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Nationalism Quotes

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Nationalism Quotes

“The world has a very serious problem, my friend' Shiva went on. 'Poor children still die by their millions. Westerners and the global rich -- like me -- live in post-scarcity society, while a billion people struggle to get enough to eat. And we're pushing the planet towards a tipping point, where the corals die and the forests burn and life becomes much, much harder. We have the resources to solve those problems, even now, but politics and economics and nationalism all get in the way. If we could access all those minds, though...”

“The seeming nation, unified for centuries, was a stew of uncoordinated principalities, towns, villages, 'pseudo-feudal tribal economic units', a sprawl and splatter of vigorous, competent, quarrelsome individualities over which a grid of authority was insecurely and lightly laid. Nothing, I thought, could ever unite Karhide as a nation. Total diffusion of rapid communication devices, which is supposed to bring about nationalism almost inevitably, had not done so.”

“But the many are there. You've got to do something about them." "You've got to do something about them," Mr. Propter agreed. "But at the same time, there are circumstances in which you can't do anything. You can't do anything effective about any one if he doesn't choose or isn't able to collaborate with you in doing the right thing. For example, you've got to help people who are being killed off by malaria. But in practice you can't help them if they refuse to screen their windows and insist on taking walks near stagnant water in the twilight. It's exactly the same with the diseases of the body politic You've got to help people if they're under the menace of sudden revolution or slow degeneration. You've got to help. But the fact remains, nevertheless, that you can't help if they persist in the course of behaviour which originally got them into their trouble. For example, you can't preserve people from the horrors of war if they won't give up the pleasures of nationalism. You can't save them from slumps and depressions so long as they go on thinking exclusively in terms of money and regarding and regarding money as the supreme good. You can't avert revolution and enslavement if they will identify progress with the increase of centralization and prosperity with the intensifying of mass production. You can't preserve them from their collective madness and suicide if they persist in paying divine honours to ideals which are merely projections of their own personalities - in other words, if they insist on worshiping themselves...”

“We are asking if thought can be aware of itself. That is rather a complex question, and requires very careful observation. Thought has created wars through nationalism, through sectarian religions. Thought has created all this; God has not created the hierarchy of the church--the pope, all the robes, all the rituals, the swinging of the incense, the candles. All that paraphernalia that goes on in a cathedral or in a church is put together by thought, copied, some of it, from the ancient Egyptians, from the ancient Hindus, and Hebrews. It is all thought. So "God" is created by thought.”

“Passing to historical nations, we must first point out that in relation to them the word race cannot and should not be used at all. We do not know of any historical nation that can be regarded as racially pure; each of them is the product of an extremely lengthy and intense process of interbreeding and intermingling of different ethnic elements. Now try, after this, to determine the influence of “race” on the history of the ideologies of any nation! At a first glance it seems that nothing could be simpler and more correct than the idea that natural environment influences national temperament and, through temperament, the history of the nation’s intellectual and aesthetic development. But if Labriola had only recalled the history of his own country, he would have been convinced of the erroneousness of this idea. The modern Italians are surrounded by the same natural environment as that in which the ancient Romans lived, yet how unlike is the “temperament” of our modern tributaries of Menelik to the temperament of the stern conquerors of Carthage! If we were to undertake to explain the history of Italian art, for example, by the Italian temperament, we should very soon be confronted by the baffling question why this temperament, for its part, varied so profoundly at different times and in different parts of the Apennine Peninsula.”

