Patriot Quotes & Sayings

Almighty Freedom! give my venturous song
The force, the charm that to thy voice belong;
Tis thine to shape my course, to light my way,
To nerve my country with the patriot lay,
To teach all men where all their interest lies,
How rulers may be just and nations wise:
Strong in thy strength I bend no suppliant knee,
Invoke no miracle, no Muse but thee. — Joel Barlow

No. I am not a royalist. Not at all. I am definitely a republican in the British sense of the word. I just don't see the use of the monarchy though I'm fierce patriot. I'm proud proud proud of being English, but I think the monarchy symbolizes a lot of what was wrong with the country. — Daniel Radcliffe

I have never been much of a patriot. My father would not have allowed such a thing while he lived, and his death insured that his wish was carried out. Piter commanded far more affection and loyalty from me than the nation as a whole. But that night, running across the unplowed fields of winter wheat, with the Fascist invaders behind us and the dark Russian woods before us, I felt a surge of pure love for my country.
We ran for the forest, crashing through the stalks of wheat, beneath the rising moon and the stars spinning farther and farther away, alone beneath the godless sky. — David Benioff

Why should I trade one tyrant three thousand miles away for three thousand tyrants one mile away? — Benjamin Martin

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,

The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born. — Leo Tolstoy

Decisive action has been taken on the home front with passage of the USA Patriot Act, which has strengthened the hand of law enforcement agencies to stop terrorists before they can act. — Roger Wicker

From Gandhi to Mandela, from the American patriot to the Polish shipbuilders, the makers of revolutions have not come from the top. — Gary Hamel

I don't want to weaken the Patriot Act. I want to repeal it. — Jon Tester

We are not a nation that says, 'Don't ask, don't tell.' We are a nation that says, 'Out of many, we are one.' We are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot. We are a nation that believes that all men and women are created equal. Those are the ideals that generations have fought for. Those are the ideals that we upheld today. — Barack Obama

I never considered myself a patriot. I like to think I recognize only humanity as my nation. — Isaac Asimov

My work with Patriot Voices actually dovetails very well into the work I'm going to be doing with EchoLight. I'll be traveling around the country, doing a lot of radio interviews, a lot of media interviews, so I don't see that as all inconsistent. — Rick Santorum

One can be a patriot, you know, without making one's wife join the breadline. — Jean Anouilh

Lesson number one in trying to develop the ability of independent thought: Understand that EVERYTHING the government says has the potential to be lies and deception. You can believe it's the truth only after you question, exhaust every avenue, and find that their story checks out. If you're a patriot, it's your duty to always question your government anyway, at every turn. A patriot is loyal to his country and his countrymen, not his government. — Derek R. Audette

This Land Is Protected By Million's Blood Bath, If Needed, We'll Fight Again By Sipping The Death Bowl ... — Muhammad Imran Hasan

Insurgent, terrorist, guerrilla, or patriot. As far as he was concerned, anyone who chose violence against the helpless as his means of protest deserved the same label: barbarian, and — David Weber

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. — Walter Cronkite

Ending mass surveillance of private phone calls under the Patriot Act is a historic victory for the rights of every citizen. Yet while we have reformed this one program, many others remain. — Edward Snowden

Since the days of Peter the Great, Russia had looked to the West for her civilization, even to the extend of adopting French as a second language - or as a first for people of station and learning. The United States, recently cut loose politically from England, still drew heavily on the Old World for her art, literature, science and philosophy. Intellectuals from both nations flocked to Europe in search of eduction and aesthetic stimulation, and many became so enthralled with European civilization that they failed to return. In Russia as well as in the United States many an indignant patriot would rant about the need for serving European apron strings. — Perry D. Westbrook

The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to 'loving and faithfully serving his country,' at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms," Schurz — Stephen Kinzer

The Patriot Act has increased the flow of information within our government and it has helped break up terrorist cells in the United States of America. And the United States Congress was right to renew the terrorist act
the Patriot Act. — George W. Bush

Congress passed the deeply flawed Patriot Act and authorized the invasion of Iraq. It even gave its retroactive approval to warrantless wiretapping. — Andrew Rosenthal

