Phil Ochs Quotes

There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

Behind all these men you have to do with, behind officers, and government, and people even, there is the country herself, your country, and . . . you belong to her as you belong to your own mother. Stand by her, boy, as you would stand by your mother.

My daughter, who goes to Stuyvesant High School only blocks from the World Trade Center, thinks we should fly an American flag out our window. Definitely not, I say: The flag stands for jingoism and vengeance and war.

At the bottom of all patriotism there is war: that is why I am no patriot.

I wanted to serve. It was Desert Storm. I thought, 'I was a rich kid, and America's been good to me.'

You ask me if I will not be glad when the last battle is fought, so far as the country is concerned I, of course, must wish for peace, and will be glad when the war is ended, but if I answer for myself alone, I must say that I shall regret to see the war end.

I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter.

In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?

Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.

If an American citizen or group of citizens were to implement what is in this document [The Declaration of Independence] today, it probably would be considered unpatriotic and even bordering on committing acts of treason or rebellion," said Pastor "It's a powerful document

'Misguided Little Unforgivable Hierarchies' is a piece that I did around the time that I was very frustrated and angry with the fact that the U.S., where I live, had decided to pull itself into another war. I was really angry.

There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter and, I trust, the stronger party.

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?

Long live Germany. Long live Austria. Long live Argentina. These are the countries with which I have been most closely associated and I shall not forget them. I had to obey the rules of war and my flag. I am ready.

You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.

I did not feel very patriotic. I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.

...Sean Penn claimed to be 'serv[ing] the country' by giving aid and comfort to an enemy about to be attacked by the US. He said it made him feel more patriotic to dissent from the war aims of his nation. It is at least a counterintuitive position. Most people would not instantly grasp how it is more patriotic to always root against America. White supremacists should try claiming that burning crosses is more supportive of civil rights than not burning them.

They didn't give their lives for their country! their lives were taken from them by their government.

The man who fights against his own country is never a hero.

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.

Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war; only patriots and traitors.

Every one of the aristocratic conspirators and would-be murderers claims to be an arch-patriot; every one of them insists that the war is being waged to make the world safe for democracy. What humbug! What rot! What false pretense! These... tyrants, these red-handed robbers and murderers, the "patriots," while the men who have the courage to stand face to face with them, speak the truth, and fight for their exploited victims - they are [called] the disloyalists and traitors. If this be true, I want to take my place side by side with the traitors in this fight.

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

In four short years he has turned our country from a prosperous nation at peace into a desperately indebted nation at war. But so what? He is the President of the United States, and you're not. Love it or leave it.