Quotes About Patriotism

When mighty roast beef was the Englishman's food It ennobled our hearts and enriched our blood-- Our soldiers were brave and our courtiers were good. Oh! the roast beef of England. And Old England's roast beef.

To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.

Patriotism is best exemplified through auto-critique.

Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.

They are dead; but they live in each Patriot's breast, And their names are engraven on honor's bright crest.

One if by land, and two if by sea;And I on the opposite shore will be,Ready to ride and spread the alarmThrough every Middlesex village and farm.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear,Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;Hardly a man is now aliveWho remembers that famous day and year.

If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him - it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known - the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag only, but the nation itself; and whatever may be its symbols, its insignia, he reads chiefly in the flag the government, the principles, the truths, the history which belongs to the nation that sets it forth.

Well, we're all in this together, boys. Each one of us must think, not of himself, but of his pals. We must stick by our pals, which means our country. Our country is our people, remember. It took a war like this one to bring that home to everybody.

All the stories and descriptions of that time without exception peak only of the patriotism, self-sacrifice, despair, grief, and heroism of the Russians. But in reality it was not like that...The majority of the people paid no attention to the general course of events but were influenced only by their immediate personal interests.

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion.

Patriotism and its results--wars--give an enormous revenue to the newspaper trade, and profits to many other trades. Every writer, teacher, and professor is more secure in his place the more he preaches patriotism. Every Emperor and King obtains the more fame the more he is addicted to patriotism.

We do not acknowledge allegiance to any human government. We recognize but one King and Lawgiver, one Judge and Ruler of mankind. Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity only as we love all other lands. The interests and rights of American citizens are not dearer to us than those of the whole human race. Hence we can allow no appeal to patriotism to revenge any national insult or injury… "We

They died out there, in countless numbers, not for government officials in Berlin, but for their old countries, gilded by the centuries, and for their common fatherland, Europe, the Europe of Virgil and Ronsard, the Europe of Erasmus and Nietzsche, of Raphael and Dürer, the Europe of St. Ignatius and St. Theresa, the Europe of Frederick the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte.

The nationalists, at heart, were socialists. The socialists, at heart, were nationalists.

The violent but narrow passions that pass under the name of patriotism are not the noblest forms of human and social emotions. The world, or the people who, unfortunately, have most to say in governing the world, believe no such thing, and will not believe it when the representatives of States meet again to decide how to fill up the graves which they helped dig in Europe.

I'm kind of perverse in that I think pessimism is helpful. My pessimism is my own kind of patriotism. My dissent.

If the country is ever attacked as it was on 9/11, we all respond with a sense of urgency.

We The People' is public domain, any American can use that.

Tell mother, tell mother, I died for my country... useless... useless.

I can understand if you think that I'm disrespecting the flag by kneeling, but it is because of my utmost respect for the flag and the promise it represents that I have chosen to demonstrate in this way.

I realize that men and women of the military go out and sacrifice their lives and put their selves in harm's way for my freedom of speech and my freedoms in this country, and my freedom to take a seat or take a knee, so I have the utmost respect for them, and I think what I did was taken out of context and spun a different way.