State Patriotism Quotes & Sayings

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

As to the state, from my point of view, the measure of a writer's patriotism is not oaths from a high platform, but how he writes in the language of the people among whom he lives . — Joseph Brodsky

There is no New Testament basis for a linking of church and state until Christ, the King returns. The whole "Constantine mentality" from the fourth century up to our day was a mistake. Constantine, as the Roman Emperor, in 313 ended the persecution of Christians. Unfortunately, the support he gave to the church led by 381 to the enforcing of Christianity, by Theodosius I, as the official state religion. Making Christianity the official state religion opened the way for confusion up till our own day. There have been times of very good government when this interrelationship of church and state has been present. But through the centuries it has caused great confusion between loyalty to the state and loyalty to Christ, between patriotism and being a Christian.
We must not confuse the Kingdom of God with our country. To say it another way: "We should not wrap our Christianity in our national flag. — Francis A. Schaeffer

But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty. — Ron Paul

Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism, does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds expression in the anonymity of the Corporate State. It purports to cherish democracy, patriotism, and the Constitution while manipulating internal levers. — Chris Hedges

Patriotism! It is used to define so many diversities, to justify so many wrongs, to compass so many ends, that its life is killed out; it becomes a dead word in the vocabulary-a blank counter, to be moved to any part of the game; and that flag which, streaming from the mast-head of our ship of state, striped with martyr-blood, and glistening with the stars of lofty promise, should always indicate our worldwide mission, and the glorious destinies that we carry forward, is bandied about in every selfish skirmish, and held up as the symbol of every political privateer. — Edwin Hubbel Chapin

General amnesty, weekly carnival with masked licence, bonuses for all, esperanto the universal language with universal brotherhood. No more patriotism of barspongers and dropsical impostors. Free money, free rent, free sex and a free lay church in a free lay state. — James Joyce

I'm so patriotic, I think every British kid should have a chance to grow up to be our head of state. — Johann Hari

The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. — Leo Tolstoy

The sense of national emergency engendered by war transforms the destruction of dissident opinion into patriotism. — Thomas Szasz

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. — George Orwell

We have seen that the priests regard the state as an enemy to be exploited, it is only natural that our politicians do likewise. Thus, although patriotism is held in greater esteem in this country than in any other country in the world, there is no other country in the world where patriotism is less in evidence among politicians and among the general mass of the community. For patriotism and the state are so closely allied that love of one is necessarily love of the other. And if any man considers the state an enemy and an institution to be exploited, it follows naturally that he is no patriot. Thus the amazed tourist will see that it is very fashionable for Irish politicians who are not in the government to denounce the government and then when they get into the government it is equally fashionable for them to use the powers of government for the purpose of robbing the country. — Liam O'Flaherty

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought. Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. 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

A Russian should rejoice if Poland, the Baltic Provinces, Finland, Armenia, should be separated, freed from Russia; so with an Englishman in regard to Ireland, India and other possessions; and each should help to do this, because the greater the state, the more wrong and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded. Therefore, if we really wish to be what we profess to be, we must not only cease our present desire for the growth of the state, but we must desire its decrease, its weakening, and help this forward with all our might. — Leo Tolstoy

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency. — Douglas MacArthur

One of the most notorious slogans of ultra-nationalism in Turkey has been 'Either love it or leave it!' It is meant to block all kinds of fault-finding from within. The implication is that if you criticize your country or your state, you are showing disrespect, not to mention a lack of patriotism, in which case you had better take your leave. If you do stay, however, the implication is that you love your homeland, in which case you had better not voice any critical opinions. This black-and-white mentality is an obstacle to social progress. But it is not only Turkish ultra- nationalism that is fuelled by a dualistic mentality. All kinds of extremist, exclusivist discourses are similarly reductionist and sheathed in tautology. Either/or approaches ask us to make a choice, all the while spreading the fallacy that it is not possible to have multiple belongings, multiple roots, multiple loves. — Elif Shafak

Bourgeois patriotism, as I view it, is only a very shabby, very narrow, very mercenary, and deeply antihuman passion, having for its object the preservation and maintenance of the power of the national state-that is, the mainstay of all the priveleges of the exploiters throughout the nation. — Mikhail Bakunin

But whether the resistance against government tyrants is non-violent or physically violent, the effort to overthrow state oppression qualifies as true patriotism. — Ron Paul

I am blessed to live in a democracy, not a totalitarian state. But the democracy I cherish is constantly threatened by a brand of politics that clothes avarice and the arrogance of power in patriotic and religious garb. — Parker J. Palmer

The true patriot is motivated by a sense of responsibility and out of self interest for himself, his family, and the future of his country to resist government abuse of power. He rejects the notion that patriotism means obedience to the state. — Ron Paul

America's state religion, is patriotism, a phenomenon which has convinced many of the citizenry that 'treason' is morally worse than murder or rape. — William Blum

It has enriched a tiny global elite that has no loyalty to the nation-state. These corporations, if we use the language of patriotism, are traitors. — Chris Hedges

Patriotism is the surefire wingnut that binds our diverse society. Rulers historically used patriotism to manipulate the populous. Patriotism serves as the trump card to justify going to war and mandatory inscription of young men into military service. Patriotism is becoming synonyms with state justified coercion and murder of less powerful people. — Kilroy J. Oldster

I wonder how many such men in America would know that Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavouring. — Albert Jay Nock

If I want to transform patriotism then I do not proceed in the slightest against the fine fact of the nation but against the mixing up of the nation and the state. — Gustav Landauer

