Ernest Andre Gellner Quotes

You only have to glance at the daily news to see how passions are stirred by claims of exclusive loyalty to one's own kin, one's own clan, one's own country, and one's own church. These ties that bind are vital to our communities and our lives, but they can also be twisted into a noose.

The idea is, we're still a society where we recognize and see and even sometimes seek members of our own tribe, whatever that tribe is. It could be ethnic, religious, geographic, political.

Nationalism - in other words, the dividing of the church into bodies - consisting of such and such a nation, is a novelty, not above three centuries old, although many dear children of God are found dwelling in it.

All of nationalism can be understood as a kind of collective narcissism.

As globalization proceeds, tribalism increases.

I think it's just in human nature: if you've got two guys fighting, and you don't really know them, you're going to root for the guy who comes from your country.

I loathe nationalism. It is a form of tribalism--the idolatry of the 20th century.

War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

It graduates to 'our state is better than your state', and 'our nation is better than your nation.' And it circles all the way around to where it started: 'Our God is better than your God.'

I don't believe in nationalism. I think it's a bunch of slogans. It's a bunch of poor attempts at creating pride. My problem with nationalism is that it becomes exclusionary. We start to exclude people.

I think it's unfair to criticise someone for not being Welsh, but the smaller the nation, the more patriotic you seem to be.

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.

A second characteristic of our time is the prevalence of nationalism. This is still spreading, affecting new communities, more peripheral regions and so-called backward peoples.

Some versions of patriotism come close to the tribal, which we all want to surpass, and some don't.

When we attach ourselves to national identities, then we enter into a cycle of conflict. I didn't choose where I was born or who to be or what people would call me.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

There's an enormous difference between voting for a candidate because you hate another ethnic group and voting for a candidate because he's a member of your ethnic group.

Just because I believe in the identity and integrity of my country doesn't make a xenophobe or a nationalist.

I don't think nationalism is alone holding the field; it's in contention with a lot of different things.

I love my country very dearly, and I greatly resent the implication that some of the places that I have sung and some of the people that I have known, and some of my opinions, whether they are religious or philosophical, make me less of an American.

I'm really not big on nationalism, to be honest with you. I really don't think it gets people anywhere except near a pile of dead bodies. I'm Irish, yeah, but I don't need to get up on a soapbox about it.

I prefer people to see me as an Ivorian and as a patriot.

The French will only be united under the threat of danger. Nobody can simply bring together a country that has 265 kinds of cheese.

In Europe … nationalism is nothing more than a mania.

A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.