States Are Countries Quotes & Sayings

The countries that have risen and separated out as a result of the collapse of the Soviet Union are, on the whole, following freer economic policies. Most of these states have freer government and less restrictions on trade. — Milton Friedman

There are countries in which public establishments are considered by the government as its own personal affair, so that it admits persons to them only according to its pleasure, just as a proprietor refuses at his pleasure admission into his house; they are a sort of administrative sanctuaries, into which no profane person can penetrate. These establishments, on the contrary, in the United States, are considered as belonging to all. The prisons are open to everyone who chooses to inspect them ad every visiter may inform himself of the order which regulates the interior. — Gustave De Beaumont

We are at war to liberate Iraq, to protect the people of the United States and other countries from the devastating impact of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being used by terrorists or the Iraqi government to kill thousands of innocent civilians. — Paul Cellucci

Beyond the borders of wealthy countries like the United States, in developing countries where most people in the world live, the impacts of climate change are much more deadly, from the growing desertification of Africa to the threats of rising sea levels and the submersion of small island nations. — Amy Goodman

Combat and rape, the public and private forms of organized social violence, are primarily experiences of adolescent and early adult life. The United States Army enlists young men at seventeen; the average age of the Vietnam combat soldier was nineteen. In many other countries boys are conscripted for military service while barely in their teens. Similarly, the period of highest risk for rape is in late adolescence. Half of all victims are aged twenty or younger at the time they are raped; three-quarters are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six. The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. They are the paradigmatic forms of trauma for women and men. — Judith Lewis Herman

Denmark is a small, homogenous nation of about 5.5 million people. The United States is a melting pot of more than 315 million people. No question about it, Denmark and the United States are very different countries. — Bernie Sanders

In essence, terrorism is a show. Terrorists stage a terrifying spectacle of violence that captures our imagination and makes us feel as if we are sliding back into medieval chaos. Consequently states often feel obliged to react to the theatre of terrorism with a show of security, orchestrating immense displays of force, such as the persecution of entire populations or the invasion of foreign countries. In most cases, this overreaction to terrorism poses a far greater threat to our security than the terrorists themselves. Terrorists — Yuval Noah Harari

It is obviously easier, for the short run, to draw cheap labor from adjacent pools of poverty ... than to find it among one's own people. And to the millions of such prospective immigrants from poverty to prosperity, there is, rightly or wrongly, no place that looks more attractive than the United States. Given its head, and subject to no restrictions, this pressure will find its termination only when the levels of overpopulation and poverty in the United States are equal to those of the countries from which these people are now so anxious to escape. — George F. Kennan

The United States cannot reshape other countries in its own image and that, with a few exceptions, its efforts to police the world are neither in its interests nor within the scope of its resources. This whole tendency to see ourselves as the center of political enlightenment and as teachers to a great part of the rest of the world strikes me as unthought-through, vainglorious and undesirable. — George F. Kennan

The principal purposes to be answered by union are these the common defense of the members; the preservation of the public peace as well against internal convulsions as external attacks; the regulation of commerce with other nations and between the States; the superintendence of our intercourse, political and commercial, with foreign countries. — Alexander Hamilton

In Bangladesh alone, tens of millions are expected to have to flee from low-lying plains in coming years because of sea level rise and more severe weather, creating a migrant crisis that will make today's pale in significance. With considerable justice, Bangladesh's leading climate scientist says that "These migrants should have the right to move to the countries from which all these greenhouse gases are coming. Millions should be able to go to the United States." And to the other rich countries that have grown wealthy while bringing about a new geological era, the Anthropocene, marked by radical human transformation of the environment. — Chomsky Noam

So we draw lines around our property, our counties, our cities, our states, our countries. And, boy, do we act as if those lines are important. I mean, we go to war. We will kill and die to protect those boundaries. Nature couldn't give two hoots about our national boundaries ... — David Suzuki

So, the international community are all the countries that are important: the United States definitely everywhere; the European Union because it is very important, and also, they do show a great deal of international responsibility; and then the local players. — Lakhdar Brahimi

