41 quotes found
“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
“So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbors. The citizen of the universe would be the man who wishes his country never to be e...”
“Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.”
“George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus...”
“People afraid of outsiders are easily manipulated. The warrior caste, supposedly society's protectors, often become protection racketeers. In times of war or crisis, power is easily stolen from the...”
“Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely diffe...”
“You can call anyone you want a traitor as long as you're the one holding the pen.”
“Today many of these selfish politicians are preying on the nation itself (belching corruption and farting discontent!)”
“Every society produces its own cultural conceits, a set of lies and delusions about itself that thrive in the face of all contrary evidence.”
“Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation ...”
“But I was brought up on convent morals and paternal nationalism, I was getting bogged down in contradictions.”
“You felt, in spite of all bureaucracy and inefficiency and party strife something that was like the feeling you expected to have and did not have when you made your first communion. It was a feelin...”
“France bleeds, but liberty smiles, and before the smile of liberty, France forgets her wound.”
“Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies t...”
“Our true nationality is mankind.”
“What matters is the need to move from the rigidity of national stereotypes towards something more truly human; what matters is to discover the riches of human hearts and souls; what matters is the ...”
“The rest of the rebels were recruited from the ranks of the young and excitable and had rather more enthusiasm than skill.”
“Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception. Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself ...”
“A land is precious, but ours is to be revered.”
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.”
