PATRIOTISM QUOTES III
quotations about patriotism
If patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, what is the first? There are alas three strong contenders: politics, religion and journalism. Take your pick.
MINHAZ MERCHANT
"BJP/Congress must stop misusing patriotism to seduce voters", Daily O, March 28, 2016
True patriotism is a charity so wide that it covers a nation.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I don't wear an American flag in my button hole. And I challenge anybody who does to prove that he's a better or more loving American than I am. And I just think that patriotism has so many of the same characteristics as religion has that we've got to be very careful about using it to the extent we do. It's -- I mean, we got a great country here. I mean, how could you not love being an American? But I didn't have much to do with making it as good as it is. I enjoy being here. I was lucky. I was lucky to be born in this country. It wasn't anything that I did. And I just -- it is as if these people who have flags all over are taking credit for how great this country is. I object.
ANDY ROONEY
Larry King Live, June 5, 2002
Patriotism is easy to understand.... It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.
CALVIN COOLIDGE
The Price of Freedom
In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain's Notebook
The best way we can approximate patriotism is through steadfastness -- steadfastness not to put the interests of friends and family before that of the nation; steadfastness not to steal; steadfastness to adhere to the tedious processes of the law; and steadfastness to act on the people's grievances no matter how banal.
ANDREW JAMES MASIGAN
"On Grace Poe and patriotism", Manila Bulletin, March 20, 2016
Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A Cynic Looks at Life
No country is without its faults. Acknowledging them is the first step toward creating patriotism -- which is based on an understanding of history -- rather than nationalism, which is blind to history.
WALT GARDNER
"The right way to teach patriotism at school", Japan Times, March 26, 2016
Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part. Worse still, the fraction so favored is determined by an accident of birth or residence.
AMBROSE BIERCE
A Cynic Looks at Life
Patriotism is a sore subject with me. We have the flag-waving loudmouth patriot who never sacrificed a thing for this country. We have the sidearm-carrying patriot who thinks playing cowboy is a substitute for patriotism. We have the moneyed, connected types who automatically consider themselves patriots. We have people who had a great-great-grandfather who ... and on and on and on.
PAUL SYPEK
"Missing The Character Of True Patriotism", Hartford Courant, March 28, 2016
A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle: and patriotism is loyalty to that principle. In poetic minds and in popular enthusiasm this feeling becomes closely associated with the soil and the symbols of the country. But the secret sanctification of the soil and the symbol is the idea which they represent, and this idea the patriot worships through the name and the symbol, as a lover kisses with rapture the glove of his mistress and wears a lock of her hair upon his heart.
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
oration at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., July 20, 1857
We could have no patriotism unless we were aware of other nations, and the effect of a definitely organized society of nations, in whose activities we all took a generous interest, would be, not to diminish patriotism, as some have unintelligently asserted, but to raise its character, to make it more vivid, continuous, varied, and sympathetic. It would be like the self-consciousness of an intelligent individual in constant and friendly intercourse with others, as contrasted with the brutal self-assertion of one who knows his fellows only as objects of suspicion and hostility. The patriotism of the past has been of the latter kind, and we have hardly considered its higher possibilities.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
The awful waste that patriotism necessitates ought to be sufficient to cure the man of even average intelligence from this disease. Yet patriotism demands still more. The people are urged to be patriotic and for that luxury they pay, not only by supporting their "defenders," but even by sacrificing their own children. Patriotism requires allegiance to the flag, which means obedience and readiness to kill father, mother, brother, sister.
EMMA GOLDMAN
"Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty", Anarchism and Other Essays
Mostly, patriots are unheralded and unnoticed. They live their lives without fanfare and expect no reward. Yes, the military dominates the patriot conversation. I wore the uniform myself. I think I know one when I see one.
PAUL SYPEK
"Missing The Character Of True Patriotism", Hartford Courant, March 28, 2016
I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to John Banister, April 21, 1778
For patriotism, it is necessary to have love in your heart, sensitivity towards the society and people. That is patriotism for me.
AAMIR KHAN
"Patriotism is being 'sensitive' towards society", on manorama, March 14, 2016
No, I don't mean love, when I say patriotism. I mean fear. The fear of the other. And its expressions are political, not poetical: hate, rivalry, aggression. It grows in us, that fear. It grows in us year by year.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
The patriot labours, not for signs of success, but for the accomplishment of that which is right. He must be painstaking, if his labours are to prove useful; and he must be patient, if his work is to be crowned with completion. Reckless, random action is not the sign of patriotism, and, whether it be borne with a longer or a shorter period, it always ends in collapse.
W. GLENNY-CRORY
Time: A Monthly Magazine, 1886
PATRIOTISM, or the love of country, is one of the first loves the young heart should know, and the last the old heart should feel. O, keep me away from the man or woman who love not the land of their fathers--there is not, there cannot be good in them. The mind that never, when in exile, wanders back to its mother country, must indeed be a small mind; and that heart can have no love in it, but must indeed be barren and bleak, from from every tender emotion; cold as ice, hard as marble, unchristian and unnatural. On the other hand, the noble mind will ever point to and never cease to remember the land of its birth, just as the magnet ever points to the north; and the last earthly spot that will be photographed on the retina of the eye will be home, sweet home.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On Patriotism", Short Essays
Patriotism is a virtue, no doubt: and it is a duty to cherish patriotism in ourselves and others. But patriotism means wishing well to our country, and the question is what is this "well". Lord Beaconsfield would say "material prosperity, grandeur, increase of power and territory"; Mr. Gladstone would say "that our country may act virtuously". If patriotism is an extension of the feeling which we have about our relatives, Mr. Gladstone is surely right; we wish our relatives to be good men in the first instance, and then successful men, if success is compatible with goodness. I cannot understand how many excellent people fail to feel thus about their country too; it would seem to me that exactly in the proportion in which we realise the fact that a nation is only a very overgrown family which has kept open house for some centuries will be our anxiety that this country should act as a good man would act; and that patriotism consists in wishing this.
HENRY PARRY LIDDON
letter to C. T. Redington, January 13, 1879