The most that these members of Congress can say, in favor of their appointment, is simply this: Each one can say for himself: I have evidence satisfactory to myself, that there exists, scattered throughout the country, a band of men, having a tacit understanding with each other, and calling themselves "the people of the United States," whose general purposes are to control and plunder each other, and all other persons in the country, and, so far as they can, even in neighboring countries; and to kill every man who shall attempt to defend his person and property against their schemes of plunder and dominion. — Lysander Spooner

I'd say that Holland, Sweden, and Denmark are all better countries politically than the United States. The average person is far better off in one of those countries than he is in the United States and poverty of the sort that we have is absolutely unknown in Northern Europe. — Gore Vidal

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States and China are more likely to view each other as competitors if not adversaries. But the die has not been cast. The best possible outcome is a new understanding that when they cannot cooperate, they will coexist and allow all countries in the Pacific to grow and thrive. — Lee Kuan Yew

There's something that scares me. It's the way media in the United States presents the rest of the world. I feel like people in America are getting a completely different picture of what's going on in other countries than what is reality. — Rula Jebreal

We hear from time to time about horrible human rights atrocities happening around the globe. Our government claims that it stands in favor of human rights, and our leaders are in the news demanding consequences for other countries that are abusing their populations. But there is a huge denial about how widespread and common these kinds of atrocities are in the United States, and that we are not nearly as different from other countries as we would like to believe we are. — Lundy Bancroft

From 1914 to 1918 a generation of German schoolboys daily experienced war as a great, thrilling, enthralling game between nations, which provided far more excitement and emotional satisfaction than anything peace could offer; and that has now become the underlying vision of Nazism. That is where it draws its allure from: its simplicity, its appeal to the imagination, and its zest for action; but also its intolerance and its cruelty towards internal opponents. Anyone who does not join in the game is regarded not as an adversary but as a spoilsport. Ultimately that is also the source of Nazism's belligerent attitude towards neighboring states. Other countries are not regarded as neighbors but must be opponents, whether they like it or not. Otherwise the match must be called off! — Sebastian Haffner

There are many different places of power around the world. They're invisible openings to other worlds. We find a preponderance of these places in the Himalayas, in the western part of the United States; of course, in every country of the world there are some. — Frederick Lenz

In 49 countries around the world, including all of Europe, people have the opportunity of knowing whether or not they are eating food which contains genetically engineered ingredients. In the United States, we don't. — Bernie Sanders

There are war-torn countries, people full of poverty, who still voted 60, 70 percent. If here in the United States of America, we voted at 60 percent, 70 percent, it would transform our politics. — Barack Obama

What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa. — George Ayittey

Now then, Mr. Crab," said the zebra, "here are the people I told you about; and they know more than you do, who live in a pool, and more than I do, who live in a forest. For they have been travelers all over the world, and know every part of it."
"There's more of the world than Oz," declared the crab, in a stubborn voice.
"That is true," said Dorothy; "but I used to live in Kansas, in the United States, and I've been to California and to Australia
and so has Uncle Henry."
"For my part," added the Shaggy Man, "I've been to Mexico and Boston and many other foreign countries."
"And I," said the Wizard, "have been to Europe and Ireland."
"So you see," continued the zebra, addressing the crab, "here are people of real consequence, who know what they are talking about. — L. Frank Baum

When we were invited to the White House we said we would accept the invitation on one condition. If it's just a photo session we would not go - but if Obama would listen to what was in our hearts, then we would. The message came back: you are free to say whatever you wish. And so we did! It was quite a serious meeting. We talked about the importance of education. We discussed the United States' role in supporting dictatorships and drone attacks in countries like Pakistan. I told him that instead of focusing on eradicating terrorism through war, he should focus on eradicating it through education. In — Malala Yousafzai

The critical point is that thousands of people are swept into the criminal justice system every year pursuant to the drug war without much regard for their guilt or innocence. The police are allowed by the courts to conduct fishing expeditions for drugs on the streets and freeways based on nothing more than a hunch...and once inside the system, people are often denied attorneys or meaningful representation and pressured into plea bargains by the threat of unbelievably harsh sentences - sentences for minor drug crimes that are higher than many countries impose on convicted murderers. This is the way the roundup works, and it works this way in virtually every major city in the United States. — Michelle Alexander

