George Orwell Quotes

Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer.

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.

The slight reproach to which the virtue of patriotism is commonly liable, the noble are most likely to incur.

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

What every Englishman thinks about patriotism, the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Leo Tolstoy ... defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties.

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.

Patriotism is devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life.

Patriotism is the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers.

Patriotism is the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings.

A patriot is a fool in ev'ry age.

The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone's lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.

Patriotism, often a thinly veiled form of collective self-worship, celebrates our goodness, our ideals, our mercy and bemoans the perfidiousness of those who hate us.

A patriot is someone who cares what happens in their country.

Patriotism covers a multitude of sins.

Patriotism is not sentimental nonsense. Nor something dreamed up by demagogues. Patriotism is as necessary a part of man's evolutionary equipment as are his eyes, as useful to the race as eyes are to the individual.

The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice -- and always has been.

Patriotism is the vital condition of national permanence.

Nationalism, like virtue, has its own reward.

There is no patriotic art and no patriotic science.

We have a secret weapon...it is called Nationalism

Let's give some substance to patriotism. It may take a generation.

… 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.

Something has been lost, a special feeling of patriotism, of belonging, is vanishing.