Margaret Thatcher Quotes

To represent your country is always very nice.

There is no sense and no sanity in objecting to the desecration of the flag while tolerating and justifying and encouraging as a daily business the desecration of the country for which it stands.

Let the one fight for his flag, and the other for his ideal, and let them both imagine that they are fighting for the country; the strife will be colossal.

I'm not really clear what the whole deal is with flags. I like my flag, but I wouldn't die for it. There's issues of identity, of course. That's going to always come in. I, for example, don't want to be called a 'North Britisher.' I want to be Scottish.

We live in a great country. It's time again to get religion about it.

I am proud of my work for my country.

As an athlete, I've always been very proud to represent the United States.

There's a civic nationalism in Britain and dozens of other countries.

I'm not super-patriotic, but the U.S. is where I live, and it's the passport that I carry.

We are part of a country that outshines those that have gone before us and most of those in existence today.

He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland.

It’s a little strange, this obsession with the flag. It’s incomprehensible to someone who comes from a country where the flag has, so to speak, disappeared, where any nostalgia and concern for it is a sign of an attachment to the past…

Show me the race or nation without a flag, and I will show you a people without any pride.

When I look at his gallant services, finding him first in the military school of the United States, educated at the expense of his country—taught to love the principles of the Constitution; afterwards entering its service fighting beneath the Stars and Stripes, ... I cannot understand how he can be willing to hail another banner, and turn from that of his country; .... If I could not unsheathe my sword in vindication of the flag of my country, ... I would return the sword to its scabbard; I would never sheathe it in the bosom of my mother. Never! Never! Never!

National honor is national property of the highest value.

My country? My country is the United States.

I wish to be no less than national in all the positions I may take.

I have loved but one flag and cannot share that affection with the mongrel banner designed for the League [of Nations.]

Let us abandon this narrow conception of patriotism, which consists of the doctrine, "My country right or wrong." There is a nobler doctrine, ... "My country must always be right.

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

Unlike many other peoples less happy, we give our devotion to a Government, to its Constitution, to its flag, and not to men.

The spirit of nationalism springs from the deepest of human emotions. It rises from the yearning of men to be free of foreign domination, to govern themselves. It springs from a thousand rills of race, of history, of sacrifice and pride in national achievement.

Patriotism, love of country, and pride in the flag which symbolizes country may be feelings which the race will at some period outgrow, but at present they are very real and strong, and the man who lacks them is a useless creature, a mere encumbrance to the land.

There is a pride which spurs nations on to great achievements

… loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death.