“Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone and as irrational as a headless hen.” ——Ambrose Bierce
“Patriotism is a religion, the egg from which wars are hatched.” ——Guy de Maupassant
“Patriotism is a menace to liberty.” ——Emma Goldman
“Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.” ——George Bernard Shaw
“Patriotism is a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion.” ——Gustave Herve
“Patriotism – the virtue of the vicious.” ——Oscar Wilde
“Patriotism is a survival from barbarous times which must not only be evoked and educated but which must be eradicated by all means – by preaching, persuasion, contempt and ridicule.” ——Leo Tolstoy
“You’ll never have a quiet world until you knock the patriotism out of the human race.” ——George Bernard Shaw
“A patriot sets himself apart in his own country under his own flag, sneers at other nations and keeps an army of uniformed assassins on hand at heavy expense to grab slices of other people’s countries and keep them from grabbing slices of his. In the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for ‘the universal brotherhood of man’ – with his mouth.” ——Mark Twain, The Lowest Animal
“This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism on command, senseless violence and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.” ——Albert Einstein
“Patriotism means advocating plunder in the interests of the privileged class of your particular country. The time will soon come when calling someone a patriot will be the deepest insult.” ——Ernest B. Bax
“Politically speaking, tribal nationalism [patriotism] always insists that its own people are surrounded by ‘a world of enemies’ – ‘one against all’ – and that a fundamental difference exists between this people and all others. It claims its people to be unique, individual, incompatible with all others, and denies theoretically the very possibility of a common mankind long before it is used to destroy the humanity of man.” ——Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p.227
“Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of patriotism. One would expect the harm and irrationality of patriotism to be self-evident to everyone. But the surprising fact is that cultured and learned people not only do not notice the harm and stupidity of patriotism, they resist every unveiling of it with the greatest obstinacy and passion (with no rational grounds), and continue to praise it as beneficent and elevating.” ——Leo Tolstoy
“Blind patriotism has been kept intact by rewriting history to provide people with moral consolation and a psychological basis for denial.” ——William H. Boyer
“Patriotism is a superstition artificially created and maintained through a web of lies and falsehoods, robbing us of our dignity and increasing our arrogance and conceit.” ——Emma Goldman
“In the beginning of a change, the patriot is a scarce man, brave, hated, and scorned. When his cause succeeds however, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.” ——Mark Twain
“If the test of patriotism comes only by reflexively falling into lockstep behind the leader whenever the flag is waved, then what we have is a formula for dictatorship, not democracy… But the American way is to criticize and debate openly, not to accept unthinkingly the doings of government officials of this or any other country.” ——Michael Parenti
“During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.” ——Howard Thurman
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism— how passionately I hate them!” ——Stephen Decatur
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” ——William Shakespeare
“Men in authority will always think that criticism of their policies is dangerous. They will always equate their policies with patriotism, and find criticism subversive.” ——Henry Steele Commager (1902-1998), Historian and author
“We should take care, in inculcating patriotism into our boys and girls, that it is a patriotism above the narrow sentiment which usually stops at one’s country, and thus inspires jealousy and enmity in dealing with others… Our patriotism should be of the wider, nobler kind which recognises justice and reasonableness in the claims of others and which lead our country into comradeship with…the other nations of the world.” ——Lord Baden-Powell
“Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.” ——James Bryce
“More often than not, those leaders who rally the people to kill other people in the name of patriotism and nationalism are usually themselves murders, liars and thieves who through their power cause millions of others to ‘kill, steal and destroy.’ Satan is well served by these devious tyrants.” ——Gary Amirault
“When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.” ——Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The feeling of patriotism – It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience.” ——Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government
“One of the great attractions of patriotism—it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what’s more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.” ——Aldous Huxley
“The dangerous patriot: ‘The one who drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions. He is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory. Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism . . . which identifies numerous enemies who can only be dealt with through military power and which equates the national honor with military victory.'” ——Marine Corps Colonel James A. Donovan
“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country.” ——Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism in its simplest, clearest and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish enthrallment to those in power.” ——Leo Tolstoy
“Patriotism is the belief your country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.” ——George Bernard Shaw
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.” ——Bertrand Russell
“Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn’t. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.” ——Mark Twain
“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.” ——George William Curtis
“It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.” ——Arthur C. Clarke
“Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.” ——Adlai E. Stevenson
“It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind.” ——Voltaire
“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” ——Malcolm X (1925-1965)
“To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.'” ——Leo Tolstoy