Quotes & Sayings About The U.s. Flag

Under the rules of colonialism, everything goes to and comes from the mother country. In 1870, the colony of Turks and Caicos was asked to send a crest to England so that a flag for the colony could be designed. A Turks and Caicos designer drew a crest that included Salt Cay saltworks with salt rakers in the foreground and piles of salt. Back in England, it was the era of Arctic exploration, and, not knowing where the Turks and Caicos was, the English designer assumed the little white domes were igloos. And so he drew doors on each one. And this scene of salt piles with doors remained the official crest of the colony for almost 100 years, until replaced in 1968 by a crest featuring a flamingo. — Mark Kurlansky

He held the flag like a banner of defiance. 'You can take our lives but you'll never take our freedom!' he screamed.

Carcer's men looked at one another, puzzled by what sounded like the most badly thought-out war cry in the history of the universe. — Terry Pratchett

I believe that movements to suppress wrongs can be carried out under the protection of our flag. — Mary Harris Jones

I can't bring myself to trust you. But even if you were to betray me, and even if you were to become my enemy ... would it be okay for me to love? Could you ... let me love you? — Ryohgo Narita

I take any opportunity I can to raise our country's flag really high and get some shining positive light on things over there. — Kirsty Coventry

I feel like I just returned a 100-yard kickoff in the last two minutes of the Super Bowl to win it all, only to have my run called back by a flag on the play. — Kobe Bryant

Well, start waving and yelling, because it is the so-called Oxford comma and it is a lot more dangerous than its exclusive, ivory-tower moniker might suggest. There are people who embrace the Oxford comma and people who don't, and I'll just say this: never get between these people when drink has been taken. Oh, the Oxford comma. Here, in case you don't know what it is yet, is the perennial example, as espoused by Harold Ross: "The flag is red, white, and blue." So what do you think of it? Are you for or against it? Do you hover in between? — Lynne Truss

On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. — Samuel P. Huntington

with aides while he wrote his memoirs, Mein Kampf, meaning 'My Struggle,' in which he gave the world's leader fair warning about what was to come. Of course, they didn't listen to him. They never do. "When Hitler got out of Landsberg, there was a gift waiting for him. One of his followers had managed to find their flag, blood and all. They presented it to Hitler as a memento of the Beer Hall Putsch, the incident that brought him to national prominence. To — Steve Martini

I know where he should have put his flag up, and he'd have got plenty of help.
(said at Stamford Bridge) — Ron Atkinson

There are bands that I got into when I was 15, when I was mad at my dad and just wanted to be different. I don't think I'd give those bands half a chance now. But I hold some kind of nostalgia for them that I won't let go. Bands like Minor Threat and Black Flag. — Pete Wentz

It is obviously good and proper to respect the U.S. flag, perpetuated with the blood of American heroes. On the other hand, it can be a fatal mistake, a nuking of the Bill of Rights, not to recognize scoundrels who wrap themselves in the same flag to cover up their crimes against the American common people. — Sherman Skolnick

If the flag of an armed enemy of the U.S. is allowed to fly over government buildings, then it implies that slavery, or at least the threat of slavery, is sanctioned by that government and can still legally exist. — Amiri Baraka

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity. — William Manchester

The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice the last boy and the last girl so that the Palestinian flag will be flown over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem. — Yasser Arafat

If you're living a yielded life, and if you have the preaching and teaching gift, and you're yielding that to God on a continual basis, that's one of the signs that you're in the right place doing the right thing for the right reasons. If you're doing something in the kingdom, and you rarely feel that, that's a red flag. Something needs to be looked at. Are you using the right gift? Are you using it in the right way? For the right reasons? At the right time? In the right context? If I didn't feel it consistently, that would be quite troubling to me. — Bill Hybels

Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?
They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us -- they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.

And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them. — Hunter S. Thompson

No doubt Pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. It removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of a rebel soul. — C.S. Lewis

In prosperous times I have sometimes felt my fancy and powers of language flag, but adversity is to me at least a tonic and bracer. — Walter Scott

I located America thirty-one years ago in a Model T Ford and planted my flag. I've tried a couple of times since to find it again, riding in faster cars and on better roads, but America is the sort of place that is discovered only once by any one man. — E.B. White

When Black Flag and DOA and all those bands were touring in the early 80s, it was kind of a forest and you just kind of got your way through it. Now it's like a six lane highway with Starbucks every twenty meters. That's just civilization. — Henry Rollins

What is Americanism? Every one has a different answer. Some people say it is never to submit to the dictation of a King. Others say Americanism is the pride of liberty and the defence of an insult to the flag with their gore. When some half-developed person tramples on that flag, we should be ready to pour out the blood of the nation, they say. But do we not sit in silence when that flag waves over living conditions which should be an insult to all patriotism? — Anna Howard Shaw

