moon. This mission will inspire countries of the world, citizens, our youth. — Eric C. Anderson

Witness the surprise of the average American: 'How is it possible that these people display and practise such a disregard for their own lives?' Is not the obverse of this surprise the rather sad fact that we, in First World countries, find it more and more difficult even to imagine a public or universal Cause for which we would be ready to sacrifice our life? — Slavoj Zizek

Of course, Third World leaders love you. By ascribing third world ills to First World sins, you absolve them of blame for their countries' failure to advance. — John McCarthy

The current total of countries in the world with First Amendments is one. You have guaranteed freedom of speech. Other countries don't have that. — Neil Gaiman

First of all, developed countries have basically expropriated the atmosphere of the world community. But one must say clearly that we redistribute de facto the world's wealth by climate policy. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore ... — Ottmar Edenhofer

And so the point of this story is that when I first met you at the photocopy machine, sure, we talked like a telethon and everything, but the perfume you were wearing then - that perfume was the smell of my stamp album, the smell of countries I always wanted to visit but never thought I'd be able to. It was like you had the world inside you. — Douglas Coupland

As the President has indicated, my life has been a life of travel - for 60 years constantly moving over the wide world on journeys which first and last have taken me to 83 countries, and, what is more significant, to most of them again and again. — John Raleigh Mott

It's the first time in the history of the world that creatives are also distributors. And that's very profound if you think that up until the recent history, permission was required for us to be able to share work at any sort of scale. We had to get permission from galleries, from ad agencies or photo editors to be able to have our work out there. And now anybody with access to a computer can show their work in 200 countries around the world. — Chase Jarvis

The principle of fair reduction is based on the concept of historic responsibility. Developed countries finished industrialising first. Thus, over the last 60 years, the developed countries, which represent 17 percent of the world's population, have been responsible for 70 percent of carbon emissions. The developed countries should adjust for this disparity accordingly. In contrast, developing countries, which represent 83 percent of the world's population, have contributed only 30 percent of total carbon emissions over the past 60 years. It is therefore fair to give developing countries more leeway to produce carbon emissions. — Yan Xuetong

During the past quarter of a century, most developing countries have liberalized trade to a huge degree. They were first pushed by the IMF and the World Bank in the aftermath of the Third World debt crisis of 1982. There was a further decisive impetus towards trade liberalization following the launch of the WTO in 1995. During the last decade or so, bilateral and regional free trade agreements (FTAs) have also proliferated.Unfortunately, during this period, developing countries have not done well at all, despite (or because of, in my view) massive trade liberalization, — Ha-Joon Chang

non-Western countries had, until quite recently, highly unreliable legal systems and differing accounting rules. If a foreign trading partner decided to default on its debts, there was little that an investor situated on the other side of the world could do. In the first era of globalization, the solution to this problem was brutally simple but effective: to impose European rule. — Niall Ferguson

Why do other first world countries give children so many fewer vaccines than we do? Vaccines save lives, but might be harming some children. Is moderation such a terrible idea? — Jenny McCarthy

No matter where we're born, which countries we're raised in, what cultures we come from, there are some universal experiences we all have as children. We all kind of start the same. We want the love of our parents, companionship, friends, we want to have fun, to play, and we're all hurt the first time we learn that the world is far from perfect place - it's the start of a series of epiphanies and realizations that is what growing up is all about. — Khaled Hosseini

Beautiful surroundings, the society of learned men, the charm of noble women, the graces of art, could not make up for the loss of those light-hearted mornings of the desert, for that wind that made one a boy again. He had noticed that this peculiar quality in the air of new countries vanished after they were tamed by man and made to bear harvests. Parts of Texas and Kansas that he had first known as open range had since been made into rich farming districts, and the air had quite lost that lightness, that dry, aromatic odour. The moisture of plowed land, the heaviness of labour and growth and grain-bearing, utterly destroyed it; one could breathe that only on the bright edges of the world, on the great grass plains or the sage-brush desert. — Willa Cather

Before the First World War, in many places military officers who had not taken part directly in operations became liable one way or another under the jurisprudence and military law of their own countries. But the question of prosecuting the political authorities--the people who ran the country--had not yet been considered. Calls during the war to hold the Ottoman political elite and the German kaiser personally responsible for the Armenian massacres and to prosecute them on those grounds heralded a turning point. From that point on, personal responsibility and prosecution--even of those in the political sphere--became one of the most important principles of international law. — Taner Akcam

The First World became a popular phrase in about the 1970s and '80s. The World Bank then began categorizing countries in different categories, advanced to the least developed. — Lee Kuan Yew

The political situation was becoming increasingly volatile. The Treaty of Versailles was such a sore point. It popped up in almost any conversation. Perhaps the separation from the "Reich" (what was left of the old Germany) was more intensely felt in everyday life in our province of East Prussia than in the rest of Germany. The Treaty forced Germany to accept blame for causing the First World War. It demanded that Germany disarm, give up substantial portions of land, and pay heavy reparations to countries of the victors. No other country bore the blame or brunt of the burden as heavily as Germany. Germans viewed the terms imposed by the treaty as blatantly unfair. From our perspective, Germany was drawn into the conflict through a political alliance we had with the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. We did not initiate hostilities. The fact that Europe was a political powder keg was certainly not the exclusive fault of the German Empire. I — Ulrich Karl Thomas

