#otis

Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. ↗

— Shana McDonald

#national-security #patriotism #whistleblowers #courage

Some people, who always talk about how busy they are, are really trying to claim how 'important' they are. ↗

— Donna Lynn Hope

#self-centered #self-importance #business

Even if you succeed in study and business, if your nation collapses, then what good is it for? ↗

— Hirobumi Ito

#nation #patriotism #politics #business

Having gone through it all had changed our outlooks. You can't be as much of a bitch as you were before, you can't be as much as an egomaniac, you can't feel as much like the world owed you something, you can't be the 'where's mine?' guy. ↗

— Anthony Kiedis

#outlook #change

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty. ↗

— Thomas Jefferson

#despotism #liberty #men #prefer #sea

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down. ↗

— Mitch Albom

#patriotism #war #courage

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries, which result, gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of Public Liberty. ↗

— George Washington

#party-dissension #party-politics #age

My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death. ↗

— Mark Twain

#death

If my body dies, let my body die, but do not let my county die. ↗

— Gengis Khan

#patriotism #death

Well, yeah," Dovey said. "That's America. We watch shows about rich people's houses and their designer dresses and we drool. It's patriotic. ↗

— Barbara Kingsolver

#design