Country Quotes - Page 793

What a treasure of awesome sights and attractions our country has.

Part of the problem of being labeled a model minority is that everyone thinks you've made it, but that's far from the case. You can see that in the horrific stories where undocumented workers are trying to get into the country. That's the backlash.

I have twenty countries in my memory and trail in my soul the colors of one hundred cities.

On general principles, it is best that I should not leave the country. Scotland Yard feels lonely without me, and it causes an unhealthy excitement among the criminal classes.

It is always a joy to meet an American, Mr. Moulton, for I am one of those who believes that the folly of a monarch and the blundering of a minister in far-gone years will not prevent our children from being some day citizens of the same world-wide country under a flag which shall be a quartering of the Union Jack with the Stars and Stripes.

I think in the long run the money that s been put into the space program is one of the best investments this country has ever made . . .This is a downpayment on the future of mankind. It's as simple as that.

No country can allow its safety to be wholly dependent on faithful observance by other states of rules to which they are obliged.

When we were attacked militarily it was our duty to defend our country.

I didn't know the English were good at swimming. I have been in this country for 12 years and I haven't seen a swimming pool.

It's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating.

I've always been a big thinker that the more international competition that we create through sports the better relationships we'll have with countries.

It is such a disappointment in American political reaction and actions. When some of our politicians are flying around the country in private airplanes all the time, using public services as their mode of private transportation, and then criticizing us who are in business.

Young people know how important it is for dads to be involved in their lives. As I travel the country and talk with students, some of them tell me that their lives would be totally different if their father was around.

Whether you look at these recent PISA results, which we are mediocre at best, whether you look at a 25 percent dropout rate in this country, whether you look at, in one generation, we're not doing what we need to be doing to keep America great.

There's so much that we're doing wrong today. And studies show we're one of three countries that doesn't invest more in disadvantaged communities.

What you see around the world is that poverty is not destiny. In other countries, much more systemically, student after student, school after school, year after year, educate poor and disadvantaged young people. And, so, anyone who says that you can't overcome these battles is a huge part of the problem.

Other countries haves passed us by. They're outworking us. They're outcompeting us. We have got to wake up and we have got to start moving.

This is a devastating problem, is, the longer our children are in school, the worse they do. Year after year after year, our children in America are falling further behind. Our 3- and 4-year-olds enter kindergarten OK, and they fall further and further behind. Each year, children in other countries are learning more than children in this country. And so the gap between American student performance in Singapore and Finland and South Korea and Canada and these other countries, the gap widens year after year after year.

The jobs of the future, as you know so well, are knowledge-based. You need college-educated folks to do this work. And so the consequences for our country are absolutely devastating if we don't start to behave in very different ways.

If the goal is to dramatically improve college completion rates, not college-going rates by itself but college completion, it's not just a college problem. We need a big focus on early childhood education. Our early childhood education system is pretty good in this country. Not enough students have opportunity. And, very discouragingly, they lose their advantage because they go to poor schools after that. So, let's focus on our babies.

Other countries have outeducated us. They have made this a priority. And a big part of what I'm trying to do, frankly, is raise the profile of education and get America to wake up.

A global democracy works only when countries trust one another.

This America has been the country of greed rather than the country of need.

Most writers who leave their country physically have already left it mentally and emotionally.

The only tool we have to fix the problems of this country - the democratic process - is itself broken. Which is why nothing will fundamentally change until we solve the problem of money in politics.