6 quotes
The soul and substance of what customarily ranks as patriotism is moral cowardice — and always has been.
It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.
Mark Twain in Eruption: Hitherto Unpublished Pages About Men and Events (1940)
In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and ignorant w:NegroesNegroes made the crops for the white planter on shares.
"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"
Mark Twain's Notebook (1935)
I would throw out the old maxim, ‘My country, right or wrong,’ etc., and instead I would say, ‘My country when she is right.’ Because patriotism is supporting your country all the time, but your government only when it deserves it.
Address to the Male Teachers Association of the City of New York (1901)
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear—not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave; it is merely a loose application of the word. Consider the flea! — incomparably the bravest of all the creatures of God, if ignorance of fear were courage.