Quotes About Patriotism

He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. —FREDERICK DOUGLASS

The historian must have no country. —JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.

I remember saying goodbye to my father the night he left to join the Navy. He didn't have to. He was older than other servicemen and had a family to support but he wanted to be a part of the fight against fascism, not just make movies about it. I admired this about him.

I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard ) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.

A soldier's body is a work of art that contains his country's history.

He wanted the country to stay one country—the United States of America.

Jews have had to carry around their own sense of self in a carpet bag and I think perhaps too much emphasis might be being put on nationality and on the other hand patriotism, that sort of thing.

Turning back to embrace the past has been a long, slow lesson not only in self-esteem, but in patriotism—pride in homeland, heritage. It has taken a decade to whip the shame, to mispronounce words and shun grammar when mispronunciation and misspeaking are part of my dialect, to own the bad blood. What I come from has made me who I am.

Our love for our country is worth nothing if it deprives us of our sense of humanity, if it destroys positive consensus."

W]hat makes patriotic and religious fanatics such dangerous opponents is not the deaths of the fanatics themselves, but their willingness to accept the deaths of a fraction of their number in order to annihilate or crush their infidel enemy.

It is difficult to think of diversity as a strength when Old Glory is treated as gang colors.

It was the only time before or since when Americans became emotionally invested in the idea of self-deprivation and frugality. Third graders roamed their neighborhoods in packs, gathering scrap materials, tires, and paper and cooking fat and old sneakers whose soles could be sacrificed for the rubber. The Big Three automakers stopped making cars and started making planes. Factory workers took secrecy oaths. Everybody had a secret now.

The soldier doesn't usually act on his own initiative, he doesn't harbour feelings of hatred or resentment or jealousy, he isn't motivated by long-held desires or personal ambition; the only motivating force is a vague, rhetorical, empty patriotism, for those soldiers, that is, who are moved by such feelings or allow themselves to be convinced.

Only Americans can hurt America.

I will not kiss your fucking flag

There is some shit I shall not eat, and I will not kiss your fucking flag!

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

I cannot conceive how any man can have brought himself to consider his country as nothing but carte blanche, upon which he may scribble whatever he pleases.

The elevation of mind to be derived from fear will never make a nation glorious.

More clearly than almost any other statesman he beheld the grandeur of the nation loom up, vast and shadowy, through the coming years.

A poet can do much more for his country than the proprietor of a nail factory.

A poet," he liked to say, "can do much more for his country than the proprietor of a nail factory.