Sunday, August 16, 2020 – This American Experiment
We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again. ~ Donald Trump
America’s present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy; not revolution but restoration. ~ Warren G. Harding
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand. ~ Harry Truman
America was indebted to immigration for her settlement and prosperity. That part of America, which had encouraged them the most, had advanced most rapidly in population, agriculture and the arts. ~ James Madison
Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants and revolutionists. ~ Franklin D. Roosevelt
The fact is Canadians understand that immigration, that people fleeing for their lives, that people wanting to build a better life for themselves and their kids is what created Canada, it’s what created North America. ~ Justin Trudeau
America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. ~ John Quincy Adams
I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward. ~ George Washington
When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1824
I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first and Americans only at a late and convenient hour. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts
The nation is divided, half patriots and half traitors, and no man can tell which from which. ~ Mark Twain
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons. ~ Bertrand Russell
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. ~ Oscar Wilde
It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. ~ Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary
Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. ~ George Jean Nathan
The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born. ~ Leo Tolstoy
Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen. ~ Ambrose Bierce
Patriotism is when love of your own people comes first; nationalism, when hate for people other than your own comes first. ~ Charles de Gaulle
He is a poor patriot whose patriotism does not enable him to understand how all men everywhere feel about their altars and their hearthstones, their flag and their fatherland. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick
My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. ~ Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance. ~ Theodore Roosevelt
Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves. ~ Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
Intellectually I know that America is no better than any other country; emotionally I know she is better than every other country. ~ Sinclair Lewis
We are determined that before the sun sets on this terrible struggle our flag will be recognized throughout the world as a symbol of freedom on the one hand and of overwhelming force on the other. ~ General George Marshall
He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would fully suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. ~ Albert Einstein
To me, it seems a dreadful indignity to have a soul controlled by geography. ~ George Santayana
The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair. ~ H. L. Mencken
The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults. ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat. ~ George Carlin
Laughter is America’s most important export. ~ Walt Disney
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. ~ James Baldwin (in Paris)
I have walked into the palaces of kings and queens and into the houses of presidents, and much more. But I could not walk into a hotel in America and get a cup of coffee, and that made me mad. ~ Josephine Baker (in Paris)
The proper means of increasing the love we bear our native country is to reside some time in a foreign one. ~ William Shenstone
America is dumb. It’s like a dumb puppy that has big teeth that can bite and hurt you – aggressive. My daughter is four; my boy is one. I’d like them to see America as a toy – a broken toy. Investigate it a little, check it out, get this feeling, and then get out. ~ Johnny Depp
America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success. ~ Sigmund Freud
Las Vegas is the expression, in glitter and concrete, of America’s brittle and mutating id. ~ John Burdett
The thing that impresses me most about America is the way parents obey their children. ~ Edward VIII
The fortunes of the entire world may well ride on the ability of young Americans to face the responsibilities of an old America gone mad. ~ Phil Ochs
I love America the way I love my family. I was born into it. And there’s no escape out of it. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates
America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up. ~ Oscar Wilde
There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children and the United States of America. ~ Otto von Bismarck
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people. ~ Howard Zinn
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet or fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. ~ Ernest Hemingway
“My country, right or wrong,” is a thing that no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.” ~ G. K. Chesterton
All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers. Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born. ~ François Fénelon
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. ~ Samuel Johnson
I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. ~ Albert Camus
One question in my mind, which I hardly dare mention in public, is whether patriotism has, overall, been a force for good or evil in the world. Patriotism is rampant in war and there are some good things about it. Just as self-respect and pride bring out the best in an individual, pride in family, pride in teammates, pride in hometown, brings out the best in groups of people. War brings out the kind of pride in country that encourages its citizens in the direction of excellence and it encourages them to be ready to die for it. At no time do people work so well together to achieve the same goal as they do in wartime. Maybe that’s enough to make patriotism eligible to be considered a virtue. If only I could get out of my mind the most patriotic people who ever lived, the Nazi Germans. ~ Andy Rooney, My War
The great thing about being a government is you can wage nonsensical wars, and people will line up to give their lives in exchange for small paychecks and being called patriots. ~ Jarod Kintz
In thinking of America, I sometimes find myself admiring her bright blue sky – her grand old woods – her fertile fields – her beautiful rivers – her mighty lakes, and star-crowned mountains. But my rapture is soon checked, my joy is soon turned to mourning. When I remember that all is cursed with the infernal actions of slaveholding, robbery and wrong, when I remember that with the waters of her noblest rivers, the tears of my brethren are borne to the ocean, disregarded and forgotten, and that her most fertile fields drink daily of the warm blood of my outraged sisters, I am filled with unutterable loathing. ~ Frederick Douglass
The American Negro has the great advantage of having never believed the collection of myths to which white Americans cling: that their ancestors were all freedom-loving heroes, that they were born in the greatest country the world has ever seen, or that Americans are invincible in battle and wise in peace, that Americans have always dealt honorably with Mexicans and Indians and all other neighbors or inferiors, that American men are the world’s most direct and virile, that American women are pure. Negroes know far more about white Americans than that; it can almost be said, in fact, that they know about white Americans what parents – or, anyway, mothers – know about their children, and that they very often regard white Americans that way. And perhaps this attitude, held in spite of what they know and have endured, helps to explain why Negroes, on the whole, and until lately, have allowed themselves to feel so little hatred. The tendency has really been, insofar as this was possible, to dismiss white people as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing. ~ James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
One of the greatest necessities in America is to discover creative solitude. ~ Carl Sandburg
The loneliest ebb of my life came on that Christmas Eve, only one day after my arrival in New York. The abyss of loneliness. I ate a solitary dinner in a small cafe, and the very food tasted bitter with my unshed tears. One doesn’t dare cry in America. It is unmanly here. ~ Rudolph Valentino
Just Above Sunset 