The single most important impediment to global institutions is the concept of “my country, right or wrong”.
Whatever there is of greatness in the United States, or indeed in any other country, is due to labor. The laborer is the author of all greatness and wealth. Without labor there would be no government, no leading class, and nothing to preserve.
I appreciate the fact, and am proud of it, that the attentions I am receiving are intended more for our country than for me personally.
But Italy is not an intellectual country. On the subway in Tokyo everybody reads. In Italy, they don’t. Don’t evaluate Italy from the fact that it produced Raphael and Michelangelo.
In the United States there’s a Puritan ethic and a mythology of success. He who is successful is good. In Latin countries, in Catholic countries, a successful person is a sinner.
Narrativity presumes a special taste for plot. And this taste for plot was always very present in the Anglo-Saxon countries and that explains their high quality of detective novels.
Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country.
We are a pluralist civilisation because we allow mosques to be built in our countries, and we are not going to stop simply because Christian missionaries are thrown into prison in Kabul. If we did so, we, too, would become Taliban.
When I go to a country, I go to flea markets, antique stores. I am always looking for something.
The misogyny that shapes every aspect of our civilization is the institutionalized form of male fear and hatred of what they have denied and therefore cannot know, cannot share: that wild country, the being of women.
He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safer for children to grow up in.
The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we’re visiting, life.
What is love of one’s country; is it hate of one’s uncountry? Then it’s not a good thing.
Maybe the one I enjoyed playing most was A Month in the Country.
There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.
The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.
Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.
My revenge is fraternity! No more frontiers! The Rhine for everyone! Let us be the same Republic, let us be the United States of Europe, let us be the continental federation, let us be European liberty, let us be universal peace!
As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.
As a woman, I have no country.