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Patriotism Quotes

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Patriotism Quotes

“As I grew to understand the gifts of the earth, I couldn't understand how "love of country" could omit recognition of the actual country itself. The only promise it requires is to a flag. What of the promises to each other and to the land?”

“…The story of the Pledge of Allegiance and its National Socialist roots is a fascinating one. Dr. Rex Curry, a passionate libertarian, has made the issue his white whale.”

“It must be this overarching commitment to what is really an abstraction, to one's children right or wrong, that can be even more fierce than the commitment to them as explicit, difficult people, and that can consequently keep you devoted to them when as individuals they disappoint. On my part it was this broad covenant with children-in-theory that I may have failed to make and to which I was unable to resort when Kevin finally tested my maternal ties to a perfect mathematical limit on Thursday. I didn't vote for parties, but for candidates. My opinions were as ecumenical as my larder, then still chock full of salsa verde from Mexico City, anchovies from Barcelona, lime leaves from Bangkok. I had no problem with abortion but abhorred capital punishment, which I suppose meant that I embraced the sanctity of life only in grown-ups. My environmental habits were capricious; I'd place a brick in our toilet tank, but after submitting to dozens of spit-in-the-air showers with derisory European water pressure, I would bask under a deluge of scalding water for half an hour. My closet wafter with Indian saris, Ghanaian wraparounds, and Vietnamese au dais. My vocabulary was peppered with imports -- gemutlich, scusa, hugge, mzungu. I so mixed and matched the planet that you sometimes worried I had no commitments to anything or anywhere, though you were wrong; my commitments were simply far-flung and obscenely specific. By the same token, I could not love a child; I would have to love this one. I was connected to the world by a multitude of threads, you by a few sturdy guide ropes. It was the same with patriotism: You loved the idea of the United States so much more powerfully than the country itself, and it was thanks to your embrace of the American aspiration that you could overlook the fact that your fellow Yankee parents were lining up overnight outside FAO Schwartz with thermoses of chowder to buy a limited release of Nintendo. In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendent, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity. Although neither of us ever went to church, I came to conclude that you were a naturally religious person.”

“Democracy failed in Europe in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, and it is failing not only in much of Europe but in many parts of the world today. It is that history and experience that reveals to us the dark range of our possible futures. A nationalist will say that "it can't happen here," which is the first step toward disaster. A patriot says that it could happen here, but that we will stop it.”

“Your patriotism is not measured by what your country can do for you. It's all about what you can do for your country for your own benefit and for the benefit of unborn generations!”

“So I saw someone with one of those "home of the free because of the brave" shirts a few days ago. I almost laughed. I tried not to because of the upcoming Veterans day… I guess. Home of the Slaves because of the cowards, I think would be more appropriate. Look at these American wars. Vietnam… Iraq… is that really the “brave” thing to do? Beating up on little countries cuz u’r trying to look brave huh? Cowards. And then they tell me to go work at Kroger? Are you insane? Don’t you know my fucking SAT score, you dumb fuck? Why don’t you go and invade Croatia or something instead. Idiots.”

“Love opens the most impossible gates in the world. Feel, therefore, my would-be patriots. Do you feel? Do you feel that millions of your sisters and brothers are starving today and have been in such condition for ages? Do you feel my dear soldiers? Do you feel that the light of truth has become much scarier to the society than the darkness of ignorance? Does this not make you restless? Does this not make you sleepless? Has it not gone into your blood yet, coursing through your veins, becoming resonant with your heart-beat? Are you not yet seized with the one idea of lifting the misery from the society? Have you not been yet immersed in this idea, so much so that, you have forgotten your name, your fame, your property and even your very physical existence as a flesh and blood being? Have you done that yet? That is the very first step of the real education my friend. Your world needs heroes. Be Heroes!”

“Sieg Heil and the rest (Sonnet 1162) Some shout Sieg Heil, Some shout Jai Hind. Some Star Spangled Banner, Others God save the fiend. Only the language differs, Jungliness remains the same. Even in an integrating world, Some maintain the habits lame. Once upon a time, they might have had some value. Today they are just anachronism, Kept alive by apes without clue. If you are still enraged, how dare I compare Sieg Heil with the rest! Study the history unvarnished - behind every tribal salute you'll find a holocaust equivalent.”

“Patriotism 101: How To Murder Like A Pro (Sonnet 2445) Murder is an art, if you do it properly you can not only get away, but actually be praised for it. First and foremost, lock your brain and heart up in the cupboard, you don't need them, and join a military kennel, oops, I mean academy, spend all your conscious days and nights finding reasons to hate those beyond the border, and you don't need to search hard, because since you've already abandoned civilized senses, your animal instincts would take over, and deliver you the enemy as per the government requirement - you just need to make sure that, never for a second you must let the human in you take charge, because if it does, that's the end of all patriotic glory.”

