In politics, I’ve endured not just change but ideological whiplash. I was never politically correct but I was liberal and from youth I held fast to pacifism, which was my response to Vietnam, my belief that it had to be the right answer. But now our generation has faced our Hitler in bin Laden and […]
Patriotism Quotes
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.
If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.
We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it and more anxious about what it can do for the nation.
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by ‘patriotism’ I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the […]
God grant, that not only the Love of Liberty, but a thorough Knowledge of the Rights of Man, may pervade all the Nations of the Earth, so that a Philosopher may set his Foot anywhere on its Surface, and say, “This is my Country.”
Patriotic societies seem to think that the way to educate school children in a democracy is to stage bigger and better flag-saluting.
“The American nation in the Sixth Ward is a fine people,” he says, “They love th’ eagle,” he says, “on the back iv a dollar.”
To criticise one’s country is to do it a service. Criticism, in short, is more than a right; it is an act of patriotism – a higher form of patriotism, I believe than the familiar rituals and national adulation.
A politician will do anything to keep his job – even become a patriot.
