Top 500 Country Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

2. “Love your country, but never trust its government.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

3. “This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

Also featured in: 4th Of July Quotes

4. “Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year. Always hold on to the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Be obedient and eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and your country, and you will move the world.”

— Swami Vivekananda

5. “A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

— Edward Abbey

6. “Thinking is progress. Non-thinking is stagnation of the individual, organisation and the country. Thinking leads to action. Knowledge without action is useless and irrelevant. Knowledge with action, converts adversity into prosperity.”

— Abdul Kalam

7. “I love the freedoms we got in this country, I appreciate your freedom to burn your flag if you want to, but I really appreciate my right to bear arms so I can shoot you if you try to burn mine.”

— Johnny Cash

8. “If this country is ever demoralized, it will come from trying to live without work.”

— Abraham Lincoln

9. “A great way to learn about your country is to leave it.”

— Henry Rollins

10. “Everything that’s really worthwhile in life comes to us free – our minds, our souls, our bodies, our hopes, our dreams, our intelligence, our love of family and friends and country. All of these priceless possessions are free.”

— Earl Nightingale

11. “Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.”

— Patrick Henry

12. “Without debate, without criticism no administration and no country can succeed and no republic can survive.”

— John F. Kennedy

Also featured in: Government Quotes

13. “Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be.”

— John Wayne

14. “There’s a plot in this country to enslave every man, woman, and child. Before I leave this high and noble office, I intend to expose this plot.”

— John F. Kennedy

15. “Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.”

— Thomas Jefferson

16. “Any young man, who makes dowry a condition to marriage, discredits his education and his country and dishonours womanhood.”

— Mahatma Gandhi

17. “No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens.”

— Michelle Obama

18. “My country is wherever liberty lives.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Quotes About Liberty

19. “I love my country. I love my guns. I love my family. I love the way it is now, and anybody that tries to change it has to come through me. That should be all of our attitudes. Cause this is America, and a country boy is good enough for me, son.”

— Charlie Daniels

20. “These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in the crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Summer Quotes

21. “As a woman I have no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”

— Virginia Woolf

22. “A country without a memory is a country of madmen.”

— George Santayana

23. “Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes

24. “Without translation, I would be limited to the borders of my own country. The translator is my most important ally. He introduces me to the world.”

— Italo Calvino

Also featured in: Important Quotes

25. “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Justice Quotes

26. “Going to another country doesn’t make any difference. I’ve tried all that. You can’t get away from yourself by moving from one place to another. There’s nothing to that.”

— Ernest Hemingway

27. “Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.”

— Nelson Mandela

28. “Commit yourself to the noble struggle for human rights. You will make a greater person of yourself, a greater nation of your country and a finer world to live in.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

29. “Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.”

— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

30. “I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”

— James Baldwin

31. “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”

— James Baldwin

32. “Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

— Karl Marx

Also featured in: Communication Quotes

33. “The universe is my country and the human family is my tribe.”

— Khalil Gibran

34. “City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.”

— Stephen King

35. “The future is now. Roll up your sleeves and let your passion flow. The country we carry in our hearts is waiting.”

— Bruce Springsteen

36. “Everybody in this country should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think.”

— Steve Jobs

37. “Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action-Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.”

— Rabindranath Tagore

38. “Our children are the rock on which our future will be built, our greatest asset as a nation. They will be the leaders of our country, the creators of our national wealth, those who care for and protect our people.”

— Nelson Mandela

39. “The country was founded on the principle that primary role of government is to protect property from the majority, and so it remains.”

— Noam Chomsky

40. “Overpopulation in various countries has become a serious threat to the health of people and a grave obstacle to any attempt to organise peace on this planet.”

— Albert Einstein

41. “French people are Italian people in a bad mood.”

— Jean Cocteau

42. “India is not a nation, nor a country. It is a subcontinent of nationalities.”

— Muhammad Ali Jinnah

43. “I don’t favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I’m also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.”

— Malcolm X

44. “Call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all God’s children.”

— Martin Luther King Jr.

45. “Muhammad says, ‘Love of one’s country is a part of the faith.’ But don’t take that literally! Your real ‘country’ is where you’re heading, not where you are. Don’t misread that hadith.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Real Quotes

46. “It is a time for martyrs now, and if I am to be one, it will be for the cause of brotherhood. That’s the only thing that can save this country.”

— Malcolm X

47. “We take the star from Heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity representing liberty.”

— George Washington

48. “It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them.”

— Ernest Hemingway

49. “Because you’re mine, I walk the line.”

— Johnny Cash

Also featured in: Quotes About Songs

50. “The work of volunteer groups throughout our country represents the very heart and soul of America. They have helped make this the most compassionate, generous, and humane society that ever existed on the face of this earth.”

— Ronald Reagan