Patriotism Quotes

African nationalism is meaningless, dangerous, anachronistic, if it is not, at the same time, pan-Africanism.

It was patriotism, not communism, that inspired me.

True patriotism doesn't exclude an understanding of the patriotism of others.

I want nothing for myself... My glory is and always will be... the banner of my people, and even if I leave shreds of my life on the wayside I know that you will gather them up in my name and carry them like a flag to victory.

The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism.

It is not the reporter's job to be a patriot or to presume to determine where patriotism lies. His job is to relate the facts.

True patriotism sometimes requires of men to act exactly contrary, at one period, to that which it does at another, and the motive which impels them the desire to do right is precisely the same.

If I knew something that would serve my country but would harm mankind, I would never reveal it; for I am a citizen of humanity first and by necessity, and a citizen of France second, and only by accident

There's no reason for the establishment to fear me. But it has every right to fear the people collectively - I am one with the people.

"Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically, "marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others."

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.

As an artist I come to sing, but as a citizen, I will always speak for peace, and no one can silence me in this.

We shall always be a small minority in the world, but, when a small nation accomplishes something with its limited means, what it achieves has an immense and exceptional value, like the widow's mite. It is a deliberate and discerning love of a nation that appeals to me, not the indiscriminate love that assumes everything to be right because it bears a national label. Love of one's own nation should not entail non-love of other nations. Institutions by themselves are not enough.

Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.

I have no sense of nationalism, only a cosmic consciousness of belonging to the human family.

The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins.

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

Patriotism was a living fire of unquestioned belief and purpose.

There are no points of the compass on the chart of true patriotism.

My films are always concerned with family, friendship, honor, and patriotism.

A thoughtful mind, when it sees a nation's flag, sees not the flag, but the nation itself.

The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography.

Patriotism is usually stronger than class hatred, and always stronger than internationalism.

Sovereignty and the right to rule cannot be conferred on anyone no matter who ... as a result of an academic discussion. Sovereignty is acquired by force and power and violence.

The soldier does not wish to appear a coward, disloyal, or un-American. The situation has been so defined that he can see himself as patriotic, courageous, and manly only through compliance.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.

Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards any one.

What scoundrels we would be if we did for ourselves what we are ready to do for Italy.

Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen.

It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.

Populism is folkish, patriotism is not. One can be a patriot and a cosmopolitan. But a populist is inevitably a nationalist of sorts. Patriotism, too, is less racist than is populism. A patriot will not exclude a person of another nationality from the community where they have lived side by side and whom he has known for many years, but a populist will always remain suspicious of someone who does not seem to belong to his tribe.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

For a writer only one form of patriotism exists: his attitude toward language.

Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.

Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.

I have the people behind me and the people are my strength.

The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously.

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

All true patriots will meet in heaven.

While the rest of the country waves the flag of Americana, we understand we are not part of that. We don't owe America anything - America owes us.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny; flattery to treachery; standing armies to arbitrary government; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

Love your neighbor as yourself and your country more than yourself.

My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.

The dissenter is every human being at those moments of his life when he resigns momentarily from the herd and thinks for himself.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

I hope to find my country in the right: however I will stand by her, right or wrong.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

Unless our conception of patriotism is progressive, it cannot hope to embody the real affection and the real interest of the nation.

Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.