Patrick Kavanagh Quotes

Poetry is not Irish or any other nationality; and when writers such as Messrs. Clarke, Farren and the late F. R. Higgins pursue Irishness as a poetic end, they are merely exploiting incidental local colour.

The Law and Justice government does not want a bunch of foreign historians to decide what goes on in 'their' museum.

Few in the Nineties would have ventured to prophesy that the remote dim singer of the Celtic Twilight would, in a new age, become the leading poet of the English-speaking world. None have disputed the claim of William Butler Yeats to that title.

And in spite of everything, Ireland remains the brain of the Kingdom. The English, judiciously practical and ponderous, furnish the over-stuffed stomach of humanity with a perfect gadget--the water closet. The Irish, condemned to express themselves in a language not their own, have stamped on it the mark of their own genius and compete for glory with the civilized nations. This is then called English literature.

A nation without a language is a nation without a heart.

One motherland, one sanskriti (culture), common ancestry and heritage and unity in diversity. It is these three that constitute the national culture. The mode of worship can differ from person to person.

The more I am French, the more I feel a part of humanity.

A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it.

Language is at the root of Quebec nationalism.

A nation is a historical group of men of recognizable cohesion, held together by a common enemy.

All these nations and peoples of Europe and Asia will insist upon their independence and their own cultures.

A Volk [people] without a state is nothing, a lifelong frivolous phantom like the vagabond gypsies and Jews.

Nationality is the role assigned by God to each people in the work of humanity.

Great artists have no fatherland.

I am Turkey. To destroy me is to destroy Turkey.

Nationalism is spiritual and all-embracing, in the sense that it opens its arms to and spreads its wings over all those who have shared with the Arabs their history and have lived in the environment of their language and culture for generations, so that they have become Arab in thought and feeling. There is no fear that nationalism will clash with religion, for, like religion, it flows from the heart and issues from the will of God; they walk arm in arm, supporting each other, especially when religion represents the genius of the nationality and is in harmony with its nature.

Nationalism usually conquers in the name of a putative folk culture.

Cultural goods … are the source of the Nation's identity, continuity and development.

A Pole must accept everything Polish, both good and bad,..

We want American customs, habits, manners, dress, manufactures, modes of thought, modes of expression, and language. We should encourage national and even State peculiarities; for there are peculiarities and differences in the wants and situations of all people, that require provincial and national, not cosmopolitan, institutions and productions.

Nationalism is the most powerful force on earth today.

We used to have a view that to really be a good Australian, to love Australia, you almost had to cut your links with the country of origin. But I don’t think that was right and it never was right.

I am neither a Serb nor a Bulgarian, I am a South Slav.

The relationship of a people to their homeland is crucial. A people will naturally have a difficult time maintaining a common cultural identity without a collective presence in their homeland. Only in its homeland can a people develop economically, culturally and socially as a homogeneous entity. In fact, this is the crux of why some of us consider it necessary to struggle to live in our homeland.

A nation is a body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home-country.