National Interest Quotes

1. "This concern with the basic condition of freedom -- the absence of physical constraint -- is unquestionably necessary, but is not all that is necessary. It is perfectly possible for a man to be out of prison and yet not free -- to be under no physical constraint and yet to be a psychological captive, compelled to think, feel and act as the representatives of the national State, or of some private interest within the nation, want him to think, feel and act."
Author: Aldous Huxley

2. "Our talks in Paris tackled economic, democratic, security and political issues; we talked on means for combating terrorism, in addition to latest regional and international developments of mutual interest, especially those in region."
Author: Ali Abdullah Saleh

3. "Last year, customs officials screened only five percent of the 11 million cargo containers entering the United States. That rate is both unacceptable and dangerous to our national and economic interests."
Author: Allyson Schwartz

4. "All of Britain's aid is spent in Britain's national interests, and some of it contributes to Britain's national security as well."
Author: Andrew Mitchell

5. "Pakistan has made no mention of ending our tests. We have a missile program, and it is in the national interest whatever we want to do."
Author: Ayub Khan

6. "'Time' is an internationalist publication catering to internationalist readers who are not only interested in their own backyard."
Author: Bobby Ghosh

7. "The predominant yardstick of your government is not human rights but national interests."
Author: Breyten Breytenbach

8. "Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science."
Author: Carl Sagan

9. "Patriotism, red hot, is compatible with the existence of a neglect of national interests, a dishonesty, a cold indifference to the suffering of millions. Patriotism is largely pride, and very largely combativeness. Patriotism generally has a chip on its shoulder."
Author: Charlotte Perkins Gilman

10. "My overall worldview has never changed: that America has and must maintain the strongest military in the world, that we must lead the international community to confront threats and challenges together, and that we must use all tools of American power to protect our citizens and our interests."
Author: Chuck Hagel

11. "Transferring our sovereignty and decisionmaking power to the WTO, to the United Nations, or any other international body is not in the long-term interests of our people."
Author: Dana Rohrabacher

12. "Idealism that makes no distinction between areas where our national interest lies and those from which it is remote does no good for America. The weariness of the post-Versailles, post-Korea, post-Vietnam eras is never far from the national mood."
Author: Dick Morris

13. "National languages are all huge systems of vested interests which sullenly resist critical inquiry."
Author: Edward Sapir

14. "What is required from members of Congress and the public alike is a new spirit of devotion to the national welfare beyond party or self-interest."
Author: Evan Bayh

15. "There's an institution here called the National Sound Archive, and there's a character who works there, Paul Wilson. He takes a very special interest in the history of the music and advised Martin Davidson of the existence of these tapes."
Author: Evan Parker

16. "So is it always nationalist to resist US globalization? The US thinks it is, and wants you to agree; and, moreover, to consider US interests as being universal ones."
Author: Fredric Jameson

17. "We must recognize that as the dominant power in the world we have a special responsibility. In addition to protecting our national interests, we must take the leadership in protecting the common interests of humanity."
Author: George Soros

18. "We really believe our national interests are identical with European interests."
Author: Gerhard Schroder

19. "The (nation) state's concern had been the development of citizens - social subjects whose identity was shaped by the goals of the state - and the preparation of a labour force serving the needs of a national economy and administration. That state was interested in cohesion, integration and homogeneity - however imperfectly realized. The globally framed interests of current versions of the market are neither about citizenship - shared social values, aspirations, dispositions - nor about the preparation of a labour force....."
Author: Gunther Kress

20. "The war on terror, if this is a war on terror, can only be won by a sincere regional and international cooperation. All have to believe they have something at stake and work together. In the absence of this it will become political and interest-oriented."
Author: Hamid Karzai

21. "We shall convince France and the world, that we are not a degraded people, humiliated under a colonial spirit of fear and a sense of inferiority, fitted to be the miserable instruments of foreign influence, and regardless of national honor, character, and interest."
Author: John Adams

22. "And when they do spin out of control there are important ramifications that affect America, not just its direct national interest but its broader interests as a nation which has thought of itself as a beacon to other nations, of freedom, liberty, democracy, whatever."
Author: John Pomfret

23. "After everyone has had a chance to bluster, posture, and pontificate, we are left with one basic question: under any foreseeable circumstance, would it be in our national interest to default on our debt? The answer is unequivocally no."
Author: John Sununu

24. "I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio. My family was not nationally known as being a literary family, though my mother and my mother's side of the family in general were interested in literature."
Author: Kenneth Koch

25. "Their [realists'] concern is that utopian aspirations towards a new peaceful world order will simply absolutize con?icts and make them more intractable. National interests are in some degree negotiable; rights, in principle, are not. International organizations such as the United Nations have not been conspicuously successful in bringing peace, and it is likely that the states of the world would become extremely nervous of any move to give the UN the overwhelming power needed to do this."
Author: Kenneth Minogue

26. "It's true that I run a multi-national group but I have no interests in India. So please tell me, what should my identity be?"
Author: Lakshmi Mittal

27. "Multi- polarisation has become an inevitable trend in the process of shaping a global political pattern and has been widely welcomed by the international community as it reflects the common interests and aspiration of the overwhelming majority of countries."
Author: Li Peng

