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If I haven't fought for my country at least I'll paint for her.
Sep 10, 2025
He was inordinately proud of England and he abused her incessantly.
The greatest honor history can bestow is the title of peacemaker.
A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot.
We have to love our freedom, not just for the private opportunities it provides, but for the goodness it makes possible.
I look forward to a great future for America - a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
For the first time in the history of our country the majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years.
I think America is changing. I think we are becoming a country that is not as welcoming to immigrants anymore. You have a president Donald Trump just last week who was retweeting anti-Muslim videos. That causes great harm to the Muslim-American community in this country who are law-abiding, faithful, yet patriotic people in this country. And it's sad that they are denigrated in that fashion.
For me patriotism is the sme as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India . . . My patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will.
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. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.
I reject discrimination against Muslim Americans - who are just as patriotic as we are.
Only religion can prevent democratic rule from developing into mob rule. A nation can prosper only as its citizens are religious, intelligent, capable of service and eager to render it.
We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued and they must be defeated.
All of us should have free choice when it comes to patriotic displays... a government wisely acting within its bounds will earn loyalty and respect from its citizens. A government dare not demand the same.
I do not believe that the Constitution was the offspring of inspiration, but I am as satisfied that it is as much the work of a Divine Providence as any of the miracles recorded in the Old and New Testament.
In practice, US officials seem to know better than to indulge in the patriotic myth that our constitution is the greatest system of government ever devised.
Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.
It is the duty of every citizen, for his own welfare, if for no other patriotic reason, to support and fight for and possibly initiate measures having to do with conservation of soil, water and forests.
Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.
We must teach our children to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons.
And to me, that's why the civil rights era is about the future, not about the past, because it's great lessons of how citizens can organize to call on the patriotic heritage of the country to tackle some of our most intractable problems and we need to do that again.
They look for a victim to chivy, and howl him down, and finally lynch him in a sheer storm of sexual frenzy which they honestly imagine to be moral indignation, patriotic passion or some equally allowable emotion, it may be an innocent Negro, a Jew like Leo Frank, a harmless half-witted German; a Christ-like idealist of the type of Debs, an enthusiastic reformer like Emma Goldman.
Freedom is never granted. It is earned by each generation... In the face of tyranny, cruelty, oppression, extremism, sometimes there is only one choice. When the world looks to America, America looks to you, and you never let her down.
Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will.
True patriotism springs from a belief in the dignity of the individual, freedom and equality not only for Americans but for all people on earth, universal brotherhood and good will, and a constant and earnest striving toward the principles and ideals on which this country was founded.
Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching.
This patriotic revolution where people want to find their own identity are not racist but want to fight for the preservation of their own people. Their own country, their own values. Their own money. Their own borders. This is such a positive thing.
It may be a mere patriotic bias, though I do not think so, but it seems to me that the English aristocracy is not only the type, but is the crown and flower of all actual aristocracies; it has all the oligarchical virtues as well as all the defects. It is casual, it is kind, it is courageous in obvious matters; but it has one great merit that overlaps even these. The great and very obvious merit of the English aristocracy is that nobody could possibly take it seriously.
Listen, the environmental movement is not about protecting the fishes and the birds so much as recognizing that nature is the infrastructure of our communities ... If you're saying the values that drive the environmental movement are uncool and antithetical to America, then I would argue just the opposite. If you think being patriotic is not cool, I'd say that's not true either. I'd say the most patriotic thing you can do is to take care of the environment and try to live sustainably.
Man's greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.
If America is destroyed, it may be by Americans who salute the flag, sing the national anthem, march in patriotic parades, cheer Fourth of July speakers - normally good Americans, but Americans who fail to comprehend what is required to keep our country strong and free, Americans who have been lulled away into a false security.
New England clam chowder, made as it should be, is a dish to preach about, to chant praises and sing hymns and burn incense before. [...] It is as American as the Stars and Stripes, as patriotic as the national Anthem. It is Yankee Doodle in a kettle.
Those who misrepresent the normal experiences of life, who decry being controversial, who shun risk, are the enemies of the American way of life, whatever the piety of their vocal professions and the patriotic flavor of their platitudes.
I believe this Government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.
the seat of the greatest patriotic loyalties is in the stomach. Long after giving up all attachment to the land of his birth, the naturalized American citizen holds fast to the food of his parents.
That we we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain - that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.
A pure democracy is a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person.
Everyone talks about America, this great country. You hear, "I'm more patriotic than you are. No, I'm more patriotic!" But how few people know the history of this country and how we came into being. That's the part that just amazed me.
Liberals don't mind discussing who is more patriotic if patriotism is defined as redistributing income and vetoing the Pledge of Allegiance. Only if patriotism is defined as supporting America do they get testy and drone on about 'McCarthyism.'
Loyal and substansial Catholic service on the battlefield undermined one of the most longstanding objections to emancipation: namely, that since Catholics owed religious allegiance to a foreign authority in the person of the Pope, their political and patriotic allegiance must necessarily be suspect.
This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
All of us ... should remember that no amount of flag-waving, pledging allegiance, or fervent singing of the national anthem is evidence that we are patriotic in the real sense of the word. ... Outward behavior, while important, is not the real measure of a man's patriotism.
Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity.
I did not feel very patriotic. I did not feel proud of our country, seeing that we were bombing peasant villages, that we were not just hitting military targets, that children were being killed. We were terrorizing the North Vietnamese with our enormous Air Force. They had no Air Force at all. They were a little pitiful country and we were terrorizing them with our bombs. And no, I did not feel proud at all.
The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.
Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men and women are created equal.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.