Globally, emissions may have to be reduced, the scientists are telling us, by as much as 60% or 70%, with developed countries likely to have to make even bigger cuts if we're going to allow the developing world to have their share of growing industrial prosperity ... The Kyoto Protocol is only the first rather modest step. Much, much deeper emission reductions will be needed in future. The political implications are mind-blowing. — Michael Meacher

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

First, climate change is the greatest long-term threat faced by humanity. It could cause more human and financial suffering than the two world wars and the great depression put together. All countries will be affected, but the poorest countries will be hit hardest. Secondly, the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action — David Miliband

If the twenty-first century turns out to be a time of low (demographic and economic) growth and high return on capital (in a context of heightened international competition for capital resources), or at any rate in countries where these conditions hold true, inheritance will therefore probably again be as important as it was in the nineteenth century. An evolution in this direction is already apparent in France and a number of other European countries, where growth has already slowed considerably in recent decades. For the moment it is less prominent in the United States, essentially because demographic growth there is higher than in Europe. But if growth ultimately slows more or less everywhere in the coming century, as the median demographic forecasts by the United Nations (corroborated by other economic forecasts) suggest it will, then inheritance will probably take on increased importance throughout the world. — Thomas Piketty

I couldn't wait to get out of the car. The first thing I did was smell the air. I closed my eyes and took a breath, the biggest breath of my life, knowing I was taking the biggest breath of my life. I was taking a breath to smell Shepelevo. Breathing in Shepelevo was like hitting the right note on the piano. There was only one right note. When I was young, Shepelevo was the smell of nettles, of salted smoked fish, of fresh water from the Gulf of Finland, and of burning firewood, all wrapped up in one Shepelevo. As it had been, so it was. Across two continents, a dozen countries, twenty cities, three colleges, two marriages, three children, three books, and twenty-five years of another life, I breathed it and smelled the air. Nowhere else in the world had it. "Papa," I said, my voice breaking. "Do you think we could photograph the smell?" He gave me a look and then laughed. — Paullina Simons

...Americans didn't stick to cities, which makes us different from the people in other industrialized countries. We no sooner arrived in town, turning those towns into great mid-century metropolises, than we decided to take off for the green world beyond, so that by the 1970 Census, we had become the first suburban nation in the history of the world. And Detroit led the way, with a population curve up and down just like everywhere else, but with its urban decline a lot steeper over the past sixty years - so typical a place that it only looks like an exception. — Jerry Herron

Rising demand for oil exposed Europe, and later America, to oil shocks - serious interruptions in supply. Like a pebble tossed into a pond, an oil shock creats ripples, or effects, felt everywhere.
Oil shocks have two causes. The first is natural, because existing oil fields may not yield enough to satisfy demand. Scarcity results in higher prices for oil products, reducing our standard of living. Natural scarcity was not a problem in the world's major producing areas until recently.
The second cause of oil shocks is political. Political shocks happen when governments of oil-producing countries reduce or halt supply to gain the upper hand in dealings with other governments. This is the case in the Middle East, where oil has often mixed with politics, religion, and blood. The reasons for this have shaped the history of recent times. — Albert Marrin

For the first time in history all the major countries in the world are pushing together to reach this goal ... building something in space that is really for all humankind. — Umberto Guidoni

Einstein's prediction of light deflection could not be tested immediately in 1915, because the First World War was in progress, and it was not until 1919 that a British expedition, observing an eclipse from West Africa, showed that light was indeed deflected by the sun, just as predicted by the theory. This proof of a German theory by British scientists was hailed as a great act of reconciliation between the two countries after the war. — Stephen Hawking

More and more we're negating the validity of first-hand experience of people from other countries and other cultures ... whether it's on TV, the Internet, mobile phones or whatever - the world system we live in so values second-hand information. — Nitin Sawhney

Ten thousand officers and men named Smith died in the First World War. One thousand four hundred Campbells died, six thousand Joneses, and one thousand Murphys. Smith, Campbell, Jones and Murphy: the names of the United Kingdom, whose presence in regiments from all four countries speaks of the ebb and flow of peoples within these islands, of a common sacrifice, and a shared agony that burned in so many million hearts down the decades. — Kevin Myers

first settlers were emigrants from different European nations, and of diversified professions of religion, retiring from the governmental persecutions of the old world, and meeting in the new, not as enemies, but as brothers. The wants which necessarily accompany the cultivation of a wilderness produced among them a state of society, which countries long harassed by the quarrels and intrigues of governments, had neglected to cherish. In such a situation man becomes what he ought. He sees his species, not with the inhuman idea of a natural enemy, but as kindred; and the example shows to the artificial world, that man must go back to nature for information. — Thomas Paine

There are countries that send us garbage. There are countries that send us their outdated technology as their cooperation. With Fidel [Castro] it is totally different. Fidel is the first and the best one to stand for peace in the world denouncing the interventionist policies of the U.S. — Evo Morales

