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Scandinavia Quotes

Browse 42 quotes about Scandinavia.

Scandinavia Quotes

“Mapema, kabla ndege haijaondoka na baada ya kuagana na maafisa waliomsindikiza, Nanda aliingia katika ndege na kutafuta namba ya kiti chake. Alivyoiona, alishtuka. Msichana mrembo alikaa kando ya kiti (cha Nanda) akiongea na simu, mara ya mwisho kabla ya kuondoka. Alivyofika, Nanda hakujizuia kuchangamka – alitupa tabasamu. Alivyoliona, kupitia miwani myeusi, binti alitabasamu pia, meno yake yakimchanganya kamishna. Alimsalimia Nanda, harakaharaka, na kurudi katika simu huku Nanda akikaa (vizuri) na kumsubiri. Alivyokata simu, alitoa miwani na kumwomba radhi Kamishna Nanda. Nanda akamwambia asijali, huku akitabasamu. Alikuwa na safari ya Bama kupitia Tailandi, kwa ndege ya Shirika la Ndege la Skandinavia na Maxair kutokea Bangkok; sawa kabisa na safari ya kamishna.”

JourneySmileTeethOfficersSunglassesBeautiful GirlThailandPhoneBurmaSafariScandinaviaBangkokPlaneSeatSimuNdegeBintiCommissionerMenoTabasamuBamaKamishnaNandaKitiMaafisaTailandiMaxairMiwani MyeusiMsichana MremboNamba Ya KitiSeat NumberSkandinavia
Book:Kolonia Santita
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“To achieve authentic, sustained happiness, above all else you need to be in charge of your life, to be in control of who you want to be, and be able to make the appropriate changes if you are not. This cannot merely be a perception, a slogan like the American Dream (the United States came way down on the LSE's social mobility scale, incidentally). In Scandinavia it is a reality. These are the real lands of opportunity. There is far greater social mobility in the Nordic countries than in the United States or Britain and, for all the collectivism and state interference in the lives of the people who live here, there is far greater freedom to be the person you want to be, and do the things you want to do, up here in the north. In a recent poll by Gallup, only 5 percent of Danes said they could not change their lives if they wanted to. In contrast, I can think of many American states in which it would probably be quite an uncomfortable experience to declare yourself an atheist, for example or gay, or to be married yet choose not to have children, or to be unmarried and have children, or to have an abortion, or to raise your children as Muslims. Less significantly, but still limiting, I don't imagine it would be easy being vegetarian in Texas, for instance, or a wine buff in Salt Lake City, come to that. And don't even think of coming out as a socialist anywhere! In Scandinavia you can be all of these things and no one will bat an eye (as long as you wait and cross on green). Crucial to this social mobility are the schools. The autonomy enabled by a high-quality, free education system is just as important as the region's economic equality and extensive welfare safety nets, if not more so. In Scandinavia the standard of education is not only the best in the world, but the opportunities it presents are available to all, free of charge. This is the bedrock of Nordic exceptionalism.”

FreedomEducationLibertyEqualityAmerican DreamAutonomySocial DemocracyScandinaviaSocial Mobility
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“It is seven months since a thirty-two-year-old Oslo man, the racist extremist Anders Behring Breivik, single-handedly doubled Norway's average annual homicide rate in one afternoon, killing a total of seventy-seven people ... From my seat in the bus nothing appears to have changed. What did I expect? That the Norwegians would have put up razor wire and enforced constant police patrols? Hardly likely in a land where the then prime minister, at the memorial service to the dead of Utoya and the Oslo bomb, gave one of the most courageous speeches in defense of public freedom I have ever heard. Jens Stoltenberg had called for 'more openness, more democracy,' at a time when most politicians elsewhere in the world would have used an attack of that nature to pledge revenge, exploit the anxieties of the electorate, garner greater authority and power, and then compromise civil liberties. His speech was a reminder that the political leaders of the north have often served as the moral compass of the world.”

DemocracyTerrorismExtremismCivil LibertiesSocial DemocracyScandinavia
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“To a great extent, friluftsliv is made possible by the Swedish common law of allemansratten (the right of public access), which grants anybody the right to walk, ride a bike or horse, ski, pick berries, or camp anywhere on private land, except for the part that immediately surrounds a private dwelling. In short, that means you can pick mushrooms and flowers, as well as light a campfire and pitch a tent, in somebody else's woods, but not right in front of their house... allemansratten relies on an honor system that can simply be summed up with the phrase "Do not disturb, do not destroy," and trusts that people will use their common sense.”

ParentingHyggeScandinavia
Author:Linda Akeson McGurk
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“Sitting next to a woman at a dinner party recently, she had explained how stifling she found the attitude in her hometown. 'On the [Danish] west coast, anyone who even slightly broke with convention, or or showed that they had any ambition, was frowned upon,' she told me. 'People really didn't like it. Everyone knew your business, everyone had an opinion about what you should be doing. I had to get away. I came to Copenhagen as soon as I could, and don't often go back.' It is common to have such feelings about one's hometown, I suppose, but they do often seem to be particularly keenly felt by people from Jutland.”