From the perspective of the plan of salvation, one of the most serious abuses of children is to deny them birth. This is a worldwide trend. The national birthrate in the United States is the lowest in 25 years,2 and the birthrates in most European and Asian countries have been below replacement levels for many years. This is not just a religious issue. As rising generations diminish in numbers, cultures and even nations are hollowed out and eventually disappear.
One cause of the diminishing birthrate is the practice of abortion. Worldwide, there are estimated to be more than 40 million abortions per year.3 Many laws permit or even promote abortion, but to us this is a great evil. — Dallin H. Oaks

Al-Qa'idah was set up to wage a jihad against infidelity, particularly to encounter the onslaught of the infidel countries against the Islamic states. Jihad is the sixth undeclared element of Islam. The first five being the basic holy words of Islam, prayers, fast, pilgrimage to Mecca, and giving alms Every anti-Islamic person is afraid of it. Al-Qa'idah wants to keep this element alive and active and make it part of the daily life of the Muslims. It wants to give it the status of worship. We are not against any Islamic country nor we consider a war against an Islamic country as jihad. — Osama Bin Laden

States are far less violent than traditional bands and tribes. Modern Western countries, even in their most war-torn centuries, suffered no more than around a quarter of the average death rate of nonstate societies, and less than a tenth of that for the most violent one. — Steven Pinker

The United States consumes power per land-area at a rate three times the average. Even though they are more energy efficient, densely populated industrial countries like Germany, Britain and Japan have even bigger power consumption per area. — David J. C. MacKay

I think it's good for anybody to learn languages. Americans are particularly limited in that way. Europeans less so ... We're beginning to have Spanish move in on English in the states because of all the people coming from Hispanic countries ... and we're beginning to learn some Spanish. And I think that's a good thing ... Only having one language is very limiting ... You get to think that's the way the human race is made; there's only one language worth speaking ... Well, this isn't good for English. — W.S. Merwin

The countries of the American continent and the adjacent islands are for the United States the natural marts of supply and demand. — Chester A. Arthur

I think, while it is true that the Hillary Clinton and I voted differently on the war in Iraq, what is important is that we learn the lesson of the war in Iraq. And that lesson is intrinsic to my foreign policy if elected president, is the United States cannot do it alone. We cannot be the policeman of the world. We are now spending more I believe than the next eight countries on defense. We have got to work in strong coalition with the major powers of the world and with those Muslim countries that are prepared to stand up and take on terrorism. — Bernie Sanders

Prostitution thrives in the United States. We focus in this country on punishing the girls. For every brothel owner or pimp or male customer, there are 50 girls who are arrested for being prostitutes. Other countries have tried the other way around, and it works beautifully ... they bring the charges against the brothel owners and the pimps and the male customers, and they do not prosecute the girls, who quite often are brought into that trade involuntarily. It works quite well, by the way. — Jimmy Carter

So much of the United State's political relationship with Israel is based on culture. Israel is the only Westernized culture in the region and the Middle Eastern countries bordering Israel are Arab, which is a totally different society. Even though Israel doesn't exactly feel like the United States, by comparison to its neighbors it's very Western. — Jill Soloway

Economists agree that all taxes potentially detract from the ability of markets to allocate resources efficiently, and the least inefficient types of taxation are those that are simple, uniform, and predictable, which allow businesses to plan and invest around them. The U.S. tax code is exactly the opposite. While nominal corporate tax rates in the United States are much higher than in other developed countries, very few American corporations actually pay taxes at that rate, because they have negotiated special exemptions and benefits for themselves. — Francis Fukuyama

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets. — Alan Dershowitz

Unless some other factor is operative, in large, weak and underpopulated states, the luxury of ostentation prevails over that of comfort; but in countries which are more populous than extensive, the luxury of comfort always diminishes ostentation. — Cesare Beccaria

Now all of the ideas that I'm talking about, they are not radical ideas. Making public colleges and universities tuition free, that exists in countries all over the world, used to exist in the United States. Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, and creating 13 million jobs by doing away with tax loopholes that large corporations now enjoy by putting their money into the Cayman Islands and other tax havens. That is not a radical idea. — Bernie Sanders

I think I'm being conservative when I say there are more people playing soccer in the United States than in 90% of the world's other countries, probably 95%. — Rabih Alameddine

