Quotes About Nationalism

A language has genius. Some works translate well, others are untranslatable. Molière is effective only in French. Without knowing Arabic nobody has ever understood the Koran. Pushkin remains a possession of the Russian people, though the world has acquired Tolstoy. In general, the higher the charge of peculiarly national identity and emotion, the less translatable a work is.

The last war ruined Germany. Another war will be the absolute end of our country.

Individually the Germans were remarkably like Americans; he thought it curious that both peoples had the eagle for their national emblem. The Germans were the same sort of businesslike go-getters: direct, roughly humorous, and usually reliable and able.

The Germans were the bad children of Europe, Jastrow argued: egotistic, willful, romantic, always poised to break up faltering patterns of order. Arminius had set the ax to the Pax Romana; Martin Luther had broken the back of the universal Church; now Hitler was challenging Europe's unsteady regime of liberal capitalism, based on an obsolete patchwork structure of nations.

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States.

Against the claims of a violent human nature there is enormous historical evidence that people, when free of a manufactured nationalist or religious hysteria, are more inclined to be compassionate than cruel. When citizens have an opportunity to learn of vicious acts committed by their own governments, they react with indignation and protest. So long as atrocities remain remote, abstract, they will be tolerated, even by decent people.

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.

From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country-and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

In January 1943, there appeared in a Negro newspaper this Draftee's Prayer: Dear Lord, today I go to war: To fight, to die, Tell me what for? Dear Lord, I'll fight, I do not fear, Germans or Japs; My fears are here. America!

Nations are not communities and never have been.

creating patriotic loyalty.

They speak like that because they're afraid of the Irish language coming back and killing everybody in the country this time. He [my father] says Irish people drink too much and talk too much and don't want to speak Irish, because it stinks of poverty and dead people left lying in the fields. That's why they speak posh English and pretend that nothing ever happened.

That gin-soaked little Nazi from the Gazette got pissed off when you didn't doff your hat for the national anthem," Burgin explained. "He kept bitching about you to the guy in charge of the press box, then he got that asshole who works for him all cranked up and they started talking about having you arrested." "Jesus creeping shit," I muttered. "Now I know why I got out of sportswriting.

Many of Pakistan's problems—from falling behind in secular education to the rise of Islamist extremism—can be traced to the country's founding on the basis of religious nationalism.

property, fed on each side by nationalistic stupidity. I summoned the Borges observation: two bald men fighting over a comb.

Zionism offered itself as the solution to anti-Semitism, but became the main reason for its continued presence.

ethnic cleansing is an effort to render an ethnically mixed country homogenous by expelling a particular group of people and turning them into refugees while demolishing the homes they were driven out from.

The first generation of the young people of our revolution took up arms following Comrade Kim Il Sung and fought the bloody anti-Japanese struggle, thus achieving the historic cause of national liberation.

Our definition of the alt-right is younger people who are anti-globalists, very nationalist, terribly anti-establishment.

I believe now that I've cemented my spot as the best swimmer in the world, and I can't describe how proud that makes me. I just want to keep working hard and hopefully just inspire more youngsters to keep swimming and encourage South Africans to become a winning nation.

Youngsters taking up boxing will get a lot of encouragement to do something for the country, seeing my laurels.

When I hear of nationalism in my country today from the youngsters, I want to sit them down and tell them that flags and songs are not nationalism. Stopping at the traffic signal, opening the door for a lady, doing something for your country is nationalism.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.