“I firmly believe that all the best things on earth have been created by brave nerds. (I have on the wall of my office a photograph of the 1927 Solvay Conference on Physics. My heroes are those brave nerds who brought about a revolution and enabled the progress of all humankind. I find them so inspiring that I have hung a copy of that photo in the rooms of both my children.) But these nerds in Yabloko were cowardly, scared to experiment. The world changed and they stood still. There was a time when Yabloko was a faction in the State Duma, and the party could not imagine it ever being different. When they failed to get over that 5 percent threshold, they complained about abuse of power and falsification of results. They were indignant and claimed that victory had been stolen from them and that in fact they had received many more votes. It was true that the election results even then were being flagrantly rigged, but Yabloko had also done nothing to fight for votes. Gradually the y resigned themselves to the idea that they could never win. They believed they were little people facing a huge, hostile country were nerds were unpopular. They became afraid of their voters, and their fear was masked by exaggerated elitism with intellectual overtones. Needless to say, no one cared for that, and they began to lose what little support they had left. This was absolutely contrary to my idea of how to do politics. I believed it was essential to find a common language with everyone. I feel at home with my former classmates, almost all of whom are now in the armed forces or police, as well as when I am being held in a detention center with drug addicts and hooligans of every variety. One such hapless guy in the next bunk has been telling me how he ruined his life, and that his HIV treatment is very expensive and doesn't work. We are discussing the ins and outs of methadone therapy. The Russian people are good; it's our leaders who are appalling. I had no doubt that 30 percent of the Russian population subscribed to democratic views, so we had every chance of becoming, over time, the political majority. That is why, when I realized Yabloko was deliberately alienating its supporters, I got tired of being in a political minority. I was ultimately expelled from the party. The pretext was my "nationalism.”

“Dare I admit it? Dare I confess? America, land of supermarkets and superhighways, of supersonic jets and Superman, of supercarriers and the Super Bowl! America, a country not content simply to give itself a name on its bloody birth, but one that insisted for the first time in history on a mysterious acronym, USA, a trifecta of letters outdone later only by the quartet of the USSR. Although every country thought itself superior in its own way, was there ever a country that coined so many “super” terms from the federal bank of its narcissism, was not only superconfident but also truly superpowerful, that would not be satisfied until it locked every nation of the world into a full nelson and made it cry Uncle Sam?”

“Giants in Jeans Sonnet 76 In the old days tribal chiefs used to fool people, With talks of tribal honor and heritage. Today's chiefs in suits manipulate modern tribals, With talks of national security and lineage. When our ancestors behaved as tribals, It is acceptable for they didn't know better. But when we identify as civilized yet act tribal, It is but a degrading stain upon our honor. Though all politicians are not savages, Paradigm of modern politics thrives on division. So make not the dreadful mistake to think, That politicians are gonna bring peace and elevation. It is a world of citizens, citizens are its lifeblood. You and I are its caretakers, not some elected vanguard.”

“Home is a people, not a place. Move to a different city, and anyone from your hometown will feel like family. Move to a different country, and the very sight of someone from your native country will make you emotional. Move to space, and the very sight of earth will wreak tears of joy. We keep bickering over trivial things like race, religion, gender, sexuality, status and so on, because even in this day and age we still take human life for granted. Ask an astronaut, and they'll tell you, whether they can find any trace of those prehistoric barriers from up there in space.”

“Outside The Museum (The Sonnet) Enough with, patria o muerte*! Enough with, god save the queen! Enough with, heil hitler! Enough with, o say can you see! Bronze age beings yell about national glory, Stone age beings yell about religious glory. Electric beings got no time for such make-believe, On their shoulders walks the present of humanity. There is no earth till all roots combine, Till we crave for each other all roots are chains. Museums add perspective on the direction of life, But to spend a life in museum is life lost in vain. Enough with vande mataram**, it's time for vasudhaiva kutumbakam***. To hell with nation, culture and tradition, civilization awaits outside the museum. (*homeland or death, *hail the motherland, ***world is family)”

“Time to Bury All Divide (The Sonnet) It's time we bury the nationality nonsense, Person is known by their behavior not nation. It's time we bury the holy book nonsense, Person becomes holy by compassion not religion. It's time we bury the representation nonsense, Social reform starts with civic duty not delegation. It's time we bury the intellectualism nonsense, Society is civilized by heart not cocky argumentation. It's time we abolish the royalty nonsense, Humans are known by behavior, animals by bloodline. It's time we dissolve all moronity of hierarchy, True advancement lies in the abolition of divide. Even the mighty sun doesn't differentiate between first world and third world humanity. It is only the lowly beings who can't help but practice some good old exclusivity.”

