#patriotic

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

I love my country, not my government. ↗

— Jesse Ventura

#bill-of-rights #constitution #despotism #freedom #government

It is the patriotic duty of every man to lie for his country. ↗

— Alfred Adler

#country #duty #every #every man #his

There is a fundamental difference between the Polish experience of the state and the Russian experience. In the Polish experience, the state was always a foreign power. So, to hate the state was a patriotic act. ↗

— Ryszard Kapuscinski

#always #between #difference #experience #foreign

The sea is calm tonight. The tide is full, the moon lies fair Upon the straits;- on the French coast the light Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand, glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. ↗

— Matthew Arnold

#britain #calm #cliffs #coast #home

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it. ↗

— George McGovern

#commit #national #national security #our #patriotic

If your neighbor has a completely different view on abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, all of those things, you still are both Americans. Neither one of you is necessarily more patriotic than the other. Neither loves their country any more than the other one does. ↗

— Phil McGraw

#any #both #cell #cell research #completely

The Voters are Coming! ↗

— Jay Dwyer

#freedom

There are many ways to honor America. This book is mine. I have completed this journey of self-education in the belief that the most terrifying possibility since 9/11 has not been terrorism--as frightening as that is--but the prospect that Americans will give up their rights in pursuing the chimera of security. ↗

— David K. Shipler

#patriotic #political #privacy #rights #security

Most Italians who came to this country are very patriotic. There was this exciting possibility that if you worked real hard, and you loved something, you could become successful. ↗

— Francis Ford Coppola

#become #came #could #country #exciting