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Patriotism Quotes

Samia Suluhu Hassan, George Washington, George Orwell, Albert Einstein and Daniel Webster lead the list. The sourced lines are mostly sceptical. Oscar Wilde, in 1894, calls patriotism the vice of nations. Russell, in Has Man a Future? (1962), notes that patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for it. Mark Twain’s notebook, published in 1935, has a passage on the patriot being a scarce, brave, hated and scorned man at the start of a change, whose place the timid join once his cause succeeds.

Three entries are flagged misattributed. A line on preserving the life of citizens, credited to Seneca, comes from the Roman tragedy Octavia, which modern scholarship generally does not give to him. A passage about killing the national pride of one generation is credited to Lavrentiy Beria. A line separating patriotism from nationalism is credited to Samuel Johnson.

Random quote on Patriotism

Most quoted on patriotism:

There is no greater sign of a general decay of virtue in a nation, than a want of zeal in its inhabitants for the good of their country. This generous and public-spirited Passion has been observed of late Years to languish and grow cold in this our Island; where a Party of Men have made it their Business to represent it as chimerical and romantic, to destroy in the Minds of the People the Sense of national Glory, and to turn into Ridicule our natural and ancient Allies, who are united to us by the common interests both of Religion and Policy.

Joseph Addison The free-holder: or political essays (1716)

So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbours. The citizen of the universe would the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.

Voltaire

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.
My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

John F. Kennedy

That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator.

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.

Patrick J. Geary The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2003)

[N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.

George Washington farewell address (1796)

Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone - everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital.

Fredy Perlman The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism (1984)

If modern youth has realized, as I believe it has, that to live for one's country is a finer type of patriotism than to die for it, then the youth of my generation will not, after all, have laid down the best of its life in vain.

Vera Brittain

We, that would be known
The father of our people, in our study
And vigilance for their safety, must, not change
Their ploughshares into swords, and force them from
The secure shade of their own vines, to be
Scorched with the flames of war.

Philip Massinger

There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.

J. William Fulbright The Arrogance of Power (1966)

It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom.

Gerald Bullett

Perhaps the central question in our understanding of nationalism is the role of the past in the creation of the present. … For nationalists themselves, the role of the past is clear and unproblematic. The nation was always there, indeed it is part of the natural order, even when it was submerged in the hearts of its members.

Anthony D. Smith Gastronomy or Geology? The Role of Nationalism in the Reconstruction of Nations (1994)

To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.

Frederick William Robertson

The lines of red are lines of blood, nobly and unselfishly shed by men who loved the liberty of their fellowmen more than they loved their own lives and fortunes. God forbid that we should have to use the blood of America to freshen the color of the flag. But if it should ever be necessary, that flag will be colored once more, and in being colored will be glorified and purified.

Woodrow Wilson

If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.

Howard Zinn Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991)

this was what patriotism meant to me-
to be at home inside my own head long enough
to accept its infinite freedom
and move forward anywhere, to mysteries coming.

Naomi Shihab Nye Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners (2018)

Patriotism means equipped forces and a prepared citizenry. Moral stamina means more energy and more productivity, on the farm and in the factory. Love of liberty means the guarding of every resource that makes freedom possible—from the sanctity of our families and the wealth of our soil to the genius of our scientists.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Citizens by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.

George Washington

Neither Montaigne in writing his essays, nor DesCartes in building new worlds, nor Burnet in framing an antedeluvian earth, no nor Newton in discovering and establishing the true laws of nature on experiment and a sublimer geometry, felt more intellectual joys; than he feels who is a real patriot, who bends all the force of his understanding, and directs all his thoughts and actions, to the good of his country.

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke On the Spirit of Patriotism (1736)

United States of the People of America now is stumbling through the darkness of hatred and divisiveness. Our values, our principles, and our determination to succeed as a free and democratic people will give us a torch to light the way. And we will survive and become the stronger—not only because of a patriotism that stands for love of country, but a patriotism that stands for love of people.

Gerald Ford

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