I can remember standing in the middle of the field after the race and seeing the American flag raised and hearing 'The Star Spangled Banner' and all the people singing it. Then I walked off the field and just kind of enjoyed the feeling. — Elizabeth Robinson Schwartz

I remember every player - every single one - who wore the Tennessee orange, a shade that our rivals hate, a bold, aggravating color that you can usually find on a roadside crew, "or in a correctional institution," as my friend Wendy Larry jokes. But to us the color is a flag of pride, because it identifies us as Lady Vols and therefore as women of an unmistakable type. Fighters. I remember how many of them fought for a better life for themselves. I just met them halfway. — Pat Summitt

I'm proud of the U.S.A. We've done some amazing things. To wear our flag in the Olympics is an honor. — Shaun White

I tell you, my friends, it's a sin to pray for the U.S.A. And nobody that's intelligent, and that fears God, will fly the American flag any way but upside-down, the international signal of distress ... It's too late to pray for the U.S.A. — Fred Phelps

I said what do you mean by his country? A flag someone invented two hundred years ago? The Bench of Bishops arguing about divorce and the House of Commons shouting Ya at each other across the floor? Or do you mean the T.U.C. and British Railways and the Co-op? — Graham Greene

It's the founding ideals that the flag draped over my father's coffin stand for.
Truth: His father was buried in Kenya, never served in the U.S. military. Which flag draped his father's coffin? And what ideals does the flag that draped his father's coffin in Kenya stand for? — Barack Obama

I felt it absolutely essential that we plant the U.N. flag in Rwanda and plant it in a place of significance to show all the political entities, all the signees of the agreement and the Rwandans ... that the international community were here and we're here to stay and we're going to be doing our job. — Romeo Dallaire

Why does the U.S. care which flag will be hoisted on a small piece of land thousands of miles away? — Ron Paul

Had someone from Serbia flown a 'Greater Serbia' flag in Tirana or Pristina, it would become an issue for the U.N. Security Council. — Ivica Dacic

I felt like, by the end of the week in the U.S. Amateur, I was never aiming at a flag; I was just hitting it at slopes and just letting the natural contours take over. — Peter Uihlein

As I prepare for my second term as Secretary-General, I am thinking hard about how we can meet the expectations of the millions of people who see the U.N.'s blue flag as a banner of hope. We have to continue our life-saving work in peacekeeping, human rights, development and humanitarian relief. — Ban Ki-moon

It was the tale of a woman scorned, a woman locked in battle over her man, her money, her children, and her rights as a long-term wife. It was a morality tale of Biblical proportions, involving adultery and covetousness, all of it wrapped in a great big flag emblazoned with the almighty U.S. dollar - and concluding in what, on the face of it, appeared to be a most blood-curdling case of stark, premeditated murder in the first degree. Shooting them in their sleep? No soap opera writer could have concocted better. — Bella Stumbo

Earlier in the morning Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Marines had attacked eastward into the ruins of Shuri Castle and had raised the Confederate flag. When we learned that the flag of the Confederacy had been hoisted over the very heart and soul of Japanese resistance, all of us Southerners cheered loudly. The Yankees among us grumbled, and the Westerners didn't know what to do. Later we learned that the Stars and Stripes that had flown over Guadalcanal were raised over Shuri Castle, a fitting tribute to the men of the 1st Marine Division who had the honor of being first into the Japanese citadel. — Eugene B. Sledge

Since the 1920s, when some U.S. cruise ships decided to fly a Panamanian flag to avoid Prohibition regulations, ships have commonly flown the flag of countries foreign to their owners. The benefits are obvious: lower taxes, laxer labor and safety laws. — Rose George

Show that good old team spirit. Wave the flag, give 'em hell, and all that. — Jeff Lindsay

Raising the flag and singing the anthem are, while somewhat suspicious, not in themselves acts of treason. — Terry Pratchett

American patriotism is generally something that amuses Europeans, I suppose because children look idiotic saluting the flag and because the constitution contains so many cracks through which the lawyers may creep. — Katharine Whitehorn

