National Bias Quotes

Do we really know what the past was, what actually happened, or is history “a fable” not quite “agreed upon”? Our knowledge of any past event is always incomplete, probably inaccurate, beclouded by ambivalent evidence and biased historians, and perhaps distorted by our own patriotic or religious partisanship. “Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.”

There's always something fishy about the French.

No nation is fit to sit in judgment upon any other nation.

A blaspheming Frenchman is a spectacle more pleasing to the Lord than a praying Englishman.

I'm Canadian, and so American politics aren't really in my wheelhouse.

If he'd been English or Swedish, he'd have walked the England job.

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both.

A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils

I think the scores for Olympic gymnastics are affected by what countries the judge and the gymnast are from. That's wrong. That type of political pandering isn't meant for gymnastic Olympic events. It's meant for the Supreme Court.

I don't have anything against Canadians or Australians.

Hollywood don't always pay a lot of money. Because we're English they think we're cheap!

The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations is concerned, is notorious …. Another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble.

When the contemplative mind is a French mind, it is content, for the most part, to contemplate France. When the contemplative mind is an English mind, it is liable to be seized at any moment by an importunate desire to contemplate Morocco or Labrador.

In the Middle Ages, everything bad was the work of the devil, everything good, the work of God. Today, the French see everything in reverse and blame the Germans for it.

I am unusual for a Frenchman - I have absolutely nothing against the United States.

All national histories are partisan and designed to give us a good conceit of ourselves.

All Plutophiles are based in America. If you go to other countries, they have much less of an attachment to either the existence or preservation of Pluto as a planet. Once you investigate that, you find out that Disney's dog Pluto was sketched the same year the cosmic object was discovered. And Pluto was discovered by an American.

There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.

How can what an Englishman believes be hearsay? It is a contradiction in terms.

Imagine a German as president of the European Commission. If he or she goes to some particular country and says do this or that, it won't be very well received. The president quickly ends up being the evil German. But if the president is elected by and controlled by 700 representatives from all EU countries, that legitimizes him or her in a very different way.

What we need is not a history of selected races or nations, but the history of the world void of national bias, race hate, and religious prejudice.

Americans are xenophobic, they will believe their own people rather than the adversary, even a friendly enemy voice.

I do not dislike the French from the vulgar antipathy between neighboring nations, but for their insolent and unfounded air of superiority.

The English and Americans dislike only some Irish--the same Irish that the Irish themselves detest, Irish writers--the ones that think.

The nation which indulges towards another an habitual hatred, or an habitual fondness, is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest.