Quotes About Patriotism

If I live, I will fight, wherever I must, as long as I must, until the enemy is defeated and the national stain washed clean.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first.

Whatever happens, the flame of the French resistance must not and shall not die.

As an adolescent ... I was convinced that France would have to go through gigantic trials, that the interest of life consisted in one day rendering her some signal service and that I would have the occasion to do so.

Nationalism and jingoism—essential corollaries of militarism—are also systemic imperatives because they divide the global working classes, and bind them to the elites oppressing them through the visceral cultural power of patriotism and nationalism.

It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.

Patriotism has served, at different times, as widely different ends as a razor, which ought to be used in keeping your face clean and yet may be used to cut your own throat or that of an innocent person.

We can't all be Washingtons, but we can all be patriots.

We can't all be Washington, but we can all be Patriots.

We are a Nation of peace and compassion, yet these people have and will devote every fiber of their beings to the destruction of Americans and our Country.

There are instincts that are deeper than anything else — deeper than death — and of these the strongest is the instinct of country that men call patriotism. Perhaps patriotism is the splendid spur by which the gods achieve their ends. I don't know. But nothing is so dominating, so powerful, as this patriotism.

I think there's one higher office than president, and I would call that patriot...

You see my kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its office-holders.

But the glory of the United States must rest and has rested upon a firmer foundation than that of her purely material resources. It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism.

To-day we reverently thank the abolitionists. Earth has produced no grander men, no nobler women. They were the real philanthropists, the true patriots... heroes. He loves his country best who strives to make it best. Mere politicians wish the country to do something for them, true patriots desire to do something for their country... [P]atriotism without principle is the prejudice of birth — the animal attachment to place.

...marching in line and file to the strains of music... This heroism on command, this senseless violence, this accursed bombast of patriotism — how intensely I despise them! War is low and despicable, and I had rather be smitten to shreds than participate in such doings.

A Political Warning & Prediction. — Let us guard against every enemy threatening the perpetuity of free republican institutions. If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.

A statistician made a few calculations and discovered that since the birth of our nation more lives had been lost in celebrating independence than in winning it.

I don't think America will have really made it until we have our own salad dressing. Until then we're stuck behind the French, Italians, Russians, and Caesarians.

If you want to make a revolution in the United States, you have to love this country enough to change it.

Give us liberty or give us death!

The paysans had no flags or written histories, but they expressed their local patriotism in much the same way as nations: by denigrating their neighbours and celebrating their own nobility.

I believe a significant segment of American evangelicalism is guilty of nationalistic and political idolatry.

Patriotism in America, as I understand it, is a matter of suffering, when the country fails to live up to its promises, or actively betrays them.