28. "Finally we are a nation with some conscience. It means alliances are extremely important when they're based on a national interest. We have to have the ability to sustain our presence within those alliances."
Author: Malcolm Wallop

29. "Published in this month's Harper's, from a conversation held in Beijing in February 1973:Chairman Mao Zedong: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million.U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger: The chairman is improving his offer.Mao: We can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children, and our children are too many."
Author: Mao Tse Tung

30. "But, in an "Islamophobic" West, the new ground rules were quickly established: Islam trumped feminism, trumped homosexuality, trumped everything. In speeches around the globe, the 44th President of the United States affected a cool equidistance between his national interests and those of others. He was less "the leader of the Free World" than the Bystander-in-Chief, and thus the perfect emblem of a western world content to be spectators in their own fate."
Author: Mark Steyn

31. "Soon I worked during twelve years in theater works of the prestigious Theatre National Populaire. It was the best time of my life, the most difficult, the most interesting, the most exciting."
Author: Maurice Jarre

32. "It was actually drumming that gave me the stamina to get into sports later. I started playing drums at 13, and when I got to the international touring level... I got interested in cross-country skiing, long-distance swimming, bicycling... things that require stamina, not finesse."
Author: Neil Peart

33. "Bismarck had cunningly taught the parties not to aim at national appeal but to represent interests. They remained class or sectional pressure-groups under the Republic. This was fatal, for it made the party system, and with it democratic parliamentarianism, seem a divisive rather than a unifying factor. Worse: it meant the parties never produced a leader who appealed beyond the narrow limits of his own following."
Author: Paul Johnson

34. "Well, Australians should speak for the national interests of Australia, and whatever role former Australian prime ministers may have, one of the things you do is speak frankly about the country as you see the country's best interests, you know?"
Author: Paul Keating

35. "I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something quite different about you, from the last time we were together, what could it be…."Was this my ultra-dose of Intoxicated taking effect?"I know!" said the prince happily. "You're a national disgrace!""And do you know what else is interesting," I replied. "In America, Prince is a dog's name."
Author: Paul Rudnick

36. "Thus began the long process of transforming Jesus from a revolutionary Jewish nationalist into a peaceful spiritual leader with no interest in any earthly matter. That was a Jesus the Romans could accept, and in fact did accept three centuries later when the Roman emperor Flavius Theodosius (d. 395) made the itinerant Jewish preacher's movement the official religion of the state, and what we now recognize as orthodox Christianity was born."
Author: Reza Aslan

37. "Our system provides for a winner to take office on January 20th, and he is expected to take command of the ship of state. Failure to do so, characterized by hesitation and indecision, will harm the national interest."
Author: Richard V. Allen

38. "Somebody must trespass on the taboos of modern nationalism, in the interests of human reason. Business can't. Diplomacy won't. It has to be people like us."
Author: Robert Byron

39. "If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters."
Author: Robert McChesney

40. "Talk about national interests: When we went in with Operation Iraqi Freedom, some of our allies, Turkey, for example, would not let us through. How much trouble did that cause us, because we were not able to go into Iraq through Turkey?"
Author: Roger Wicker

41. "A totally nondenominational prayer: Insofar as I may be heard by anything, which may or may not care what I say, I ask, if it matters, that I be forgiven for anything I may have done or failed to do which requires forgiveness.  Conversely, if not forgiveness but something else may be required to insure any possible benefit for which I may be eligible after the destruction of my body, I ask that this, whatever it may be, be granted or withheld, as the case may be, in such a manner as to insure said benefit. I ask this in my capacity as your elected intermediary between yourself and that which may not be yourself, but which may have an interest in the matter of your receiving as much as it is possible for you to receive of this thing, and which may in some way be influenced by this ceremony. Amen."
Author: Roger Zelazny

42. "Arabs and other Muslims generally agreed that Saddam Hussein might be a bloody tyrant, but, paralleling FDR's thinking, "he is our bloody tyrant." In their view, the invasion was a family affair to be settled within the family and those who intervened in the name of some grand theory of international justice were doing so to protect their own selfish interests and to maintain Arab subordination to the west."
Author: Samuel P. Huntington

43. "What we have to do is to find a solution that the interests of the national teams are respecting the interests of the clubs. And also the clubs they shall respect the interests and the aspirations of national teams."
Author: Sepp Blatter

44. "Pakistan has not recognized Israel... any such decision would be taken in supreme national interests after due consultation of the parliament."
Author: Shaukat Aziz

45. "I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."
Author: Smedley Butler

46. "What is forever,' I asked. . . . Forever, it appeared, was a word made up by adults so they would not have to think about endings. . . . A friend who is an attorney told me not that long ago that a recent national survey of legal documents shows that 'forever' lasts about thirty years on average. But, if forever can mean until governments fall or lose interest, what does 700 million years mean when the whole history of governments, the very idea of governments, is subsumed into inconsequence by that span of time?"
Author: Sue Hubbell

47. "Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics."
Author: Theodore Roosevelt

48. "Fellow-feeling. . .is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other's passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity."
Author: Theodore Roosevelt

49. "You can't tell me that all the wars we are fighting are in America's national security interest."
Author: Todd Rokita

National Interest Quotes Pictures