I suspect the next 10 years will be years of turmoil and hardship the globe over, and with that will come a surge in a certain kind of American patriotism. Therefore, American Christians will be challenged to remember where our true fealty lies. I'm not saying there's no place for patriotism. But Christians are people whose first allegiance cannot be to a nation-state, not to any nation-state. Increased geopolitical tension may tempt us to forget that. — Lauren F. Winner

Patriotism never demands obedience to the state but rather obedience to the principles of liberty. — Ron Paul

It would, therefore, seem obvious that patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion. — Leo Tolstoy

[I]n 1919, 1920 and 1921, the whole Israelite press stormed the Romanian state unleashing everywhere chaos and exhorting to violence against the regime, the form of government, the Church, the Romanian order, the national idea, patriotism. Now, as if by magic (in 1936), the same press, led exactly by the same people, has turned into a protector of the state order and its laws, and declares itself 'against violence', and we have become the 'enemies of the country', the 'right-wing extremists', 'in the pay and in the service of the enemy of Romanicity', and, before long, we will hear even this: that we are sponsored by the Jews. — Corneliu Zelea Codreanu

I ask the citizens of this Republic whether such a state of things is to be suffered to pass unnoticed, and the hearts of widows, orphans, and patriots to be broken, and their wrongs left without redress? No! I invoke the genius of our Constitution. I appeal to the patriotism of Americans to stop this unlawful and unholy procedure; and pray that God may defend this nation from the dreadful effects of such outrages. — Joseph Smith Jr.

Every decent director has only one subject, and finally only makes the same film over and over again. My subject is the exploitability of feelings, whoever might be the one exploiting them. It never ends. It's a permanent theme. Whether the state exploits patriotism, or whether in a couple relationship, one partner destroys the other. — Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Especially has the State been successful in recent centuries in instilling fear of other State rulers. Since the land area of the globe has been parceled out among particular States, one of the basic doctrines of the State was to identify itself with the territory it governed. Since most men tend to love their homeland, the identification of that land and its people with the State was a means of making natural patriotism work to the State's advantage. If "Ruritania" was being attacked by "Walldavia," the first task of the State and its intellectuals was to convince the people of Ruritania that the attack was really upon them and not simply upon the ruling caste. In this way, a war between rulers was converted into a war between peoples, with each people coming to the defense of its rulers in the erroneous belief that the rulers were defending them. — Murray N. Rothbard

Only when the state is in disorder is there a need for patriotism. — Lao-Tzu

The concept of patriotism is not incompatible with that of humanity; on the contrary, let me state emphatically that he who best serves pacifism serves patriotism best. The nation is and can be no more than the vital basic unit of any international league. — Leon Bourgeois

Patriotism is "a very definite feeling of preference for one's own people or State above all other peoples and States, and a consequent wish to get for that people or State the greatest advantages and power that can be got - things which are obtainable only at the expense of the advantages and power of other peoples or States." — Leo Tolstoy

My patriotism is of the kind which is outraged by the notion that the United States never was a great nation until in a petty three months' campaign it knocked to pieces a poor, decrepit, bankrupt old state like Spain. To hold such an opinion as that is to abandon all American standards, to put shame and scorn on all that our ancestors tried to build up here, and to go over to the standards of which Spain is a representative. — William Graham Sumner

Every man is the lord of a realm beside which the earthly empire of the Czar is but a petty state, a hummock left by the ice. 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. What — Henry David Thoreau

If you took the most ardent revolutionary, vested him in absolute power, within a year he would be worse than the Tsar himself. — Mikhail Bakunin

Statism ends with an eye roll. — Stefan Molyneux

They knew by instinct rather than by insight that this new expansion movement, in which "patriotism . . . is best expressed in money-making" (Huebbe-Schleiden) and the national flag is a "commercial asset" (Rhodes), could only destroy the political body of the nation-state. — Hannah Arendt

Some people claim we have a Christian heritage in America that needs restoring, but such a claim is debatable and is not well supported by the evidence. We have no biblical warrant to deify the past. Consequently, I find it difficult and possibly wasteful to try to identify just what part of our heritage was Christian in hopes that we can somehow get back to it. — Donovan L. Graham

Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.
They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead. — Henry A. Wallace

I am indebted to the British welfare state; the very one that Mr Cameron would like to replace with charity handouts. When my life hit rock bottom, that safety net, threadbare though it had become under John Major's Government, was there to break the fall. I cannot help feeling, therefore, that it would have been contemptible to scarper for the West Indies at the first sniff of a seven-figure royalty cheque. This, if you like, is my notion of patriotism. — J.K. Rowling

In times of crisis our nation depends on the courage and determination of the Guard. You know the call of active duty can come at any time. You stand ready to put your lives on hold and answer that call, ... And you did so because you love your state and your country. America appreciates your courageous decision to serve. Together with your comrades in the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Reserves, you are showing that patriotism is alive and well in Idaho and throughout the United States.. — George H. W. Bush

In a world where people are divided by sex, race, religion, patriotism, nationality, bipartisanship, and so-called borders, we need more people who are genuine with others and perspicuous with the way the world actually works, despite all the labels and... rhetoric. We need people who are not bound by any specific creed, nation or state, but who subsume them all and are free to create and destroy the many symbols and ideas that float around them, while moving freely and open-mindedly through their social environment. If we would be authentic with our world we should be as resourceful and multi-layered as possible, cultivating a Renaissance spirit. The more abundant our intent, the more epic our presence will be. The more universal our love, the more authentic our journey will be. — Gary McGee