Nation and Patriotism

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make abody of more or less connected legend, rangingfrom the large and cosmogonic, to the level ofromantic fairy-story—the larger founded onthe lesser in contact with the earth, the lesserdrawing splendor from the vast backcloths—which I could dedicate simply to: to England; tomy country.

 

Outside the Kingdom of the Lord there is no nation which is greater than another. God and history will remember your judgment!

 

The biggest thing that has happened in the world in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the Cold War.

 

The liberation of Kuwait has begun. In conjunction with the forces of our coalition partners, the United States has moved under the code name Operation Desert Storm to enforce the mandates of the United Nations Security Council.

 

What is at stake is more than one small country; it is a big idea: a new world order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind—peace and security, freedom and the rule of law.

 

We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order—a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.

 

America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral purpose. We as a people have such a purpose today. It is to make kinder the face of the nation and gentler the face of the world.

 

I want a kinder, gentler nation.

 

We are a nation of communities, of tens and tens of thousands of ethnic, religious, social, business, labor union, neighborhood, regional, and other organizations, all of them varied, voluntary, and unique . . . a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.

 

Thou, O my country, hast thy foolish ways, / Too apt to purr at every stranger’s praise!

In the U.S. you have to be a deviant or exist in extreme boredom...Make no mistake all intellectuals are deviants in the U.S.

The splendour falls on castle walls

 

And what have kings that privates have not too,

 

Upon the king! let us our lives, our souls,

 

Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.

 

Can this cockpit hold

 

The sun does not set in my dominions.

 

Moscow: those syllables can start

 

America was promises… It was Man who had been promised.

 

We live, deaf to the land beneath us, Ten steps away no one hears our speeches, But where there’s so much as half a conversation The Kremlin’s mountaineer will get his mention.

 

And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.

 

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down! Long has it waved on high, And many an eye has danced to see That banner in the sky; Beneath it rung the battle shout, And burst the cannon’s roar— The meteor of the ocean air Shall sweep the clouds no more.

 

Therefore if you insist upon fighting to protect me, or “our” country, let it be understood, soberly and rationally between us, that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannotshare; to procure benefits which I have notshared and probably will not share; but not togratify my instincts, or to protect myself or my country. For . . . in fact, as a woman, I have no country. As a woman I want no country. As awoman my country is the whole world.

We Irish are too poetical to be poets; we area nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.