#riot

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. ↗

— Theodore Roosevelt

#dissent #patriotism #truth-telling #president

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched." [My Uncle Sosthenes] ↗

— Guy de Maupassant

#fanaticism #patriotism #religion #wars #religion

Loyalty to country ALWAYS. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it. ↗

— Mark Twain

#politics #political

You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race. ↗

— George Bernard Shaw

#human race #knock #never #out #patriotism

Someday, I hope that we will all be patriots of our planet and not just of our respective nations. ↗

— Zoe Weil

#education #humane #mogo #nation #patriot

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS ↗

— Abraham Lincoln

#angels #civil-war #democracy #destiny #determination

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. ↗

— G.K. Chesterton

#wit #wit

To oppose corruption in government is the highest obligation of patriotism. ↗

— G. Edward Griffin

#patriotism #corruption

Power must never be trusted without a check. ↗

— John Adams

#scope-of-government #separation-of-powers #separation

If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining… The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless. ↗

— Chris Hedges

#media #patriotism #truth #war #death