Nation and Patriotism

The interaction of disparate cultures, the vehemence of the ideals that led the immigrants here, the opportunity offered by a new life, all gave America a flavor and a character that make it as unmistakable and as remarkable to people today as it was to Alexis de Tocqueville in the early part of the nineteenth century.

[Our objective is to prevent] the annexation of the nations of our America by the unruly and brutal North which despises them. I have lived in the bowels of the beast and I know it from the inside.

[ On the reconquest of South Georgia in the Falklands War :] Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines. Rejoice!

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.

Patriotism is usually the refuge of the scoundrel. He is the man who talks the loudest .

Eight grown Americans out of ten dread the coming of the Fourth, with its pandemonium and its perils, and they rejoice when it is gone-if still alive.

Now all the youth of England are on fire, And silken dalliance in the wardrobe lies.

We must be free or die, who speak the tongue That Shakespeare spake; the faith and morals hold Which Milton held.

Listen, my children, and you shall hear, Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five; Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and year.

The land was ours before we were the land’s. She was our land more than a hundred years Before we were her people.

We’re leaving Babylon We’re going to our Father’s land.

Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in: to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and with all nations.

We must be the great arsenal of democracy.

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for the country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.

English, no longer an English language, now grows from many roots; and those whom it once colonized are carving out large territories within the language for themselves. The Empire is striking back.

To satisfy their hunger for meaning and value, they [the masses] turn to such doctrines as nationalism, fascism and revolutionary communism. Philosophically and scientifically, these doctrines are absurd; but for the masses in every community, they have this great merit: they attribute the meaning and value that have been taken away from the world as a whole to the particular part of the world in which the believers happen to be living.

A nation is a detour of nature to arrive at five or six great men- yes, and then to get around them.

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

In the beginning of a change the patriot is a scarce man, and brave, and hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.

The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which.