#riot

A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#war #love

I love my country, not my government. ↗

— Jesse Ventura

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

[Large countries'] patriotism is different: they are buoyed by their glory, their importance, their universal mission. The Czechs loved their country not because it was glorious but because it was unknown; not because it was big but because it was small and in constant danger. Their patriotism was an enormous compassion for their country. ↗

— Milan Kundera

#patriotism #love

If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, not as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles. ↗

— Howard Zinn

#patriotism #love

Is this, Miriam wonders, what they call the march of history? And even if she doesn't fully understand, it doesn't mean she can't appreciate the need, the periodic need for some people to resort to gasoline, rags, and matches. Doesn't it always come to this? Isn't history as much about tearing things down as it is about building things up? ↗

— Peter Orner

#history #humanity #mankind #march #need

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#nationalism #patriotism #virtue

I hate the world and almost all the people in it. I hate the Labour Congress and the journalists who send men to be slaughtered, and the fathers who feel a smug pride when their sons are killed, and even the pacifists who keep saying human nature is essentially good, in spite of all the daily proofs to the contrary. I hate the planet and the human race—I am ashamed to belong to such a species. ↗

— Bertrand Russell

#pacifists #patriotism #war #men

She wanted to tell him so much, on the tarmac, the day he left. The world is run by brutal men and the surest proof is their armies. If they ask you to stand still, you should dance. If they ask you to burn the flag, wave it. If they ask you to murder, re-create. Theorem, anti-theorem, corollary, anti-corollary. Underline it twice. It’s all there in the numbers. Listen to your mother. Listen to me, Joshua. Look me in the eyes. I have something to tell you. ↗

— Colum McCann

#armies #children #lessons #let-the-great-world-spin #loss

I once had been in the middle of a mass chaos and terrible riots. There, I witnessed how men were truly such as beasts unleashed. ↗

— Toba Beta

#chaos #human #riots #true-fear #unleashed

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. ↗

— Henry David Thoreau

#patriotism #men