We have a festering mass of human wretchedness in all our great towns, which is the natural hotbed of such anarchical movements: all the great continental countries are full of this explosive material. Can we depend on our country keeping free from the infection when we have far more poverty in our midst than the neighbouring European States? — Edward R.B. Pease

This land carries people from different countries, different cultures, even different tongues, who even warred amongst themselves, but they are united over on only one cause; hate. The people of the Southern United States united in their hate against the free population of their previous slaves. — Max Connelly

Well the most likely emerging countries are Japan, Turkey, and Poland. So I would say Eastern Europe, the Middle East and a maritime war by Japan with the United States enjoying its own pleasures. — George Friedman

Part of the concept of the euro zone was to establish a common market. The banks were going to bank across all their countries like we bank across states. But that concept got killed for a whole bunch of reasons that I won't get into. That was a good concept, by the way. It may yet return, because there are huge economies of scale in banking. That's another thing people don't quite get. — Jamie Dimon

There are a lot of countries, oil-producing countries, that aren't very democratic, but supported by the United States. That's odd. — Sam Richards

In every country except - industrial country except the United States, the government uses its massive purchasing power to negotiate drug prices. That's one of the reasons prices are so much higher in the United States than in other countries. — Noam Chomsky

When they talk about raising your taxes, I think raise the taxes on some of these countries that are taking advantage of the United States. — Donald Trump

The plain fact is that this country and other industrial countries are deeply dependent on animal exploitation to sustain their present economic structures. The plain fact is that we are more dependent on animal exploitation than were the states of the southern United States on human slavery ... . So, although there are more people concerned about animals and the environment, little progress has been made because those who profit from animal exploitation and the government that exists to serve their interests have a lot to lose and are not budging - not an inch. — Gary L. Francione

Here is one optimists reason for believing unity will prevail ... within the next hundred years ... nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century
citizen of the world
will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st. All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances. No matter how permanent and even sacred they may seem at any one time, in fact they are all artificial and temporary. — Strobe Talbott

I'm a religious man," he said. "I don't believe in a particular
God, but even so one can have a faith, something beyond
the limits of rationality. Marxism has a large element of
built-in faith, although it claims to be a science and not
merely an ideology. This is my first visit to the West: until
now I have only been able to go to the Soviet Union or
Poland or the Baltic states. In your country I see an
abundance of material things. It seems to be unlimited. But
there's a difference between our countries that is also a
similarity. Both are poor. You see, poverty has different
faces. We lack the abundance that you have, and we don't
have the freedom of choice. In your country I detect a kind of poverty, which is that you do not need to fight for your
survival. For me the struggle has a religious dimension, and
I would not want to exchange that for your abundance. — Henning Mankell

In the past when a country became as powerful as the United States, other countries would band together to clip its wings. But that isn't happening now and I don't think it's not going to happen, because other countries are not threatened by us, and they secretly appreciate the services that we provide, even if they don't usually say so. — Michael Mandelbaum

[Illegal immigration] costs the taxpayers of the United States a lot of money. And it's unfair to Americans who are working every day to pay their own bills. It's also unfair to a lot of people who have waited in line for years and years in other countries to be legal immigrants. — William J. Clinton

The United States and Turkey are the only two countries that don't have some kind of subsidy for the Arts. The whole culture in society has made certain films more acceptable. I turned down so many films in the '60s and '70s. — Alex North

The United States of America is a threat to world peace. Because what [America] is saying is that if you are afraid of a veto in the Security Council, you can go outside and take action and violate the sovereignty of other countries. That is the message they are sending to the world. That must be condemned in the strongest terms. — Nelson Mandela

In those countries where income taxes are lower than in the United States, the ability to defer the payment of U.S. tax by retaining income in the subsidiary companies provides a tax advantage for companies operating through overseas subsidiaries that is not available to companies operating solely in the United States. Many American investors properly made use of this deferral in the conduct of their foreign investment. — John F. Kennedy

On the one hand, there is no question that English - frequently bad English - has become the universal language of scholarship. It is clearly a tremendous handicap for people outside of the United States, Britain, and Australia and a few other countries because few of them are native speakers, but we demand that they present and publish in English. — Henry Rosovsky

