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. . . NATIONALISM see: "LOYALTY" see: "PATRIOTISM" see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for other related links Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill. --Richard Aldington (18921962) English poet, novelist, and biographer. _The Colonel's Daughter_ [1931] The Americans are a funny lot; they drink whiskey to keep them warm; then they put some ice in it to keep it cool; they put some sugar in it to make it sweet; and then they put a slice of lemon in it to make it sour. Then they say "here's to you" and drink it themselves. --B. N. Chakravarty _India Speaks to America_ [1966] Americans always try to do the right thing after they've tried everything else. --attributed to Winston Churchill (18741965) British Conservative statesman and Prime Minister [1940-45, 1951-55]. It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other. --C.C. Colton (17801832) English clergyman and writer. _Lacon: or, Many Things in Few Words_, # CCCCXLIII [1820] Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when the hate for people other than your own comes first. --Charles de Gaulle (18901970) French soldier and statesman, President [1959-69]. Quoted in "Life" [9 May 1969]. [Of residents in Sandusky, Ohio, April 1842:] Their demeanour in these country parts is invariably morose, sullen, clownish and repulsive. I should think there is not, on the face of the earth, a people so entirely destitute of humor, vivacity, or the capacity for enjoyment. --Charles Dickens (18121870) English novelist. John Forster _The Life of Charles Dickens_ [1899], Book Third, Part 6 Adams: But Sir, how can you do this in three years? Johnson: Sir, I have no doubt I can do it in three years. Adams: But the French Academy, which consists of forty members, took forty years to compile their dictionary. Johnson: Sir, thus it is. This is the proportion. Let me see; forty times forty is sixteen hundred. As three to sixteen hundred, so is the proportion of an Englishman to a Frenchman. --Samuel Johnson (17091784) English poet, critic, and lexicographer. In James Boswell _The Life of Samuel Johnson_ [1791]. Console yourself, dear man and brother, whatever you may be sure of, be sure at least of this, that you are dreadfully like other people. Human nature has a much greater genius for sameness than for originality, or the world would be at a sad pass shortly. --James Russell Lowell (18191891) American poet, critic, essayist, and diplomat. "On a Certain Condescension in Foreigners" in the essay collection _My Study Windows_ [1871]. - If the general attitude of Canadians toward their mighty neighbor to the south could be distilled into a single phrase, that phrase would probably be "Oh, shut up." The Americans talked too much, mainly about themselves. Their torrid love affair with their own history and legend exceeded painfully the quasi-British Canadian idea of modesty and self-restraint. ... They were forever busting their buttons in spasms of insufferable yahoo pride or all too publicly agonizing over their crises. --Bruce McCall (b. 1935) Canadian author and illustrator. _Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada_ [1997] Canada had no Empire State Building, no Hoover Dam, no Golden Gate Bridge; Canada declined to soar in any way. The Americans had Franklin Delano Roosevelt at the helm. We had a dyspeptic- looking old bachelor, MacKenzie King. Canada lacked the energy to make it through a week without closing down on Wednesday afternoons and all day Sunday to rest. The USA was open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and even that was barely time enough for them to cram in all the things they were up to. The more I pondered it, the more true it seemed to be: Everything exciting, bold, glamorous in life could be traced back to America. To New York, Hollywood, Detroit, and Washington, D.C. --Bruce McCall (b. 1935) Canadian author and illustrator. _Thin Ice: Coming of Age in Canada_ [1997] - - Back in London, I was having dinner in the Groucho Club [...] when one more person started in on the Stars and Stripes. Eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about "Your country's never been invaded." (This fellow had been two during the Blitz, you see.) "You don't know the horror, the suffering. You think war is..." I snapped. "A John Wayne movie," I said. "That's what you were going to say, wasn't it? We think war is a John Wayne movie. We think *life* is a John Wayne movie with good guys and bad guys, as simple as that. Well, you know something Mister Limey Poofter? You're right. And let me tell you who those bad guys are. They're *us*. WE BE BAD! We're the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We're three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car-wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother's side. You take your Germany, France and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn't give us room to park our cars. We're the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap D'Antibes. And we've got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country's never been invaded? You're right, little buddy. Because I'd like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who'd have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying "Cheerio". Hell can't hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I'd rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all you Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast, and shit them out before lunch. Of course, the guy should have punched me. But this was Europe. He just smiled his shabby, superior European smile. --P.J. O'Rourke (b. 1947) American political satirist. _Holidays in Hell_ [1988] - The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them. --George Orwell [Eric Blair] (19031950) English novelist. "Notes on Nationalism" [1945] in _The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell_ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus [1968]. Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS our inferior one varies with the place. --Thomas Paine [spelled Pane prior to 1774] (17371809) English-American writer and political pamphleteer. "The American Crisis" (a pamphlet) [19 April 1783] I love Americans, but not when they try to talk French. What a blessing it is that they never try to talk English. --Saki [Hector Hugh Munro] (18701916) Scottish writer. _The Chronicles of Clovis_ [1911], "Adrian: A Chapter in Acclimatization" What is nationalism? It is ignoble patriotism. --Albert Schweitzer (18751965) Franco-German theologian, philosopher, and mission doctor. _The Philosophy Of Civilization_ [1923] Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language. --Oscar Wilde (18541900) Anglo-Irish dramatist and poet. _The Canterville Ghost_ [1887]  . . see: "THE HUMAN RACE" for related links In the youth of a State, arms do flourish; in the middle age of a State, learning; and then both of them together for a time; in the declining age of a State mechanical arts and merchandise. --Francis Bacon (15611626) English philosopher and essayist. _Essays_ [1625] "Of Vicissitude of Things" A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It's a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity. --Jimmy Carter (b. 1924) American Democratic statesman, President [1977-81]. In a speech in New York City [14 October 1976]. Nothing is so well calculated to produce a death-like torpor in the country as an extended system of taxation and a great national debt. --William Cobbett (17631835) English politician, agriculturist, and journalist. Letter to William Windham [10 February 1804]. I believe that it is only the abundance of money in a state which makes a difference to its greatness and its power. It is certain that by means of manufactures, a million people who languish in idleness will gain their livelihood. --Jean-Baptiste Colbert (16191683) Controller general of finance and secretary of state for the navy under Louis XIV of France. _Memoir on Commerce, A Document Presented to the King_ [3 August 1664] The foundation of every state is the education of its youth. --Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st century B.C.) Greek historian and literary critic. Attributed in "The Albany Law Journal" [25 February 1899]. An immoral nation invites its own ruin. --Dwight D. Eisenhower (18901969), American Army General, supreme Allied commander WWII, NATO commander, American President [1953-61]. "Some Thoughts on the Presidency" in _Reader's Digest_ [November 1968]. A nation never falls but by suicide. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (18031882) American philosopher and poet. _Journals_, vol. IX [1913] - In the end, more than they wanted freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all security, comfort and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again. --Edward Gibbon (17371794) English historian. "Epitaph for the People of Ancient Athens", attributed - I believe in and am proud to belong to the United States. Despite shortcomings from lynchings, to bad faith in high places our nation has had the most decent and kindly internal practices and foreign policies to be found anywhere in history. --Robert Heinlein (19071988) American science-fiction writer. "This I Believe" [Title of essay, c. 1954] The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence. --Aldous Huxley (18941963) English novelist (grandson of T.H. Huxley.) _Grey Eminence: A Study in Religion and Politics_, ch. 10 [1941] - The natural life of man is reckoned in three parts: the age of growth, the age of attainment and maturity, the age of decline ... Similarly, societies, of which states consist, also have three ages of growth, maturity and decline, which can be distinguished from each other. History shows that some states have declined soon after the age of growth; some have been cut off in their prime by a disaster of fate; and some, like this illustrious Ottoman state, have enjoyed a long period of maturity because they are built on firm foundations and good principles. However, in both individuals and in societies the signs of the third age are [eventually] discernible. --Katip Ηelebi (16091657) Turkish historian, geographer, and bibliographer. In M.J. Cohan and John Major (eds.) _History in Quotations_, p. 265 [2004]. & see: States, like men, have their growth, their manhood, their decrepitude, their decay. --Walter Savage Landor (17751864) English poet, essayist, and critic. _Imaginary Conversations_ [1824-53] - The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes. --Stanley Kubrick (19281999) American film director. In _Guardian_ (London) [5 June 1963]. As nations improve, so do their gods. --attributed to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (17421799) German scientist and drama critic. Avarice and luxury, those pests which have ever been the ruin of every great state. --Livy [Titus Livius] (59 B.C.17 A.D.). with Sallust and Tacitus, one of the three great Roman historians. Quoted in Craufurd Tait Ramage _Great Thoughts from Latin Authors_, p. 286 [3rd ed. 1884]. A nation becomes a great power only on one condition: that its military establishment and resources are such that it could really threaten decisive warfare ... Military power determines the political standing of nations. --C. Wright Mills (19161962) American sociologist. _The Power Elite_ [1956] Debt is the fatal disease of republics, the first thing and the mightiest to undermine government and corrupt the people. --Wendell Phillips (18111884) American abolitionist and reformer. "The War for the Union", a lecture delivered in Boston & New York [December 1861]. In the last analysis the all-important factor in national greatness is national character. --Theodore Roosevelt (18581919) American Republican statesman and President [19011909]. Lecture at Oxford University [7 June 1910]. [Nations are] susceptible to all moral feelings, including however painful a step it may be repentance. ... Every nation without exception, however persecuted, however cheated, however flawlessly righteous it feels itself to be today, has certainly at one time or another contributed its share of inhumanity. --Alexander Solzhenitsyn (19182008) Russian novelist. Lawrence A. Uzzell, "Solzhenitsyn the Centrist," National Review [28 May 1990] The ruin of a State is generally preceded by an universal degeneracy of manners and contempt of religion. --Jonathan Swift (16671745) Anglo-Irish poet and satirist. Attributed in _Encyclopaedia Perthensis_ [2nd ed., 1816]. ----- comity [KOM-uh-tee], noun: A state of mutual harmony, friendship, and respect, especially between or among nations or people. end page | NAME CALLING - NASTINESS | NATIONALISM - NATIONS | NATURE | NAVY - NEGLECT | NEIGHBORS/NEIGHBORHOOD - NEW YORK | NEW YORK CITY | NEWS - NEWSPEAK | NICE - NONCONFORMITY | NIXON YEARS | NONSENSE - NOVEMBER | NUCLEAR WAR - NURSERY RHYMES | OBESITY - OBSTACLES | OBSTINACY - OKLAHOMA | OLD - OLD AGE | OLD-FASHIONED - OPERA | OPINION | OPPORTUNITY - ORGANIZATION | ORIGINALITY - OYSTERS | | H | I - J | K - L | M | N - O | P - Q | | Return Home | The Credits | The Cast | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3 | The Reviews | |
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