“No Slave to Culture (The Sonnet) What do you take me for - a street dog! Slave to one religion, one nation, one culture! Dinosaur here - wherever I lay my eyes, Becomes my nation, my religion, my culture! To add nationality to my name is to vilify my name, Sectarianism and nonsectarianism don't go together. To add exclusive ethnicity to my work is a violation, Barbarism can't define the spirit of a human sonneteer. Days of single nationality, single religion are gone, It's the age of universal nationality and religion. In this civilized age, human nationality is humanity, Human religion and culture are love and compassion. Exclusive ethnicity is a sign of a backward society. Expand across the one imposed, and there'll be harmony.”

“Sectarianism kills people, racial profiling kills people, nationalism kills people, religious supremacy kills people, cultural exclusivity kills people, history has shown that again and again and again.”

“I used to think I’m a human behavior expert, but more and more I’m beginning to realize, I’m just a wildlife expert, because the core horrors that torment society are caused not by human behavior, but by the animal within the humans. Prejudice, dogma, ultraindividualism, nationalism, fascism, fundamentalism, these are not problems of human behavior, these are classic cases of animal nature.”

“In general, forced migration study reveals the stunning and gradually increasing adherence of the Soviet system to ethnically rather than socially determined repression criteria (the policy in question reached its apogee during Stalin’s rule). In other words, the state declares its loyalty to international and class awareness publicly, while in practice gravitates towards essentially nationalistic goals and methods. The deportation of so-called punished peoples can provide a most prominent example of this approach, the deportation itself serving as the punishment. All such peoples were deported not merely from their historical homeland, but also from other cities and districts, as well as demobilized from the army, which shows that such ethnic deportations embraced the entire country (we term this type of repression “total deportation”). Apart from their homeland, the “punished people” were deprived of their autonomy if they had any before, in other words, of their relative sovereignty. In essence, ten peoples in the USSR were subjected to total deportation. Seven of them—Germans, Karachais, Kalmyks, Ingushetians, Chechens, Balkars, and Crimean Tatars—lost their national autonomy too (their total number amounted to 2 million, and the land populated by them before the deportation exceeded 150,000 square kilometers). According to the criteria formulated above, another three peoples—namely Finns, Koreans, and Meskhetian Turks—fall under the category of “totally deported peoples.”

“On The Good Side of Government (Sonnet 2199) How to be on the good side of government, this is a manual for the monkeys - never question, never reason, never doubt, be a good little patriot, blind to atrocity. Foster no conviction on human rights, memorize the moral parameters set by the state, and remember, it's not about morality or ethics, it's about licking the boots of office idiots. Use music and movies as propaganda machine, for the government's favorite god 'n religion, never make art about correcting social ill, but about maintaining fanatical superstition. However, well aware of all the dangers, if you still dare to stand as human - I salute you, o brave beacon of life, there is hope yet for human civilization!”

“The Uncultured Linguist (Sonnet) The way apes understand what's cultured, I'm not that sort of cultured - I'm humanly cultured - which means, I live as cure for tribalism, not coddle; I abolish chains, not worship them, I do not entertain stereotypes - I question and denounce prejudice, both external and internal. MAGA, Zionism, Hindutva, Prima gli Italiani, Khalistan, Islamism, Türkiye Yüzyılı, these are proof, we come from the monkeys; while humans take a snooze, monkeys roam free. Dogma is barrier to understanding, blind faith is obstacle to holiness. Assumption is obstacle to communication, stereotypes are obstacle to awareness.”

“Arise Reborn! by Stewart Stafford In cosy choice, the complacent lie, Teasing open the serpent's eye, To outflank, usurp then suppress, A deceiver's mask under duress. Delusion lays a gossamer snare, Flicking forked tongues tasting air, Devotion to clan, a dying dream, Delirious mining of treachery's seam. Battle drums as heroes rise, Saving tribe and land by surprise, The call to action, your country's plea, The broad church of necessity. Lessons echo in infancy's steps, Territory gained, homeland re-annexed, Skirmishes coalesce in a patriot's war, To campfire tales of visionary valour. © 2025, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”