As long as you are forced to be a woman first instead of a person, by default, you need to be a feminist. That's it. Men are people, women are women? Screw that. Screw that. I am sick of having words aimed to shut me up. I am sick of having to be anything other than a person first. Zounds! I enjoy being a girl, whatever that means. For me, that meant Star Wars figurines, mounds of books, skirts and flats. It meant Civil War reenacting and best girlfriends I'd give a kidney to and best guy friends I'd ruin a liver with and making messes and cleaning up some of them and still not knowing how to apply eye shadow. That's being a girl. That's being a person. It's the same damn thing. I wish Rush had just called me an idiot. I'm happy to be called an idiot! On the day when someone on the Internet calls me an idiot first and ugly second, I will set down my feminist battle flag and heave a great sigh. Then I will pick it back up and keep climbing. There are many more mountains to overcome. — Alexandra Petri

The next great First Amendment battleground is just six inches high. It is a license plate bearing the Confederate flag. — Anonymous

This is a place that was "discovered" by a dude who didn't know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, "TA-DA." No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus's goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else's property and claimed it as his because he didn't know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris — Luvvie Ajayi

That's the all-American dessert. Any proud, red-blooded American should easily be able to consume a huge bowl of that with a smile before they went off to plant a flag somewhere or win a gold medal or something." "That is not the dessert of champions, baby." "It most certainly is." "My arteries hardened just looking at it. — Kristen Ashley

If you tell a guy you don't like being tickled and he tickles you anyway, that's a red flag. — Anna Kendrick

In so far as I listen with interest to a record, it's usually to figure out how it was arrived at. The musical end product is where interest starts to flag. It's a bit like jigsaw puzzles. Emptied out of the box, there's a heap of pieces, all shapes, sizes and colours, in themselves attractive and could add up to anything
intriguing. Figuring out how to put them together can be interesting, but what you finish up with as often as not is a picture of unsurpassed banality. Music's like that."
From "Derek Bailey and the Story of Free Improvisation" by Ben Watson, Verso, London, 2004, p. 440. — Derek Bailey

I could give two shits about who sits on what throne and what flag rises from Rune's towers. Whoever it is I have to kneel to is always going to be some vicious swindler who climbed into that throne on the backs of the poor, the broken and the dead. — David Benem

Took two drags off the blunts, and started breaking down the flag:
The blue is for the Crips, the red is for the Bloods,
The whites for the cops, and the stars come from the clubs
Or the slugs that ignite, through the night,
By the dawn early light, why is sons fighting for the stripe? — RZA

A [national] flag has no real significance for peaceful uses. — H.G.Wells

'MaerskKendal' is a rarity with its British flag, the 'LONDON' home port painted on its bow, its two British chief officers, and its portrait of the queen in the mess room, apparently common courtesy on British ships, but a little alarming to me. — Rose George

I expect the Republicans will enjoy a large bounce out of their convention. They're here wrapping themselves in the 9/11 flag, which I think is inappropriate in many ways, but it's their choice. — Harold Ford Jr.

I've got one Aussie flag on my car. It would be nice to have two. — Tom Lehman

When there's a star on a flag it stands for freedom. The star points in all directions, it means you can go anywhere you want. That's why I love stars, because they stand for freedom. — Stephen Kelman

Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end. — Arthur Ransome

If one asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him: It means all that the Constitution of our people, organizing for justice, for liberty, and for happiness, meant. Our flag carries American ideas, American history and American feelings. This American flag was the safeguard of liberty. It was an ordinance of liberty by the people, for the people. That it meant, that it means, and, by the blessing of God, that it shall mean to the end of time! — Henry Ward Beecher

The one consistent policy running through this [Clinton] administration is the love it has lavished on Marxists
food aid for North Korea, diplomatic recognition of the Hanoi regime, chronic kowtowing to Beijing and now doing Castro's dirty work. How can the Clinton gang
which carried the Viet Cong flag during anti-war demonstrations and decorated their dorm rooms with pictures of Che Guevara
not feel contempt for people who insist, with every fiber of their being, that communism is mankind's mortal enemy? — Don Feder

When the day comes in which the Kingdom of God will bear rule, the flag of the United States will proudly flutter unsullied on the flag staff of liberty and equal rights, without a spot to sully its fair surface; the glorious flag our fathers have bequeathed to us will then be unfurled to the breeze by those who have power to hoist it aloft and defend its sanctity. — Brigham Young

I remember in 1968 when we were in Cannes, in the festival, and we were supposed to be there 10 days, and the second day the festival collapsed because the French, you know, film-makers raised the red flag in the festival and ended the festival. — Milos Forman

He was breathing heavily. "I honestly don't understand what's wrong with you," he said. "You're telling me to pack my bags, to leave our house, knowing you're going to have a baby?"
"And this surprises you why? Have you seen what's been happening in our house?"
"Stop talking to me like this in our bed, Tatiana. My white flag is up," said Alexander. "I have no more."
"My white flag is up, too, Shura," she said. "You know when mine went up? June 22, 1941. — Paullina Simons