We discovered, like infants opening their eyes for the first time, that God's coming upon earth out of love for us had radically changed the world, because he had remained with us. As we walked about the city, or traveled to different cities and countries, it was not the beautiful and interesting things around us that attracted us. Not even Rome's wonderful monuments and precious relics seemed so important. Rather, what gave a sense of continuity to our journeying through the world for Jesus, was His Eucharistic presence in the tabernacles we found wherever we went. — Chiara Lubich

I must say that the United States, of all the countries of the West, is the least guilty and has done the most in order to prevent it. The United States has helped Europe to win the First and the Second World Wars. It twice raised Europe from postwar destruction - twice - for ten, twenty, thirty years it has stood as a shield protecting Europe while European countries counted their nickels to avoid paying for their armies (better yet, to have none at all), to avoid paying for armaments, thinking about how to leave NATO, knowing that in any case America would protect them. These counties started it all, despite their thousand year old civilization and culture, even though they are closer to the danger and should have seen it more clearly. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Today the most civilized countries of the world spend a maximum of their income on war and a minimum on education. The twenty-first century will reverse this order. It will be more glorious to fight against ignorance than to die on the field of battle. The discovery of a new scientific truth will be more important than the squabbles of diplomats. Even the newspapers of our own day are beginning to treat scientific discoveries and the creation of fresh philosophical concepts as news. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.
Progress along such lines will be impossible while nations persist in the savage practice of killing each other off. I inherited from my father, an erudite man who labored hard for peace, an ineradicable hatred of war. — Nikola Tesla

I think the Adam Smith role was played in this cycle i.e. the late twentieth century collapse of socialism in which the idea of free-markets succeeded first, and then special events catalyzed a complete change of socio-political policy in countries around the world by Friedrich Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. — Milton Friedman

But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.Remember this is our newly middle-class world. We haven't completed the first cycle of prosperity, before going back to the beginning again, to drink milk from the cow's udder. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

First of all, I think all countries in the world have agreed it is not in anyone's interest to test-fire a missile, or whatever its is. — Lee Myung-bak

I don't remember my first trip, but I do remember when my mom took me to Disney World in Orlando. It wasn't the rides but Epcot Center that most fascinated me. It made me want to see those countries that are represented there for real. — Lisa Ling

Some 1.2 billion people in the world still have too little to eat; the same number today suffer from being overweight ... ..For the first time in 100 years medical experts are predicting that life expectancy in developed countries will fall. Thanks to obesity our children face the prospect of dying younger than us. — Felicity Lawrence

The Idea of Anti-imperialism is ... to be considered on several grounds. First, it is traditionally pervasive in the United States, though given its most extreme form in anti-Western academe. Second, it is used as a negative label for any effort by the United States, or the West, to encourage liberties, to block fanaticisms, and to make aid dependent on positive economic policies. Those concerned with the future development of their countries, and of the world, cannot afford to let obsolete resentments distort their aims. — Robert Conquest

No twenty-first-century reader can understand the ultimate triumph of the Allied powers in World War II in 1945 without a grasp of the large drama that unfolded in North Africa in 1942 and 1943. The liberation of western Europe is a triptych, each panel informing the others: first, North Africa; then, Italy; and finally the invasion of Normandy and the subsequent campaigns across France, the Low Countries, and Germany. From a distance of sixty years, we can see that North Africa was a pivot point in American history, the place where the United States began to act like a great power - militarily, diplomatically, strategically, tactically. — Rick Atkinson

The first principle is that the business should be successful: that it should make money. There is a belief prevalent in America and other Western countries that being successful, making money, is somehow wrong for people who are trying to lead a spiritual life. In Buddhism though it is not the money which is in itself wrong; in fact, a person with greater resources can do much more good in the world than the one without. The question rather is how we make the money; whether we understand where it comes from and how to make it continue to come; and whether we keep a healthy attitude about the money. — Michael Roach

First World countries may have great infrastructure, material comfort and modernity, but these cannot compare with the way the homeland speaks to a Filipino's heart. There may be potholes in the street where I live but they 'speak' to me in a way that a flawless highway in a developed foreign country cannot. I may be upset by the potholes, but the feeling is a familiar one, and it is easier to endure than alienation in a foreign land. The things that upset me about the country 'speak' to me in that same familiar language. In fact, it is so familiar that my sense of humor can run circles around the very things I complain about. But that is precisely the problem: because these have become too familiar, I am no longer moved by them - at least not enough to be able to change things. Indeed, they have become 'my' potholes. Life in the Philippines may be hell at times, but it remains our home. — Jim Paredes

I know that there are many essential biological differences between the sexes, of course. But not so many 'culturally-mandated' differences. In First World countries we've evolved beyond mere biology -it isn't the fate of the human female to be pregnant continously until she wears out and dies. — Joyce Carol Oates

The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries. — Natan Sharansky

Any person or nation can successfully duplicate any achievement that a person or nation succeeded in attaining. I am sure that Africa and other economically backward countries, that are sometimes referred to as third world countries, can attain a very high rate of development much faster than the time it took Europe and other first world countries. — Sunday Adelaja