Country Quotes - Page 495

Even in this secular country, the threat posed by religious fundamentalists is never very far away. Every major religious text exhorts the same principles - that of unyielding obedience to a supernatural being, and renunciation of the intellect and personal aspirations.

My father was a Muslim immigrant; when Donald Trump started talking about banning Muslim immigrants from this country, I grew my beard out. My mother hated it. She never wanted me to look particularly "Muslim." She thought if I grew my beard out that people would know, right? "Don't make it hard for yourself. Don't let people know."

We no longer live in a world that is neatly divided between rich and well-educated countries, and poor and badly-educated ones.

I've been to almost every country in the world, and the most frustrating thing for me has been that my schedule has always been so busy that there's so little time before and after performances to explore where I'm visiting.

I don't like crying. I'm a country boy, and we're the product of our upbringing. As a boy, I was told that men don't cry.

I prefer to work for my country in a free and independent way. I was born free, and I want to die free. I am always suspicious of ideology. Instead, I respect men with ideas.

Bernie Sanders is like those liberal members of the German National Socialist Party during the WWII, or of the Italian Fascist movement during Mussolini. They'd do much for their own workers and peasants, socially... as long as funds were flowing in from the countries plundered by their imperialism.

'Colonialism' and 'democracy' are two contradictory terms. In order to be 'democratic' a country has to be free. Right now, Indonesian people are slaves: of the West and of their local elites.

There can be no democracy in a country where people are uneducated and do not understand their own position in the society and the world. People 'rule' only if they can make 'educated decisions'. Democracy means 'rule of the people'.

Of course each citizen should try to educate him or herself, but only after receiving some essential, basic blocks of knowledge. Formal education should always be free; from kindergarten to PhD. It is free in many European countries, and in several Latin American ones (including Cuba, Mexico and Argentina). China is returning to free education, as it is returning to universal health care. In countries like Chile, people are on the streets right now fighting for free education, and they are winning!

I think in the wake of 9/11, like a lot of Americans, you know, we were all very traumatized by the attacks, traumatized in a totally different way by some of what happened afterward in response. And I think there have been these questions hovering in the past decade of, what kind of country are we? Who are we?

The broader question if Sarah Palin becomes vice president, will she be shortchanging her kids or will she be shortchanging the country?

A new poll reveals that 56% of Americans believe that Wal-Mart is bad for the country, while the other 44% work there.

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.

South Korea from a country that had relatively little primary education became close to universal literacy in the course of 25, 30 years, in a way trying to replicate what Japan had done earlier. They were learning to some extent from the Japanese experience too. So I think, in a sense, the East Asians were following a path, which all other countries including South Asia could follow but chose not too.

I think in those countries, including my own in India, where I think primary education has been badly neglected by successive governments, I blame the opposition as much. Why have they allowed the government to get away with it?

I think one of the core ideas in America has always been conversation and being able to question our systems of government, and being able to dictate our own communities and how we want this country to work. And I feel like we're losing part of that because of the way that even our current political campaign is centered more around celebrity than anything else, and so we're kind of losing conversation. We're still having conversations, but they seem to be more about like Donald Trump's hair and like memes of his face more than anything else.

I think there's this great disconnect between youth culture and politics, which is a product of how our capitalist system works. I mean, a lot of the kids I know are really politically involved. They really care about politics. I think we're going to have an incredible impact on how politics end up shaking this country.

President Obama is traveling around the country, proposing a stimulus bill that has already failed once. Instead of having an honest discussion about whether or not a plan that already failed once will fail again, the establishment would rather distract the American people with gossip.

But when I look at the fact that today is 1,000 days that we have not had a budget for the United States of America, you know, the House, one of the things we did, we passed a budget last year. But that is still sitting over there at the Senate. And so we have got to get this country back on track.

I think the difference the Jimmy Carter presidency and the Obama regime is navet and maliciousness. I think this is purposeful maliciousness. That's why what you're seeing now in this administration. I don't think they care for this country. And I think they're trying to make it into some kind of third-world socialistic cesspool. I think they are willing to get in bed with any dictator or despotic ruler that they see.

I hasten to say to snobs from the Surrey pine-and-sand country that no invention since the corn plaster or the electric toothbrush has brought greater balm to the extremities of the senior golfer than the golfmobile, a word that will have to do for want of a better.

Good people are seldom fully recognised during their lifetimes, and here, there are serious problems of corruption. One day it will be realised that my findings should have been acknowledged. It was difficult, but she always smiled when asked why she went on when recognition eluded her in her own country.

One of my fun road trips was [when] a group of guys and I rented a tour bus and we started in Orlando and drove all the way around the country going to baseball games. That was an awesome trip because each night we would go to a new baseball stadium, watch a baseball game, get in the bus, wake up [in] the next city, go to another baseball game. We did this for a little while and it was great. We called that trip the Rats on the Bus and it was a fun trip.

I have underscored my commitment to dialogue and cooperation with our neighboring Turkey, a country that plays an important role for the future of our region. But I still stress that the promotion of this important relations can only take place on the basis of mutual respect without threats of war and questioning of sovereign rights.