National Song Quotes & Sayings

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. — Caitlin Moran

I worry that, especially as the Millennium edges nearer, pseudoscience and superstition will seem year by year more tempting, the siren song of unreason more sonorous and attractive. Where have we heard it before? Whenever our ethnic or national prejudices are aroused, in times of scarcity, during challenges to national self-esteem or nerve, when we agonize about our diminished cosmic place and purpose, or when fanaticism is bubbling up around us - then, habits of thought familiar from ages past reach for the controls.
The candle flame gutters. Its little pool of light trembles. Darkness gathers. The demons begin to stir. — Carl Sagan

On every album I've put out, I've put diverse Canadian songs on it. They're not provincial album; my albums are national albums. There'll be a song about Saskatchewan and Vancouver and Nova Scotia on there. — Stompin' Tom Connors

I have such a soft spot for the really cheesy zombie movies, but if I had to pick a really good one, I'd have to go with an actual TV show and say 'The Walking Dead'. — Jennifer Armentrout

Learn to expect less from life and more from yourself. Accept the changes that life throws at you. Remember, your destiny is pretty much in your hands. So, as your mom may have told you, keep them clean. — Lynda Resnick

While listening, to things like western swing, for instance, I'd work something out in my head, then play it on my National; not the same song, but one that captured the feeling of the original tune. — Mark Knopfler

I wanted to be part of a high-class scene of musicians. It was half-inspired because I didn't have many friends, and I was hoping that I would meet people and fall in love and start a community around me, the way they used to do in the '60s. — Lana Del Rey

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp
praise song for walking forward in that light. — Elizabeth Alexander

Then he asked my age and I asked his. That's the tradition in China. If we know each other's ages we can understand each other's past. We Chinese have been collective for so long, personal histories are not worth mentioning. Therefore as soon as Xiaolin and I knew how old the other was, we knew exactly what big shit had happened in our lives. The introduction of the One Child Policy shortly before out births, for instance and the fact that, in 1985, two pandas were sent to the USA as a national gift and we had to sing a tearful panda song at school. 1989 was the Tiananmen Square student demonstration. Anyway, Xiaolin was one year younger than me, so I assumed we were from the same generation. — Xiaolu Guo

He knew nothing about policy and taxes or what makes a people, and now, God help him, he was like those kids who think their country is Google. 'You're just not going deep enough,' Luke said. 'Money has imploded. Religion has gone mad. Privacy is disappearing. The ice-cap is melting and children are starving to death. And you want to sing an old song about national togetherness. — Andrew O'Hagan

When I first heard the song Don't worry - be happy I realized it was exactly the kind of mindless philosophy that Americans would respond to. It would make a great national anthem along with Me first. — George Carlin

If you forget the words to your own song, you can always claim artistic license. Forget the words to the national anthem, and you're screwed. — Lyle Lovett

Hopping around time in a non-linear storytelling fashion (on 'Lost') allows you to bring back characters who are dead and, in some cases, buried. Now that time travel is the story itself, it opens up even more doors. So when an actor reads that they're getting killed off on the show, they're basically, like, 'Okay, but should I still bother to show up next week?' — Damon Lindelof

A great deal of what passes by the name of patriotism in these days consists of the merest bigotry and narrow-mindedness; exhibiting itself in national prejudice, national conceit, and national hatred. It does not show itself in deeds, but in boastings
in howlings, gesticulations, and shrieking helplessly for help
in flying flags and singing songs
and in perpetual grinding at the hurdy-gurdy of long-dead grievances and long-remedied wrongs. To be infested by such a patriotism as this is perhaps among the greatest curses that can befall any country. — Samuel Smiles

The most scared I'd ever been was the first time I sang at a rugby match, Australia versus New Zealand, in front of one hundred thousand people. I had a panic attack the night before because people have been booed off and never worked again ... just singing one song, the national anthem. — Hugh Jackman

If you were a country," I said, "what would your national anthem be?"
I meant a pre-existing song
"What a Wonderful World" or "Que Sera, Sera" or something to make it a joke, like "Hey Ya!" ("I would like, more than anything else, for my nation to be shaken like a Polaroid picture.") — David Levithan

Thus we have at least a national song that unites all Germans, and is the symbol of our sixty-million nation. — Friedrich Ebert

Some anthems are great for sports. You've got the Russian national anthem ... 'O Canada,' how wonderful is that for hockey ... but I chose the Italian national song because at my first World Cup, I saw the Italians play four times, and they won all four times - they won the championship. — George Vecsey

Let us not overstrain our talents, lest we do nothing gracefully. — Jean De La Fontaine

I walk around with a hat, sunglasses, and sunscreen all the time, — Marcia Cross

I knew we were in for a long season when we lined up for the national anthem on opening day and one of my players said, 'Every time I hear that song I have a bad game.' — Jim Leyland

There was that sound again
snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form
Dear God
sprang with a splash from the darkness
grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water. — Kaye George

There is a notion gaining credence that the free market breaks down national barriers, and that corporate globalization's ultimate destination is a hippie paradise where the heart is the only passport and we all live together happily inside a John Lennon song (Imagine there's no country ... ). This is a canard. — Arundhati Roy

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. — Christopher Hitchens

It is, of course, true that I have given priority to the settling of the problem of security and the problem of Irian Barat, although I knew that in order to do these things, almost three-quarters of our national product had to be spent. — Sukarno

The same people in the Congress who are busy kicking holes in the social safety net are also those who would sell off the nation's forests for a song, give away its national parks, and trash its wilderness preserves; there is a connection between the two impulses. — Paul Gruchow

I was in 'Jacques Brel' Off-Broadway for many years, so I've always been a singing actress, but the songwriting was a complete surprise. I had never written a song in my life. We were on the road with 'Jacques Brel' doing the national tour, and I picked up a guitar one day and I wrote a song. — Amanda McBroom