“Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.”
Denis Diderot, Observations on the Drawing Up of Laws (1774)
“Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”
Samuel Johnson, quoted in Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791)
“Patriotism ruins history.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Conversation with Friedrich Wilhem Riemer (July, 1817)
“Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena (1851)
“I have written for all, with a profound love for my own country, but without being engrossed by France more than by any other nation. In proportion as I advance in life, I grow more simple, and I become more and more patriotic for humanity.”
Victor Hugo, Letter to M. Daelli, publisher of the Italian translation of Les Misérables (18 October, 1862)
“Patriotism is the vice of nations.”
Oscar Wilde, Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young (1894)
“Patriotism […] for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power […] Patriotism is slavery.”
Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Christianity (1894)
“Those attacks upon language and religion in Poland, the Baltic provinces, Alsace, Bohemia, upon the Jews in Russia, in every place that such acts of violence occur – in what name have they been, and are they, perpetrated? In none other than the name of that patriotism which you defend.
Ask our savage Russifiers of Poland and the Baltic provinces, ask the persecutors of the Jews, why they act thus. They will tell you it is in defence of their native religion and language; they will tell you that if they do not act thus, their religion and language will suffer – the Russians will be Polonised, Teutonised, Judaised.”
Leo Tolstoy, ‘A Reply to Criticisms’, Patriotism and Christianity (1894)
“If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and if we really want peace, then patriotism is a leftover from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and taught, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and if we wish to live in peace, then we must not only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening and contribute to it.”
Leo Tolstoy, ‘Patriotism, or Peace’, Patriotism and Christianity (1894)
“It should be the work of a genuine and noble patriotism to raise the life of the nation to the level of its privileges; to harmonize its general practice with its abstract principles; to reduce to actual facts the ideals of its institutions; to elevate instruction into knowledge; to deepen knowledge into wisdom; to render knowledge and wisdom complete in righteousness; and to make the love of country perfect in the love of man.”
Henry Giles, quoted in Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert (1895)
“I have already several times expressed the thought that in our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering; and that, consequently, this feeling should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men. Yet, strange to say – though it is undeniable that the universal armaments and destructive wars which are ruining the peoples result from that one feeling – all my arguments showing the backwardness, anachronism, and harmfulness of patriotism have been met, and are still met, either by silence, by intentional misinterpretation, or by a strange unvarying reply to the effect that only bad patriotism (Jingoism or Chauvinism) is evil, but that real good patriotism is a very elevated moral feeling, to condemn which is not only irrational but wicked.
What this real, good patriotism consists in, we are never told; or, if anything is said about it, instead of explanation we get declamatory, inflated phrases, or, finally, some other conception is substituted for patriotism – something which has nothing in common with the patriotism we all know, and from the results of which we all suffer so severely.”
Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government (1900)
“It will be said, ‘Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states’. But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one’s own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism which welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it were possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.”
Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government (1900)
“Patriotism has become a mere national self assertion, a sentimentality of flag-cheering with no constructive duties.”
H. G. Wells, Future in America (1906)
“We Americans claim to be a peace-loving people. We hate bloodshed; we are opposed to violence. Yet we go into spasms of joy over the possibility of projecting dynamite bombs from flying machines upon helpless citizens. We are ready to hang, electrocute, or lynch anyone, who, from economic necessity, will risk his own life in the attempt upon that of some industrial magnate. Yet our hearts swell with pride at the thought that America is becoming the most powerful nation on earth, and that she will eventually plant her iron foot on the necks of all other nations. Such is the logic of patriotism.”
Emma Goldman, What is Patriotism? (1908)
“Thinking men and women the world over are beginning to realize that patriotism is too narrow and limited a conception to meet the necessities of our time.”
Emma Goldman, What is Patriotism? (1908)
“When we have undermined the patriotic lie, we shall have cleared the path for the great structure where all shall be united into a universal brotherhood – a truly free society.”
Emma Goldman, What is Patriotism? (1908)
“Conceit, arrogance, and egotism are the essentials of patriotism […] 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.”
Emma Goldman, ‘Patriotism: A Menace to Liberty’, Anarchism and Other Essays (1911)
“Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. 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 it is the first.”
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary (1911)
“‘Patriotism’, i.e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”
Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928)
“I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.”
Albert Einstein, My Credo (1932)
“What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood?”
Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living (1937)
“No one is patriotic about taxes.”
George Orwell, Orwell Diaries 1938-1942 (9 August, 1940)
“Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.”
Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (1949)
“Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!”
Albert Einstein, The World as I See It (1949)
“Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”
H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949)
“Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. ‘Patriotism’ is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by ‘patriotism’ I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare – never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.”
Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)
“Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.”
Bertrand Russell, Has Man a Future? (1962)
“There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.”
J. William Fulbright, The Arrogance of Power (1966)
“America now is stumbling through the darkness of hatred and divisiveness. Our values, our principles, and our determination to succeed as a free and democratic people will give us a torch to light the way. And we will survive and become the stronger – not only because of a patriotism that stands for love of country, but a patriotism that stands for love of people.”
Gerald R. Ford, Address to the state conference of the Order of DeMolay, Grand Rapids, Michigan (7 September, 1968)
“If you think in terms of people divided up into countries, you won’t follow me. The idea of countries is going by the boards. Young people are getting wonderfully uprooted and they’re too strong to get sucked into this ‘country’ crap.”
Buckminster Fuller, quoted in ‘The View from the Year 2000’ by Barry Farrell, LIFE (26 February, 1971)
“A guiding light, though a deceptive one, is provided by the interest of the fatherland, of which there is little mention in the Gospels. In the last few centuries, an incomparably greater number of believers have staked their lives for their country than for the forbidden love of its enemies. The idealists from Fichte to Hegel have also taken an active part in this development. In Europe, faith in God has now become faith in one’s own people. The motto, ‘Right or wrong, my country’, together with the tolerance of other religions with similar views, takes us back into that ancient world from which the primitive Christians had turned away. Specific faith in God is growing dim.”
Max Horkheimer, ‘Theism and Atheism’, in Critique of Instrumental Reason (1974)
“If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one’s country, one’s fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.”
Howard Zinn, Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1991)
“No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, ‘Family Values’, The Worst Years of Our Lives: Irreverent Notes from a Decade of Greed (1991)
“I hate patriotism, I can’t stand it man, it makes me fucking sick! It’s a round world the last time I checked, okay? Y’know what I mean? In fact, that’s how we can stop patriotism, I think. Instead of putting stars and stripes on our flags we should put pictures of our parents fucking! Gather people around that flag and see your dad hunched over your mom’s big 4×4 butt, see if any boot ‘n rally mentality can circle around that little fuckin’ image.”
Bill Hicks, from Rant in E-Minor (1997)
