Quotes about patriotism

A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

— Edward Abbey

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.

— Joseph Addison

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country.

— Alfred Adler

Love of country is like love of woman -- he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.

— Felix Adler

Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike -- I would swap the whole damn zoo for the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.

— Spiro T. Agnew

True patriots we; for be it understood we left our country for our country's good.

— George Barrington

Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.

— Ambrose Bierce

Patriotism must be founded on great principles and supported by great virtue.

— Henry Bolingbroke

Who saves his country violates no law.

— Napoleon Bonaparte

Next to the love of God, the love of country is the best preventive of crime.

— George Borrow

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

— Luis Bunuel

To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.

— Edmund Burke

Though I love my country, I do not love my countrymen.

— Lord Byron

I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.

— Edith Cavell

My country wrong or right, is like saying my mother, drunk or sober.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

My country, right or wrong is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying My mother, drunk or sober.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Many a bum show has been saved by the flag.

— George M. Cohan

Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.

— Calvin Coolidge

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.

— George William Curtis

The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.

— Marquis De Custine

Our country right or wrong.

— Stephen Decatur

Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.

— Stephen Decatur

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

— Denis Diderot

Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.

— John Dryden

Everyone loathes his own country and countrymen if he is any sort of artist.

— Lawrence Durrell

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

— Barbara Ehrenreich

Patriotism has its roots deep in the instincts and the affections. Love of country is the expansion of dutiful love.

— D. D. Field

Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. Patriotism is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by patriotism I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare --never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.

— Erich Fromm

The citizen who criticizes his country is paying it an implied tribute.

— J. William Fulbright

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

— Nathan Hale

I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; --neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i.e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.

— Ernest Hemingway

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.

— E. J. Hobsbawm

Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country's cause.

— Homer

It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country.

— Horace

I think patriotism is like charity -- it begins at home.

— Henry James

... ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.

— John F. Kennedy

When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish.

— Lao-Tzu

Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.

— Sinclair Lewis

You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.

— Malcolm X

God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother.

— Giuseppe Mazzini

O my Brothers! love your Country. Our Country is our home, the home which God has given us, placing therein a numerous family which we love and are loved by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker communion of feeling and thought than with others; a family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined for a special kind of activity.

— Giuseppe Mazzini

Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.

— Herman Melville

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

— H. L. Mencken

Patriotism is a arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

— George Jean Nathan

The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.

— Thomas Paine

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.

— Theodore Roosevelt

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

— Bertrand Russell

A man's feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

— George Santayana

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!

— Sir Walter Scott

You will never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

— George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.

— George Bernard Shaw

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

— George Bernard Shaw

What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

My country, always wrong.

— Student Slogan

Yet some can be patriotic who have no self-respect, and sacrifice the greater to the less. They love the soil which makes their graves, but have no sympathy with the spirit which may still animate their clay. Patriotism is a maggot in their heads.

— Henry David Thoreau

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided b

— George Washington

He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.

— H.G. Wells

How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be American before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?

— Edith Wharton

Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion, but the tranquil ad steady dedication of a lifetime.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

— Samuel Johnson