The United States was the most unequal of the advanced industrial countries in the mid-1980s, and it has maintained that position.92 In fact, the gap between it and many other countries has increased: from the mid-1980s France, Hungary, and Belgium have seen no significant increase in inequality, while Turkey and Greece have actually seen a decrease in inequality. We are now approaching the level of inequality that marks dysfunctional societies - it is a club that we would distinctly not want to join, including Iran, Jamaica, Uganda, and the Philippines.93 Because we have so much inequality, and — Joseph E. Stiglitz

Eventually the dollar won't always rule. Eventually there will be a challenge to the United States and it will have to be like other countries that are a bit concerned about their currency, and then have to ratchet back in order to - right, in order to sustain. We just haven't reached that point yet. — Amity Shlaes

Instead of further mucking around in the Middle East, Brzezinski is seeking to marshal all remaining US-UK resources for a final onslaught on Moscow, Beijing, and the other countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the main focal point of world resistance to London and Washington. This is Brzezinski's new Operation Barbarossa. The financiers who control Brzezinski are now fielding Obama as the plausible public face for a new era of brutal and bellicose imperialist subversion and geopolitics which will be advertised on the basis of multiculturalism and dignity through selfdetermination attained through the subversion, balkanization, partition and subdivision of existing states, instead of the narrow and venomous Islamophobia which has been the constant and strident note of the Bush-Cheney neocons. — Anonymous

I'm very appreciative of, and I also, having traveled the world, know that the United States is one of the few places where there really are no limitations. As long as you've got drive and hard work and a good idea and you can get out there and do your thing, there's no social classes, so in a lot of countries there's a big history of regardless of how much money you may make, there's still that little thing where you're not in society. That doesn't exist here. — Gloria Estefan

We are well aware from which countries and through which countries the terrorists are receiving support. In the immediate future I shall be calling upon the leaders of these states to put a stop to this kind of activity. — Boris Yeltsin

This body of thought represents an almost total inversion of Westphalian world order. In the purist version of Islamism, the state cannot be the point of departure for an international system because states are secular, hence illegitimate; at best they may achieve a kind of provisional status en route to a religious entity on a larger scale. Noninterference in other countries' domestic affairs cannot serve as a governing principle, because national loyalties represent deviations from the true faith and because jihadists have a duty to transform dar al-harb, the world of unbelievers. Purity, not stability, is the guiding principle of this conception of world order. — Henry Kissinger

The United States has got to join the rest of the industrialized world in making sure that working families of the middle class have benefits that they absolutely need. We are the only major country on Earth that does not guarantee health care to all people as a right. We are the only major country on Earth that does not provide paid family and medical leave. There are many countries around the world which make sure that public colleges and universities are tuition-free. In our country, it's becoming increasingly difficult to afford to go to college. — Bernie Sanders

American critics of welfare statism are often surprised to learn that countries like West Germany, with a much more comprehensive welfare state and a statistically larger public sector, have fewer government employees per capita than the United States does. — Robert Kuttner

Well, then what the federal government should have done was accept the assistance of foreign countries, of entrepreneurial Americans who have had solutions that they wanted presented. They can't even get a phone call returned, Bill. The Dutch - they are known, and the Norwegians - they are known for dikes and for cleaning up water and for dealing with spills. They offered to help and yet, no, they too, with the proverbial, can't even get a phone call back. — Sarah Palin

I think that Canada is one of the most impressive countries in the world, the way it has managed a diverse population, a migrant economy. The natural beauty of Canada is extraordinary. Obviously there is enormous kinship between the United States and Canada, and the ties that bind our two countries together are things that are very important to us. — Barack Obama

Let me be very clear. For me geography does not exist! I strongly object to the whole concept of "foreign literature"...and speaking of national identity: that is how dictatorships get started! In literature there is no periphery and no center; there are only writers. The problem is not geographic but rather numeric. In the 19th century there were at least thirty literary geniuses in Russia, Germany, France, England and the United States. Today we are lucky if there are five writers of that caliber in the whole world...Where does one find good literature today? Mostly in third world countries, because adversity, isolation, combat provide good working conditions. It is harder to be a good writer in a so-called "civilized" country, in the so-called "democracies. — Antonio Lobo Antunes

