Quotes About Nationalism

The passion with which native intellectuals defend the existence of their national culture may be a source of amazement; but those who condemn this exaggerated passion are strangely apt to forget that their own psyche and their own selves are conveniently sheltered behind a French or German culture which has given full proof of its existence and which is uncontested.

Parce qu'elle n'a pas d'idées, parce qu'elle est fermée sur elle-même, coupée du peuple, minée par son incapacité congénitale à penser l'ensemble des problèmes en fonction de la totalité de la nation, la bourgeoisie nationale va assumer le rôle de gérant des entreprises de l'Occident et pratiquement irganisera son pays en lupanar de l'Europe.

nationalism is not explained, enriched, and deepened, if it does not very quickly turn into a social and political consciousness, into humanism, then it leads to a dead-end."23

The nationalist leaders know that international opinion is forged solely by the Western press. When a Western journalist interviews us, however, it is seldom done to render us service.

The national bourgeoisie in the underdeveloped countries should not be combated because it threatens to curb the overall, harmonious development of the nation. It must be resolutely opposed because literally it serves no purpose.

The conclusion is that far from Kirkuk being the Kurdish Jerusalem, Jerusalem had become the Jewish and Arab Kirkuk, i.e. an overblown, chauvinist fetish, and the object of arbitrarily intransigent nationalist demands on both sides.

Admiral Stephen Decatur's widely publicized toast in 1816, "our country, right or wrong," struck Adams as not only discordant but immoral.

He said that it was not his job to ensure that his soldiers died for their country. It was his job to make sure the other poor bastards died for theirs. Understand?

Hitler's own people 'liberated' from him? The Viennese and other Austrians, so many of whom had ecstatically welcomed the annexation of the country to the Reich in March 1938, now suddenly so patriotic for the Red-and-White, so insistent that they were not actually 'German' at all?

Kurt Schumacher, the Hanover-based anti-Nazi who quickly became the leading figure in the post-war Social Democratic Party, was outraged. 'Wir sind kein Negervolk' ('We are not blacks') the fiery former concentration-camp inmate told Annan.

But we must be completely clear...if nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out---that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed? Why, if this is a high watermark of our national life, has our speech been vulgarized in this unprecedented way?

We do not consider patriotism desirable if it contradicts civilized behavior.

Nationalism: a state of mind in which you do not love your own country as much as you hate somebody else's .

If nationalism is truly the hallmark of a people in the prime of its youth and energies, how does it happen that under its aegis morality decays, ancient customs die out—that men are uprooted, the steadfast derided, the thoughtful branded, the rivers poisoned, and the forests destroyed?

Robert Ashford possessed one of the key character flaws necessary to a traitor. He thought he was smarter than everyone else. This allowed the overeducated career bureaucrat to sell out his own country, because he believed he knew what was best for his nation and its people.

An author's first duty is to let down his country.

I didn't spend a lifetime studying theology, but I know that the Church was always against Ireland and for the British Empire.

While Ross and Cockburn were hastily burning the White House and Department buildings, anxious only to escape, and never sending more than two hundred soldiers beyond Capitol Square, the President, his Cabinet, his generals, and his army were performing movements at which even the American people, though outraged and exasperated beyond endurance, could not but laugh.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

I would remind my countrymen, that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. No matter how valuable law may be to protect your property, even to keep soul and body together, if it do not keep you and humanity together.

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 are in a conspiracy to under-value them.

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals

You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.