John MacDonald Quotes
My course is clear. A British subject I was born, and a British subject I will die.
He died 3 months later.
John A. MacDonald, 1815-1891, First Canadian Prime Minister (Conservative), Arguing against Canadian separation from Great Britain, Speech 1891
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Ataturk had been a military hero, but was very much opposed to war and military adventurism not unlike the Dwight Eisenhower and Colin Powell type leaders. However, the one thing that he thought worth the sacrifice of his own and other Turkish lives was Turkish independence and sovereignty. Historically, the Ottoman Empire which Ataturk finally ended, had dominated half of Europe and all of the Mid East at the cost of sovereignty of other nations and Ataturk saw no more important virtue with dying for than national sovereignty. See {125322} and {584501}.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the pledge became a matter of controversy. The Queen was the Queen of England, and many Australians were secular and objected to the reference to God. Only the flag remained uncontroversial.
For variations on this theme see Stephen Decatur, Meyer London, John Jordan Crittendon and Carl Schurtz
This quotation is often incorrectly given as “Patriotism is the religion of Hell.”
Joseph Addison had earlier written of such a situation. Recent research has strongly suggested that Hale may never have said these words. The American patriots wanted to have heroes and may not have been too worried about the documentation and historical research. See {621112}
Sir John Alexander Macdonald GCB PC QC was the first prime minister of Canada (1867–1873, 1878–1891). The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that spanned almost half a century. Macdonald was born in Scotland; when he was a boy his family immigrated to Kingston in the Province of Upper Canada (today in eastern Ontario). As a lawyer, he was involved in several high-profile cases and quickly became prominent in Kingston, which elected him in 1844 to the legislature of the Province of Canada. By 1857, he had become premier under the colony's unstable political system.