There are hundreds of Frank Lloyd Wright buildings around the United States and in other countries, too. Wright lived into his 90s, and one of his most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in New York, was completed just before his death. Wright buildings look like Wright buildings - that is their paradox. — Jane Smiley

What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor
inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing
permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children. — Howard Zinn

I don't want the United States to be in a global economy where our economic future is bound to that of Zimbabwe. We can't necessarily trust the decisions that are being made financially in other countries. — Michele Bachmann

The United Nations research states that men with the longest life expectancy are from Japan, followed by Switzerland. I am rather surprised at this result as since time immemorial we have been doing the Karva Chauth fast to make sure our men have long lives, and the results should have definitely shown by now. I scan the list, confident that in this chart of life expectancy, the Indian man must definitely be in the top 5. Nope! There are 146 countries above us where the men have longer lifespans, and the biggest blow is that even with four wives who don't fast for them, the Arab men outlive our good old Indian dudes. — Twinkle Khanna

The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are. — Michael Oppenheimer

There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration ... The United States does notconcede that those countries are under the domination of the Soviet Union. — Gerald R. Ford

My big focus is China and OPEC and all of these countries that are just absolutely destroying the United States. — Donald Trump

I had no idea what to say to this. I had been nurtured in the U.S. school system on a steady diet of the Great Men theory of history. History was full of Great Men. I had to take separate Women's History courses just to learn about what women were doing while all the men were killing each other. It turned out many of them were governing countries and figuring out rather effective methods of birth control that had sweeping ramifications on the makeup of particular states, especially Greece and Rome.
Half the world is full of women, but it's rare to hear a narrative that doesn't speak of women as the people who have things done to them instead of the people who do things. More often, women are talked about as a man's daughter. A man's wife. — Kameron Hurley

If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster. — Joseph Rotblat

The United States did not sign Kyoto, yet its emissions are not that different from the countries that did sign it. — James Hansen

The United States media is advocating for the country to go to battle with Spain and take over Cuba and Puerto Rico to gain advantage over the Atlantic," said Manuel. "They have swayed public opinion. I would not be surprised that the countries go into war, and we are caught in the middle. — Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini

Multiple political parties are a fact of life throughout Europe and most of the West. Today the only countries without strong multiparty political systems are the United States and a number of third world military dictatorships. — Thomas Naylor

The struggle of the Black people in the United States for emancipation is a component part of the general struggle of al the people of the world against U.S. imperialism, a component part of the contemporary world revolution. I call on the workers, peasants, and revolutionary intellectuals of all countries and all who are willing to fight against U.S. imperialism to take action and extend strong support to the struggle of the Black people in the United States! People of the whole world, unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common enemy, U.S. imperialism, and its accomplices! It can be said with certainty that the complete collapse of colonialism, imperialism, and all systems of exploitation, and the complete emancipation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off. — Mao Tse-tung

The way the United States intelligence community operates is it doesn't limit itself to the protection of the homeland. It doesn't limit itself to countering terrorist threats, countering nuclear proliferation. It's also used for economic espionage, for political spying to gain some knowledge of what other countries are doing. — Edward Snowden

Today, there are more people of Irish ancestry in the United States than in Ireland, more Jews than in Israel, more blacks than in most African countries. There are more people of Polish ancestry in Detroit than in most of the leading cities in Poland, and more than twice as many people of Italian ancestry in New York as in Venice. — Thomas Sowell

For all its celebration of markets and individual initiative, this alliance of government and finance often produces results that bear a striking resemblance to the worst excesses of bureaucratization in the former Soviet Union or former colonial backwaters of the Global South. There is a rich anthropological literature, for instance, on the cult of certificates, licenses, and diplomas in the former colonial world. Often the argument is that in countries like Bangladesh, Trinidad, or Cameroon, which hover between the stifling legacy of colonial domination and their own magical traditions, official credentials are seen as a kind of material fetish - magical objects conveying power in their own right, entirely apart from the real knowledge, experience, or training they're supposed to represent. But since the eighties, the real explosion of credentialism has been in what are supposedly the most "advanced" economies, like the United States, Great Britain, or Canada. — David Graeber