It really does seem that the Democrat's problem isn't that they're calling for timetables - it's that they're calling them 'timetables'. You're up against Bush and the Republicans - you've got to bring some zing. Don't call them timetables - call them 'Patriot Dates', 'Freedom Deadlines' ... 'Glory Goals'. — Jon Stewart

In a country where Americans sense, quite genuinely, that their freedoms have been taken away by the government - as in the U.S. Patriot Act, as in NSA surveillance - people feel powerless. — Jay Parini

Comes to my door. Mr. Mayor now. Got the suit, with the American flag in the lapel. Don't join the military; don't help out the little guy; don't take in your tired, your poor, your huddled masses - but if you wear a little flag, you're a patriot. — Harlan Coben

I am a patriot, and I protest speed limits by exceeding them. — Christopher Titus

Marathon Day in Boston and all of Massachusetts, it's Patriot's Day, and it's a big celebration for us. It's a day when we're kind of the whole world's city there. — Elizabeth Warren

No one in their right mind can say to me with a straight face that the Patriot Act has not aggregated the Fourth Amendment. — Peter Camejo

After we were hit on September 11, 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the U.S.A. Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. — Naomi Wolf

I am no Patriot for I try to breathe in with the steadfast belief that my country is the Earth and my religion is Humanism. — K. Hari Kumar

The line between patriot and terrorist is drawn by the historian. — Tit Elingtin

We are in an era where censorship is creeping back in through the Patriot Act and where people are.. being intimidated not to speak about what we should be speaking about,. — Gerald Nicosia

In America, after 9/11, and after the death of bin Laden, and after two wars, one of them fought, a lot of people think, on false pretenses, and definitely post the Patriot Act, there are a lot of these questions about what can we do to our citizens in order to prevent the next attack. — Gideon Raff

In the minds of many Americans, if you are a radical Democrat or a Socialist, you are automatically a Communist. And if you are a Communist, then therefore you are an anti-American person and a person who is not a patriot. But nothing is further from the truth. — Michael Eric Dyson

The Patriot Act followed 9-11 as smoothly as the suspension of the Weimar constitution after the Reichstag Fire Decree. — Srda Trifkovic

George W. Bush's legacy will always be defined by the events of September
11, 2001, which provided him with something of a delayed mandate.
Without 9/11, there would have been no unconstitutional Patriot Act, no
Homeland Security Department, no decade-long occupation of Iraq and
Afghanistan, and no open-ended "war on terror." As such, it is important to
look closely at exactly what really happened on 9/11/2001. — Donald Jeffries

People who make use of all their senses in trying times are no less patriotic than those whose restraint is lost, whose senses are dimmed and whose brains are washed. This is also the time for the patriot to say: Enough. — Gideon Levy

Suspicionless surveillance has no place in a democracy. The next 60 days are a historic opportunity to rein in the NSA, but the only one who can end the worst of its abuses is you. Call your representatives and tell them that the unconstitutional 'bulk collection' of Americans' private records under Section 215 of the Patriot Act must end. — Edward Snowden

The Patriot Act, passed overwhelmingly but hastily after 9/11, allows the FBI to obtain telecommunication, financial, and credit records without a court order. — Rebecca MacKinnon

He was a great man. But even a better patriot. — Anonymous

I'm not going askew from the principles on which the United States was built; I'm right there with our founding fathers. I'm a patriot and a Christian, and I'm moving forth with what they started. But now it's gotten to where I'm some kind of nut or Bible beater.
I say, so be it. I'll still go across the country spreading God's Word, like I've done since I was twenty-eight. I may be only one man reading Scripture and quotes, carrying his Bible, and blowing duck calls to crowds, but, hey, it has to start somewhere. It's what makes me happy, happy, happy. — Phil Robertson

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. — Voltaire

A patriot is one who wrestles for the soul of her country as she wrestles for her own being. — Adrienne Rich

Every answer he [President John Adams] gives to his addressers unmasks more and more his principles and views. His language to the young men at Philadelphia is the most abominable and degrading that could fall from the lips of the first magistrate of an independent people, and particularly from a Revolutionary patriot. — James Madison

I have always regarded myself, in the first place, as an African patriot. — Nelson Mandela

I'm a patriot with every fiber of my being. A patriot does what is best for his country, not what is best for its leader. — James Patterson

I'm a universal patriot ... my country is the world. — Charlotte Bronte

The house of every one is to him as his castle. — Edward Coke

Now that Bin Laden dead, can we get our civil liberties back?
That George Bush stole with the Patriot Act? — Ras Kass

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst. — Mark Twain

The patriot, like the Christian, must learn to bear revilings and persecutions as a part of his duty; and in proportion as the trial is severe, firmness under it becomes more requisite and praiseworthy. It requires, indeed, self-command. But that will be fortified in proportion as the calls for its exercise are repeated. — Thomas Jefferson

Prior to the passage of the Patriot Act, it was very difficult - often impossible - for us to share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, with NSA, with the other intelligence agencies, and likewise, for them to share information with us. — Robert Mueller

A humble, bootstrappy patriot, Knox wooed, then married Lucy Flucker, the highbrow daughter of the Loyalist governor of the province of Massachusetts. — Sarah Vowell

This thing called Patriot Act, through which we abdicated a lot of our civil rights to defend the country against terrorism, it's a four-year story. — Neil Young

Every American, regardless of their background, has the right to live free of unwarranted government intrusion. Repealing the worst provisions of the Patriot Act will reign in this gross abuse of power and restore to everyone our basic Constitutional rights. — Pete Stark

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it; but a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. — Edmund Burke

What Patriot wrote that shit? — Allen Ginsberg

It is better to die as a patriot than to live having abandoned one's country. — Frederick Arthur Mckenzie

But a good patriot, and a true politician, always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition, to preserve, and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution. — Edmund Burke

The Patriot Act closed dangerous gaps in America's law enforcement and intelligence capabilities, gaps that terrorists exploited when they attacked us. — George W. Bush

We must erase bin Laden's ugly legacy, not extend it: by ending the Patriot Act's erosion of our civil liberties, we can protect the freedoms that make America worth fighting for. — Aaron Swartz

There are courageous and honest men enough in both sections to fight. There is no question of courage involved. The people of both sections of this Union have illustrated their courage on too many battlefields to be questioned. They have shown their fighting qualities shoulder to shoulder whenever their country has called upon them; but that they may never come in contact with each other in fratricidal war, should be the ardent wish of every true man and honest patriot. — Robert Toombs

People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies. — Robert Mueller

I will also continue to strongly oppose any reauthorization of the Patriot Act that does not protect the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans with no connection to terrorism. — Russ Feingold

We all deserve credit for this new surveillance state that we live in because we the people voted for the Patriot Act. Democrats and Republicans alike ... We voted for the people who voted for it, and then voted for the people who reauthorized it, then voted for the people who re-re-authorize d it. — Stephen Colbert

I'm honored to be at the side of Michele Bachmann. She is a great congresswoman. She is a great human being, and she is a true American patriot. — Jon Voight

Jean ValJean. I hated that fucker. — Bill Belichick

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian. — George Washington

PATRIOT, n. One to whom the interests of a part seem superior to those of the whole. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors. — Ambrose Bierce

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country. — Bertrand Russell

It's funny that we think of libraries as quiet demure places where we are shushed by dusty, bun-balancing, bespectacled women. The truth is libraries are raucous clubhouses for free speech, controversy and community. Librarians have stood up to the Patriot Act, sat down with noisy toddlers and reached out to illiterate adults. Libraries can never be shushed. — Paula Poundstone

Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our time, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment in the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the honest workingman. — Emma Goldman

Whatever the world thinks, he who hath not much meditated upon God, the human soul, and the summum bonum, may possibly make a thriving earthworm, but will most indubitably make a sorry patriot and a sorry statesman. — George Berkeley

I prefer people to see me as an Ivorian and as a patriot. — Didier Drogba

The patriot blood of my father was warm in my veins. — Clara Barton

In living through this great epoch, it is difficult to reconcile oneself to the fact that one belongs to that mad, degenerate species that boasts of its free will. How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will. In such a place even I should be an ardent patriot! — Albert Einstein

