PATRIOTISM
Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.
George Bernard Shaw
[shaw]
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it.
George Bernard Shaw
[shaw]
Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course ...
Emma Goldman
Patriotism: A Menace To Liberty
Anarchism and Other Essays
[redEmma]
I of patriotism brag, And wave the striped rag; At the numb-heads I am laughing in my sleeves. I am always for myself, For office and for pelf; I'm a member of the "Brotherhood of Thieves."
Anna K. - The Politician (poem)
Liberty, Vol. 10, No. 21, February 23, 1895, Whole No. 307
[annaK]
I have formed a very clear conception of patriotism. I have generally found it thrust into the foreground by some fellow who has something to hide in the background. I have seen a great deal of patriotism; and I have generally found it the last refuge of the scoundrel.
G.K. Chesterton, The Judgement of Dr. Johnson, Act III
[gkChesterton]
In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
[ambroseBierce]
PATRIOT, n. The dupe of statesmen and the tool of conquerors.
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
[ambroseBierce]
Conservatives and liberals alike hold in common the mystical notion that nations really mean something, probably something permanent. Both ascribe to lines drawn on maps -- or in the dirt or in the air -- the magical creation of communities of men that require sovereignty and sanction.
Karl Hess, "The Death of Politics", Playboy, March 1969
[karlHess]