It is clear that several countries, in the Balkans for example, need to be considered countries of safe origin. But others like, in my opinion, Eritrea, undoubtedly need to be considered a country of origin with a valid claim to asylum. And with a third group of states, like Nigeria for example, each individual case needs to be evaluated. Then there are also very controversial cases like Afghanistan. In any case, united European action is needed. This argument for Europeanization may sound utopian, but there is no alternative. — Paolo Gentiloni

I have some friends, colleagues here at the Karolinska Institute and even in the United States and many other countries too, because we are working together as scientists. — Lennart Nilsson

All human beings are moral beings. So, certainly there are alliances. We are in the countries, that are secular states, and we obey its laws. I think we must recognize that common moral base. But in alliances we must always be careful just of what level the alliance is perceived. I will go and lecture to an atheist society, for example, but I will not lecture for them, because I am not an atheist. You see the difference. — John Lennox

The United States presents a value system to the world that is based on democracy, based on economic freedom, based on individual rights for men and women, .. I think that is what makes us such a draw for nations around the world. People come to the United States to be educated, to become Americans. We are a country of countries and we touch every country, and every country in world touches us. — Colin Powell

I have to say that it's very few countries that are willing to look back at its past and apologize for its act, or make amends for its act, as the United States had one. — Robert Matsui

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

Robots can now milk cows. Oil prices have fallen globally, meaning both the petro-states and those indirectly propped up by them are weakened. At the same time, slower growth in China has lately shrunk its voracious appetite for African, Australian, and Latin American commodities. China accounted for more than a third of global growth in recent years, and its growth engine multiplied the growth of many of the countries that exported raw materials to Beijing. That has slowed. China's total debt has grown from roughly 150 percent of its GDP in 2007 to around 240 percent today - a massive increase in one decade that is dampening its growth and its imports and shrinking China's wallet for foreign aid and investment in African and Latin American commodity-exporting countries. In — Thomas L. Friedman

In the States, you can buy Chinese food. In Beijing you can buy hamburger. It's very close. Now I feel the world become a big family, like a really big family. You have many neighbors. Not like before, two countries are far away. — Jet Li

This is just the United States. All the rest of the countries, all over the world, are proud of Michael. It's here we have the most trouble out of them. — Joseph Jackson

There are scores of studies demonstrating that a diet rich in vegetables and fruits reduces the risk of dying from all the Western diseases; in countries where people eat a pound or more of vegetables and fruits a day, the rate of cancer is half what is in the United States. — Michael Pollan

In some ways we indisputably are, but a major new ranking of livability in 132 countries puts the United States in a sobering 16th place. We underperform because our economic and military strengths don't translate into well-being for the average citizen. — Anonymous

My greatest contribution to hip-hop was allowing the United States of America to know and understand exactly how far they reach, and how influential they are to children in completely different countries because I am the import. — Monie Love

Countries with high levels of atheism are also the most charitable both in terms of the percentage of their wealth they devote to social welfare programs and the percentage they give in aid to the developing world. The dubious link between Christian literalism and Christian values is belied by other indices of social equality. Consider the ratio of salaries paid to top-tier CEOs and those paid to the same firms' average employees: in Britain it is 24:1; in France, 15:1; in Sweden, 13:1; in the United States, where 80 percent of the population expects to be called before God on Judgment Day, it is 475:1. Many a camel, it would seem, expects to pass easily through the eye of a needle. — Sam Harris

Now, for the moment, we are safe. The only kind of international violence that worries most people in the developed countries is terrorism: from imminent heart attack to a bad case of hangnail in fifteen years flat. We are very lucky people
but we need to use the time we have been granted wisely, because total war is only sleeping. All the major states are still organized for war, and all that is needed for the world to slide back into a nuclear confrontation is a twist of the kaleidoscope that shifts international relations into a new pattern of rival alliances. — Gwynne Dyer

If I had political responsibility, I would want to prepare for a plan B that would foresee that the European currency union, that the eurozone, no longer necessarily consists of 17 member states. And that means to make provisions so that other countries are not pulled into the maelstrom through contagion. — Peer Steinbruck

Countries, states, cities, corporations and laws are all words on paper. — Bryant McGill

Interestingly, the more Americans report knowing about Muslim countries, the more likely they are to hold positive views of those countries. (p. 155) — John L. Esposito