“Either Border or Human (Sonnet 2506) In a planet of apes, if you want power and control, all you have to do is sell fear - sell fear, blood, rage, the lot - if you are in politics sell fear, if you are in religion sell hate, if you are in cinema sell rage, but never call them by their real name, always package it in modern language, package bloodshed as patriotism, package fanaticism as tradition, package derangement as righteousness. That's enough ape talk, now hear the human speak: there is no place for nationalism in science, there is no place for fanaticism in holiness, there is no place for hate-commerce in arts, there is no place for borders in consciousness.”

“Patriotism,” said Theodore Roosevelt, “means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. … Every man,” said President Roosevelt, “who parrots the cry of ‘stand by the President’ without adding the proviso ‘so far as he serves the Republic’ takes an attitude as essentially unmanly as that of any Stuart royalist who championed the doctrine that the King could do no wrong. No self-respecting and intelligent free man could take such an attitude.”

“Arnold had never given much thought to whether or not he loved America—but now it seemed pretty obvious to him that he didn’t. Not in the way Nathan Hale had loved America. Or even in the way his late father, a Dutch-Jewish refugee, had loved America. In fact, he found the idea of sacrificing his life for his country somewhat abhorrent. Moreover, it wasn’t that he disliked abstract loyalties in general. He loved New York, for instance: Senegalese takeout at three a.m., and strolling through the Botanical Gardens on the first crisp day of autumn, and feeding the peacocks at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. If Manhattan were invaded—if New Jersey were to send an expeditionary force of militiamen across the Hudson River—he’d willingly take up arms to defend his city. He also loved Sandpiper Key in Florida, where they owned a time-share, and maybe Brown University, where he’d spent five years of graduate school. But the United States? No one could mistake his qualified praise for love.”

“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure... Never was a country worth living in unless its sons and daughters were of that stern stuff which bade them die for it at need; and never yet was a country worth dying for unless its sons and daughters thought of life not as something concerned only with the selfish evanescence of the individual, but as a link in the great chain of creation and causation, so that each person is seen in his true relations as an essential part of the whole, whose life must be made to serve the larger and continuing life of the whole.”

“It's time we change the very definition of patriotism - it's time we break our primitive loyalty to land and culture and foster a sense of servitude in its place - servitude towards the helpless - servitude towards the oppressed - servitude towards the destitute.”

“I like it too," Angelo said. "I love this country. Much you and anybody, and you know it." "I know it," Prew said. "But I still hate this country. You love the Army. But I dont love the Army. This country's Army is why I hate this country. What did this country ever do for me? Gimme a right to vote for men I cant elect? You can have it. Gimme a right to work at a job I hate? You can have that too. Then tell I'm a Citizen of the greatest richest country on earth, if I dont believe it look at Park Avenue. Carnival prizes. All carnival prizes. [..] They shouldnt teach their immigrants' kids all about democracy unless they mean to let them have a little bit of it, it ony makes for trouble. Me and the United States is dissociating our alliance as of right now, until the United States can find time to read its own textbooks a little." Prew thought, a little sickly, of the little book, The Man Without A Country that his mother used to read to him so often, and how the stern patriotic judge condemned the man to live on a warship where no one could ever mention home to him the rest of his whole life, and how he had always felt that pinpoint of pleased righteous anger at seeing the traitor get what he deserved.”

“The contents of Mr. Thorne's letter, as nearly as I can remember, were as follows: "I have seen your slave, Linda, and conversed with her. She can be taken very easily, if you manage prudently. There are enough of us here to swear to her identity as your property. I am a patriot, a lover of my country, and I do this as an act of justice to the laws.”

“In the United States there is a unique blend of patriotism indoctrination from the pulpit which blends establishment controls into the religious ideology. This way, to question the establishment is to question God, therefore one’s patriotism and salvation is contingent on their submission to the state.”

“I thought I could write something better, something that rang true. And I thought that I was the best person to do it. I was just crazy enough. Because if you're going to write a book about undocumented immigrants in America, the story, the full story, you have to be a little bit crazy. And you certainly can't be enamored by America, not still. That disqualifies you.”

“फौजियों के नाम और उनकी गौरव-गाथाएं उनकी युनिट में अक्सर दोहराई जाती हैं। कभी-कभी देश भी शायद उन्हें याद कर लेता होगा पर शहीद की पत्नी का कर्ज़ ये देश कैसे चुकाएगा? देश के लिए जान देने वाले सिपाहियों के बच्चों का जवाबदेह कौन है जो बिना बाप की छत्रछाया के बड़े होते हैं।' कुसुम अपनी ही धुन में बोले जा रही थी।”

“Tony had never considered himself to be particularly patriotic—he did not accept, in fact, that there was any material difference between the patriot and the nationalist—and so he had been surprised, and even a little ashamed, to realise just how strongly his nationality had shaped him, not just in his actions and his expectations, but in his political convictions, which he would have liked to think had been formed through his powers of reason and his intellect alone. His loathing of the super-rich, for example, was on some level not a political stance at all, but merely a very Kiwi expression of disdain—disdain for those who lived in childish comfort, and who delegated labour, and—to put it plainly—who simply weren’t hardcore enough to do without; their luxuries had not been earned or exerted for, but had been merely purchased, and that was something any fool could do.”