GossipConformityBusybodiesSocial DemocracyScandinaviaProvincialismVillage Life
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“It is probable, as Anthony Faulkes suggests, that the pagan religion was never systematically understood by those who practiced it. Different areas of Scandinavia worshipped different gods at different times in the pre-Christian era; the localized nature of cults and rituals produced neither dogma nor sacred texts, as far as we know. Rather pre-Christian religion was 'a disorganized body of conflicting traditions that was probably never reduced in heathen times to a consistent orthodoxy such as Snorri attempts to present'.”

ReligionPaganismNorseScandinaviaHeathenry
Book:The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes
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“Finnish women are dominant,' Roman Schatz enthused. 'Traditionally, on Finnish farms the woman was chief of everything under the roof, including the males, and the men were there to take care of everything outside. No Finnish man would ever decide anything without consulting his wife. Men do the dishes. We don't have housewives in Finland - no one can afford to live from one salary. Women don't stay at home and breast-feed, they have their own careers and bank accounts. It's great - my divorce only cost me a hundred euro.”

FeminismEqualityDivorceEgalitarianismFinlandSocial DemocracyScandinaviaMatriarchal Societies
Book:The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia
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“The way we deny death says something about how we live our lives, doesn't it? At least in Sweden or Scandinavia, you don't have to search further back in time than maybe three generations to find another way to relate to death. People then had a different, closer relationship with death; at least it was like that in the countryside.”

PeopleWayDifferentThreeOur LivesGenerationsDenyRelateAnother WayCountrysideSwedenBack In TimeThree GenerationsScandinavia
Author:Karl Ove Knausgard
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“What a glorious new Scandinavia might not Minnesota become! Here the Swede would find again his clear, romantic lakes, the plains of Scane rich in corn, and the valleys of Norrland; here the Norwegian would find his rapid rivers ... The climate, the situation, the character of the scenery agrees with our people better than that of any other American States.”

PeopleStatesCharacterMightSituationRichClearRiversAgreeClimateGloriousLakesValleysRapidsCornSceneryMinnesotaNorwegiansScandinavia
Author:Fredrika Bremer
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“In the ninth and tenth centuries the Vikings invaded Britain from Scandinavia and settled in large numbers. Their language, which we call Old Norse, was at least partly comprehensible to the English, who did not hesitate to take over hundreds of words from it: skirt, window, scrub, sky, give, hit, kick, scatter, scrape, skill, scowl, score, fellow, want, skin, knife, law, happy, ugly, wrong and even the pronouns they and them.”

WantGivingLawLanguageNumbersSkyCenturySkillsWindowSkinsFellowsUglyKicksBritainScoreKnivesSkirtsLarge NumbersVikingsPronounsNorseScandinavia
Author:Larry Trask
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“Every person in this country who has the desire and ability should be able to get all the education they need regardless of the income of their family. This is not a radical idea. In Germany, Scandinavia and many other countries, higher education is either free or very inexpensive. We must do the same.”

NeedsShouldPersonsIdeasCountryAbleDesireAbilityEducationCollegeHigherIncomeRadicalGermanyOther CountriesHigher EducationTuitionInexpensiveScandinaviaRadical IdeasCollege Tuition
Author:Bernie Sanders
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“Were money no object, we could have a dedicated door-opener-and-closer on all trains. But in the real world, train drivers in different countries have a wide range of responsibilities. On rural routes in Scandinavia, for example, you might find the driver selling you the ticket as well as operating the doors, helping disabled passengers, handling parcels and driving the train.”

WorldWellsDifferentRealCountryHelpingMightResponsibilityDoorsExampleObjectsTrainWideDrivingSellingRangeDriversReal WorldDedicatedTicketsRoutesDisabledPassengersParcelDifferent CountriesScandinavia
Author:Simon Calder
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“Bernie Sanders talks about socialism in Scandinavia, and he's correct to point to the huge victories the working class has won there through struggle, such as socialized medicine, free college education, and paid family leave. But if you talk to working people in Sweden or Norway today, you will find out that many of those past gains have been eroded and some virtually eliminated, including massive under-funding of healthcare and other public services and a return to for-profit systems that are unaffordable to working class people.”

PeopleIfsHas BeensTodayPastClassStruggleCollegeHugeReturnVictoryGainsPaidMedicineIncludingProfitSocialismMassiveHealthcareWorking ClassFundingPublic ServiceSwedenCollege EducationNorwaySocialized MedicineScandinavia
Author:Kshama Sawant
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“But sea power has never led to despotism. The nations that have enjoyed sea power even for a brief period-Athens, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, England, the United States-are those that have preserved freedom for themselves and have given it to others. Of the despotism to which unrestrained military power leads we have plenty of examples from Alexander to Mao.”

StatesGivenNationsUnitedPowerUnited StatesSeaMilitaryExamplePeriodsEnglandPlentyEnjoyedDespotismAthensMaoMilitary PowerNetherlandsScandinaviaSea Power
Author:Samuel Eliot Morison
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