Citizenship & Patriotism Quotes

The cheapest form of pride however is national pride. For it reveals in the one thus afflicted the lack of individual qualities of which he could be proud, while he would not otherwise reach for what he shares with so many millions. He who possesses significant personal merits will rather recognize the defects of his own nation, as he has them constantly before his eyes, most clearly. But that poor blighter who has nothing in the world of which he can be proud, latches onto the last means of being proud, the nation to which he belongs to. Thus he recovers and is now in gratitude ready to defend with hands and feet all errors and follies which are its own.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

The young people ... must recognize that they will get from their country tomorrow what they give her today.

My country, right or wrong," is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, "My mother, drunk or sober.

Neither the rich nor the poor have great interest in government. The rich can afford their own security … in their gated communities and their own information networks. The poor are usually so pushed against the wall that they do not have time for the mechanics of the government. If you lose the middle class, you lose democratic government.

I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; … If you are going to be a great patriot, i.e., loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better), you want to be killed early if your life ....

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

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism is when hate for people other than your own comes first.

It is now the moment when by common consent we pause to become conscious of our national life and to rejoice in it, to recall what our country has done for each of us, and to ask ourselves what we can do for our country in return.

The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian; I am an American.... All distinctions are thrown down; all America is one mass.

Patriotism is seen not only the last refuge of the scoundrel bus as the first bolt-hole of the hypocrite.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism…. The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.

...the true patriotism, the only rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation ALL the time, loyalty to the Government when it deserves it.

… patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest.

A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics is a man who minds his own business; we say that he has no business here at all.

In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.

Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag and carrying a cross.

I love my country too much to be a nationalist.

Not to act is to act. Not to speak is to speak.