#patriot

When a dog barks at the moon, then it is religion; but when he barks at strangers, it is patriotism! ↗

— David Starr Jordan

#dog #moon #patriotism #religion #strangers

If the Founding Fathers and other patriots who fought during the Revolutionary War could see the United States today, I believe they would be proud of the path that the thirteen colonies, now fifty strong states, have taken since then. ↗

— John Linder

#colonies #could #during #fathers #fifty

But presidential approval also became a surrogate measure of national unity and patriotism. ↗

— Thomas E. Mann

#approval #became #measure #national #national unity

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched. ↗

— Guy de Maupassant

#egg #hatched #kind #religion #wars

People talk about the Patriot Act that was passed immediately in the wake of September 11. What the Patriot Act did was break down the walls between the various agencies. ↗

— Robert Mueller

#act #agencies #between #break #did

The same ambition can destroy or save, and make a patriot as it makes a knave. ↗

— Alexander Pope

#destroy #knave #make #makes #patriot

A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot. ↗

— William Randolph

#anything #become #even #his #job

It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do. ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#citizenship #courage #democracy #free-speech #freedom

I wish it were different. I wish that we privileged knowledge in politicians, that the ones who know things didn't have to hide it behind brown pants, and that the know-not-enoughs were laughed all the way to the Maine border on their first New Hampshire meet and greet. I wish that in order to secure his party's nomination, a presidential candidate would be required to point at the sky and name all the stars; have the periodic table of the elements memorized; rattle off the kings and queens of Spain; define the significance of the Gatling gun; joke around in Latin; interpret the symbolism in seventeenth-century Dutch painting; explain photosynthesis to a six-year-old; recite Emily Dickinson; bake a perfect popover; build a shortwave radio out of a coconut; and know all the words to Hoagy Carmichael's "Two Sleepy People," Johnny Cash's "Five Feet High and Rising," and "You Got the Silver" by the Rolling Stones. After all, the United States is the greatest country on earth dealing with the most complicated problems in the history of the world--poverty, pollution, justice, Jerusalem. What we need is a president who is at least twelve kinds of nerd, a nerd messiah to come along every four years, acquire the Secret Service code name Poindexter, install a Revenge of the Nerds screen saver on the Oval Office computer, and one by one decrypt our woes. ↗

— Sarah Vowell

#nerd #nerdiness #nerds #opinion #patriotic

Today everybody is talking about the fact that we live in one world; because of globalization, we are all part of the same planet. They talk that way, but do they mean it? We should remind them that the words of the Declaration [of Independence] apply not only to people in this country, but also to people all over the world. People everywhere have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. When the government becomes destructive of that, then it is patriotic to dissent and to criticize - to do what we always praise and call heroic when we look upon the dissenters and critics in totalitarian countries who dare to speak out. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#patriotism #politics #life