“I realize that patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.”
“Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.”
“Love of country is like love of woman -- he loves her best who seeks to bestow on her the highest good.”
“Breathes there the man with soul so dead, Who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land!”
“Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”
“Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.”
“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”
“Patriotism is not a short and frenzied outburst of emotion but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”
“Patriotism has its roots deep in the instincts and the affections. Love of country is the expansion of dutiful love.”
“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.”
“Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.”
“Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.”
“Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country.”
“Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises... the best excellence in the children of any other land.”
“No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”
“A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.”
“Yippies, Hippies, Yahoos, Black Panthers, lions and tigers alike -- I would swap the whole damn zoo for the kind of young Americans I saw in Vietnam.”
“God has given you your country as cradle, and humanity as mother; you cannot rightly love your brethren of the cradle if you love not the common mother.”
“''My country, right or wrong'' is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying ''My mother, drunk or sober.''”
“The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it NOW deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
“A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards. More than that no man is entitled to, and less than that no man shall have.”
“It seems that American patriotism measures itself against an outcast group. The right Americans are the right Americans because they're not like the wrong Americans, who are not really Americans.”
“How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be ''American'' before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, and having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?”
“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.”
“The love of their country is with them only a mode of flattering its master; as soon as they think that master can no longer hear, they speak of everything with a frankness which is the more startling because those who listen to it become responsible.”
“I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided b”
“What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility... a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.”
“I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; --neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.”
“O my Brothers! love your Country. Our Country is our home, the home which God has given us, placing therein a numerous family which we love and are loved by, and with which we have a more intimate and quicker communion of feeling and thought than with others; a family which by its concentration upon a given spot, and by the homogeneous nature of its elements, is destined for a special kind of activity.”