Democracy doesn't begin at the top; it begins at the bottom, when flesh-and-blood human beings fight to rekindle what Arlo Guthrie calls 'The Patriot's Dream. — Bill Moyers

There is much more to being a patriot and a citizen than reciting the pledge or raising a flag. — Jesse Ventura

The 'Total Information Awareness' project is truly diabolical - mostly because of the legal changes which have made it possible in the first place. As a consequence of the Patriot Act, government now has access to all sorts of private and commercial databases that were previously off limits. — John Perry Barlow

No man can be a patriot on an empty stomach. — William Cowper

Here at home, we need to do two fundamental things. Number one, we need to recognize that technology has moved on. The Patriot Act was signed in 2001, roughly. The iPhone was invented in 2007. The iPad was invented in 2011. Snapchat and Twitter, all the rest of it, have been around just for several years. Technology has moved on, and the terrorists have moved on with it. — Ted Cruz

I am patriot enough to take pains to bring this usefull invention into fashion in England, and I should not fail to write to some of our Doctors very particularly about it, if I knew anyone of 'em that I thought had Virtue enough to destroy such a considerable branch of Revenue for the good of Mankind, but that Distemper is too beneficial to them not to expose to all their Resentment the hardy wight that should undertake to put an end to it. — Mary Wortley Montagu

I know my own nation best. That's why I despise it the most. And know and love my own people, too, the swine. I'm a patriot. A dangerous man. — Edward Abbey

Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.22 — Michael Shermer

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Patriot Act was rushed to the floor. Several hundred pages. Nobody read it ... But people voted because they were fearful and people said there could be another attack and Americans will blame me if I don't vote on this. — Rand Paul

Patriotism, or the peculiar relation of an individual to his country, is like the family instinct. In the child it is a blind devotion; in the man in intelligent love. The patriot perceives the claim made upon his country by the circumstances and time of her growth and power, and how God is to be served by using those opportunities of helping mankind. Therefore his country's honor is dear to him as his own, and he would as soon lie and steal himself as assist or excuse his country in a crime. — George William Curtis

In my eyes, a patriot is little more than an international blackleg. — Tariq Ali

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable. — Michel Houellebecq

NAFTA and GATT have about as much to do with free trade as the Patriot Act has to do with liberty. — Michael Badnarik

There's this whole post-modern, nuevo beatnik, retro-bohemian thing going on, you know what I mean? You walk into some coffee shops, and it feels like you're an ex-patriot in Paris in the 20s. You're like, 'Hey, isn't that a young Ernest Hemingway over there? Yeah, I think it is! Hey, let's go have a look and see what he's writing ... It's a Gap application.' — Marc Maron

Since we enacted the PATRIOT Act almost three years ago, there has been tremendous public debate about its breadth and implications on due process and privacy. — Howard Berman

I think it's dawning on some Democrats that obstructing the Patriot Act, like they've been obstructing everything else, is bad for them politically. — Karl Rove

For me, the definition of a patriot is someone who is willing to constantly question the government; that's what separates us from other countries. — George Clooney

Such is the patriot's boast, where'er we roam,
His first best country ever is at home. — Oliver Goldsmith

While briskly to each patriot lip
Walks eager round the inspiring flip;
Delicious draught, whose pow'rs inherit
The quintessence of public spirit! — John Trumbull

To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, "Our Country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation? — Mark Twain

Yet there comes a time in the life of a patriot when abdication would amount to a betrayal if not outright treachery. — Olusegun Obasanjo

A patriot is he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest — Samuel Johnson

A man doesn't have to agree with his government to be a patriot, does he? It takes a true patriot to dissent, to say he loves his country more than he cares for his own place in the social order. — Cassandra Clare

It is no response to assert that the Patriot Act has been useful; what you need to explain is how any particular safeguard would have so diluted investigative powers that it would have frustrated an investigation and created a security harm outweighing the benefit to civil liberties. If you'd rather trade scary stories, that's fine too - just let me know so I can buy a bag of marshmallows before our next round. — Julian Sanchez