National Insecurity Quotes

The English are such a frightened, nervous, insecure group of people - they no longer rule the world!

I think that whenever a nation feels itself to be at is zenith, it starts to feel a creeping sense of anxiety.

The French are very bizarre. There is this collective depiction: 'We're in decline, we're being assailed, we must protect ourselves.'

It is, I think, an indisputable fact that Americans are, as Americans, the most self-conscious people in the world, and the most addicted to the belief that the other nations of the earth are in a conspiracy to under value them.

There's a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can't say quite what it is, but they are easily spooked or driven to cynicism - the country is diverse but, paradoxically, extremely insular.

Israel is very confusing because it seems to be a Goliath, and in some ways it is, when you look at the tanks versus the Palestinian boy. But deep down, when you look at the big map and the big picture and the big history, we are really a David. We are a David with some megalomaniac ideas who thinks he's huge. But we're not. At the end of the day, Jews as a people are an endangered species. One cannot overlook this dimension.

The closer one gets to either the eastern or the southern fringe of the German-speaking world-the closer one gets, in other words, to the threatening and more numerous Slavs-the more insecure and dangerous nationalism becomes.

There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.

The United States is not only the strongest, but also the most terrified country.

[Russians] want to bring us down to make them feel better about the failure of the Soviet Union. I don't mean bring us down as in collapse, but bring us down a notch in a big way.

The negative aspects of Scottish Nationalism are a kind of aggressive complacency, that sort of boasting; but that's an expression of insecurity, I think, of a lack of confidence.