John Masefield Quotes

State Creation: A growth Industry.

Nations are not formed in a day, the formation requires years.

Africa is going through its own historical process of state formation just as Europe and America did. It is just happening much later than other continents because of the interruption of Africa's own historical development by the colonization of Africa by Europe.

But the history of the changes produced by a universal idea is not a history of changes in the individual, but of changes brought about by the successive efforts of millions of individuals in the course of many generations.

Iraqis have held elections and have recently put together their government, all encouraging developments.

Until 1847 Switzerland remained a pure Confederation of States, that is to say, she took five and a half centuries to make the step which the United States achieved at once.

State formation has been a brutal project, with many hideous consequences. But the results exist, and their pernicious aspects should be overcome.

In the life of any country, the most defining moment is the creation of the country itself.

Change is incremental. Change is small.

I do not know if the doctrine that the nation-state arose in the 19th century was still being taught:;... but it is erroneous. The nation-state reaches back far into the origins of Europe itself and perhaps beyond. If Europe was not always a Europe of nations, it was always a Europe in which nations existed, and were taken for granted, as a basic form of the State.

It does not happen all at once. There is no instant pudding.

A form of government that is not the result of a long sequence of shared experiences, efforts, and endeavors can never take root.

Nothing great comes into being all at once.

You know, when you get to the New World and you develop your three branches of government and you have a civil society, you can just jettison all the barbarism I recommended in the first books.

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America. Most of the states, of all ages ...have been founded in rapacity, usurpation, and injustice; so that in the contests recorded in history ...the military history of all nations being but a description of the wars and invasions of the mutual robbers and devastators of the human race.

Nation-building is never a 'done deal' confined to history already established.

The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout.

The mind has grown to its present state of consciousness as an acorn grows into an oak, or as saurians developed into mammals.

I am proud of my part in the creation of this new state. Our Government was the first to recognize the State of Israel.

It is the US government's desire for the Iraqi people to lead themselves, not for any outside power to be the leadership for Iraq in the future. There may be some transition period where the international community would have to help the Iraqi people put in place a representative government. But that is the goal, not for the United States, or any other nation, for that matter, who might be in such a coalition, if one is formed, to serve as the leader of the Iraqi nation.

The mission of this government is much more than the promotion of economic progress. It is to renew the spirit and solidarity of the nation.

I never yet heard of a useless thing that was not ground out of existence by evolution sooner or later. Did you? And pain gets needless.

To possess ourselves of a clear idea of what government is, or ought to be, we must trace it to its origin.

No great thing happens suddenly.

Governments, systems, ideologies come and go, but it is humanity which remains.