Scotland

There are many fine prospects in Scotland ... but the finest sight a Scotsman ever sees is the high road to England. Samuel Johnson 

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. P.G. Wodehouse

In Scotland we have a verdict “not proven”. That means “not guilty, but don’t do it again”. Andrew Brodie

 Join a Highland regiment me boy. The kilt is an unrivalled garment for fornication and diarrhoea. John Masters

There are two seasons in Scotland: June and winter. Billy Connolly

I look upon Scotland as an inferior sort of Switzerland. Sidney Smith

During the English Civil War, Thomas Windebank explained how the troops were keeping themselves warm with 'the hope of rubbing, fubbing and scrubbing those scurvy, filthy, dirty, nasty, lousy, itchy, scabby, shitten, stinking, slovenly, snotty-nosed, logger-headed, foolish, insolent, proud, beggarly, impertinent, absurd, grout-headed, villainous, barbarous, bestial, false, lying, roguish, devilish, long-eared, short-haired, damnable, atheistical, puritanical crew of the Scottish Covenant'.

 England/Britain 

I like the English. They have the most rigid code of immorality in the world. Malcolm Bradbury

The national sport of England is obstacle racing. People fill their rooms with useless and cumbersome furniture and spend the rest of their lives in trying to dodge it. Herbert Tree

The English are a race of cold-blooded queers with nasty complexions and terrible teeth who once conquered half the world but still haven’t figured out central heating. They warm their beers and chill their baths and boil all their food, including bread. P. J. O’Rourke

From every Englishman emanates a kind of gas, the deadly choke-damp of boredom. Heinrich Heine

On the Continent people have good food; in England people have good table manners. George Mikes

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him. George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion  

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. Thomas B. Macaulay

Ipswich isn't twinned with anywhere, but it does have a suicide pact with Grimsby. Ken Dodd

I would like to live in Manchester, England. The transition between Manchester and death would be unnoticeable. Mark Twain

The British tourist is always happy abroad so long as the natives are waiters. Robert Morley

Others nations use 'force'; we Britons use 'Might'. Evelyn Waugh

The devil take these people and their language! They take a dozen monosyllabic words in their jaws, chew them, crunch them and spit them out again, and call that speaking. Fortunately they are by nature fairly silent, and although they gaze at us open-mouthed, they spare us long conversations. Heinrich Heine

When I told the people of Northern Ireland that I was an atheist, a woman in the audience stood up and said, 'Yes, but is it the God of the Catholics or the God of the Protestants in whom you don't believe? Quentin Crisp

The British do not expect happiness. I had the impression, all the time I lived there, that they did not want to be happy; they want to be right. Quentin Crisp

The most pernicious race of little odious vermin that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth. The King of Brobdingnag describing the English (Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, 1726. 

America

America is the only nation in history which, miraculously, has gone directly from barbarism to degeneration without the usual interval of civilisation. Georges Clemenceau

War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Ambrose Bierce

The motto for Cleveland is “You gotta live somewhere”. Jimmy Brogan

Miami Beach is where neon goes to die. Lenny Bruce

The American people, taking one with another, constitute the most timorous, snivelling, poltroonish, ignominious mob of serfs and goosesteppers ever gathered under one flag in Christendom since the end of the Middle Ages. H. L. Mencken

Canada

Canadians are Americans with no Disneyland. Margaret Mahy

Canada is the essence of not being. Not English, not American, it is the mathematics of not being. And a subtle flavour - we're more like celery as a flavour. Mike Myers

Canada must be considered the Vichyssoise of nations - cold, half-French, and difficult to stir. Stuart Keate

Canada was built on dead beavers. Margaret Atwood

Brazil

 It is customary for the English to ridicule the Brazilians, and for the Brazilians to hate the English. Both nations are right. Jacques Arago, Narrative of a Voyage Around the World 1817-1820. Cited in Empire Adrift

Sao Paulo is just like Reading, only further away. Peter Fleming

Why then, you may well ask, is Brazil not already rich and prosperous? The short answer is, because the country is damn badly run - because there are five different gauges on the railways: because Guanabara has more civil servants than New York, and Petrobras in the State of São Paulo alone employs more chemists than Shell does in the whole world; because you can buy anything from a driving licence to a High Court Judge; because the Rector of the Federal University of Rio is paid $500 a month, whilst house-rents here are three times those of London and Rio´s hotels are among the world´s most expensive (and also among the world's worst run): because there are only 18,000 miles of paved highway in the country: because in 1968 the Brazilians killed 10,00 people on their roads - rather more than the total of U.S. casualties in Vietnam during the same period: because, as Peter Fleming put it ' Brazil is a subcontinent with imperfect  self control'... John Russell, British Ambassador, 1969. Valedictory reproduced by Matthew Parris & Andrew Bryson - Parting Shots

Other

I grew up in Europe, where the history comes from.  Eddie Izzard 

In America only the successful writer is important, in France all writers are important, in England no writer is important, in Australia you have to explain what a writer is. Geoffrey Cotterell

Heaven is an English policeman, a French cook, a German engineer, an Italian lover and everything organised by the Swiss. Hell is an English cook, a French engineer, a German policeman, a Swiss lover and everything organised by the Italians. John Elliot

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock! Orson Welles

To live in Australia permanently is rather like going to a party and dancing all night with one's mother. Barry Humphries

New Zealand is a country of thirty thousand million sheep, three million of whom think they are human. Barry Humphries

How can one govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese? Charles de Gaulle

It is not impossible to govern Italians. It is merely useless. Benito Mussolini

(The Nederlands) Apart from cheese and tulips, the main product of the country is advocaat, a drink made from layers. Anan Coren

The only nation I’ve ever been tempted to feel really racist about are the Swiss – a whole country of phobic hand washers living in a giant Barclays Bank. Jonathan Raban

Patriotism

Patriotism is the conviction that your country is superior to all others because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw 

Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. George Jean Nathan

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours. William Ralph Inge 

Nationalism means that every little group of human twerps with its own slang, haircut and pet name for God should have a country. P. J. O'Rourke 

To save your world you asked this man to die; Would this man, could he see you now, ask why? W. H. Auden, Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier