Nationalism

Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), especially with the aim of gaining and maintaining the nation's sovereignty (self-governance) over its homeland to create a nation state.


 * CONTENT: A-D, E-H , I-L , M-P , Q-T , U-Z , See also , External links

A - D

 * Nationality is the great carrier of custom, of unreflecting habit and transmitted ideas that quench individuality. Conscience gives men force to resist and discard all this. Nationality has to be dealt with discriminatingly. It is not always liberal or constructive. It may be as dangerous when its boundary is outside that of the State as salutary when inside.
 * Lord Acton to William Ewart Gladstone (18 February 1888), quoted in J. N. Figgis and R. V. Laurence (eds.), Selections from the Correspondence of the First Lord Acton, Vol. I (1917), p. 182


 * Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill.
 * Richard Aldington, The Colonel’s Daughter (1931) pt. 1, ch. 6


 * A great historian, Henry Steele Commager, said that in their lust for victory, neither traditional party is looking beyond November. And he went on to cite three issues that their platforms totally ignore: atomic warfare, Presidential Directive 59 notwithstanding. If we don't resolve that issue, all others become irrelevant. The issue of our natural resources; the right of posterity to inherit the earth, and what kind of earth will it be? The issue of nationalism - the recognition, he says, that every major problem confronting us is global, and cannot be solved by nationalism here or elsewhere - that is chauvinistic, that is parochial, that is as anachronistic as states' rights was in the days of Jefferson Davis.
 * John B. Anderson, 1980 Presidential Debate, (21 September 1980)


 * I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community.
 * Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities, London: Verso. (Anderson 1983, 6); quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13


 * What at this moment appears to prevent world unity... ? The answer is not hard to find and involves all nations: nationalism, capitalism, competition, blind stupid greed.The mass of men need arousing to see that good comes to all men alike and not just to a few privileged groups, and to learn also that "hatred ceases not by hatred but that hatred ceases by love"... practical goodwill, expressing itself through individuals, in communities and among nations.
 * Alice Bailey in Problems Of Humanity, Chapter VI - The Problem of International Unity  (1944)


 * Nationalism can take on some very ugly shapes. It looks as if as many crimes will be committed in its name as in the name of Religion or of Liberty. Indeed the source of the trouble is that Nationalists are apt to assume the garments of Religion. ... Love of one's country has been perverted into hatred of our neighbour's country by the preaching of lop-sided intellectuals, who themselves generally manage to escape the martyrdom they provide for others.
 * Stanley Baldwin, speech to the St. David's Day Banquet in Cardiff (1 March 1927), quoted in Our Inheritance (1938), pp. 46-47


 * Nationality was valuable, in so far as it was a centripetal principle, in so far as it produced closer cooperation between members of the human race. It had the other side, and it must not be put on an absurd pedestal. It was not to any politician's or statesman's credit that he worked on the emotions of nationality to produce division; the proper use of the feeling of nationality was to produce union.
 * Arthur Balfour, speech to a meeting of the Congress of Philosophy at Oxford (27 September 1920), quoted in The Times (28 September 1920), p. 12


 * Nationalism does not provide a single way of talking about the world.
 * Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (1995), pp. 86–87


 * If you don’t offer people a positive, uplifting nationalism, they will grab the nasty one. History and recent events have shown us that.
 * David Brooks, "The Central Challenge of the Age: Do Democrats know what unites us?" (5 November 2018), The New York Times


 * It is possible, in the interests of a false religion (such as Nationalism or Fascism) to avert one's eyes from the plain fact of human brotherhood; but the fact stubbornly remains, and we ignore it at our peril. We are all in the same boat, and we live in the shadow of a common doom.
 * Gerald Bullett, "Walt Whitman", in in Alfred Barratt Brown, Great Democrats, 1934 (reprinted by Spokesman Books, 2013).


 * The nationalism of a great nation inevitably degenerates into chauvinism and imperialism. The nationalism of a small nation is aimed primarily at the survival of the nation among others.
 * Vasil Bykau, Правілы жыцця Васіля Быкава // belsat.eu (in Belarusian)


 * Traditional nationalism cannot survive the fissioning of the atom. One world or none.
 * Stuart Chase, quoted in Pennsylvania Technology, Vol. 1, No. 3, 1990, p. 11


 * It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars.
 * Arthur C. Clarke, The Exploration of Space (1951), p. 187


 * The only possible foundation for a better social structure is the existing order, of which the contemporary system of nationalized states forms the foundation.
 * , The Promise of American Life (1909), p. 211


 * Positioning one's own identity in relation to the existence of the other is sickness. If you need an enemy to keep your identity alive, your identity is sick. Original: Kendi kimliğini ötekinin varlığına göre konumlandırmak hastalıktır. Kimliğini yaşatmak için sana bir düşman gerekiyorsa, senin kimliğin hastalıklıdır.
 * Hrant Dink, cited in Hrant: My brother on the knife edge, BirGün.


 * The Pale Blue Dot (photograph) is a silent rebuke to the fundamentalist, the nationalist, the militarist, the polluter-to anyone who does not put above all other things the protection of our little planet and the life that it sustains in the vast cold darkness.
 * Ann Druyan Cosmos: Possible Worlds (2020)

E - H

 * Civic nationalism appeals to universal values, such as freedom and equality. It contrasts with “ethnic nationalism”, which is zero-sum, aggressive and nostalgic and which draws on race or history to set the nation apart. In its darkest hour in the first half of the 20th century ethnic nationalism led to war.
 * The Economist, "The New Nationalism" (November 2016)


 * I am by heritage a Jew, by citizenship a Swiss, and by makeup a human being, and only a human being, without any special attachment to any state or national entity whatsoever.
 * Albert Einstein, in a letter to Alfred Kneser (7 June 1918); Doc. 560 in The Collected Papers of Albert Einstein, Vol. 8


 * I am against any nationalism, even in the guise of mere patriotism. Privileges based on position and property have always seemed to me unjust and pernicious, as did any exaggerated personality cult.
 * Albert Einstein, My Credo (1932)


 * Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
 * Albert Einstein, as quoted in }


 * Novelists...are aware that there are two important views as to the future of civilisation. One view believes that civilisation will continue to develop on the basis of private property, war and insane egotism expressed in the dictatorial nationalist state. The other view believes that humanity is fighting for a new series of values based on social property, which shall banish war, destroy nationalism, and replace it by the free growth of healthy nations co-operating with one another in a world civilisation.
 * Ralph Fox, The Novel and the People (1937), reprinted in Patrick Deane, History in Our Hands : A Critical Anthology of Writings on Literature, Culture and Politics from the 1930s, Leicester University Press, 1998


 * Nationalism is like cheap alcohol: First, it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, and then it kills you.
 * in Christine Spolar "Old divides plague Bosnia" on chicagotribune.com, May 14, 2007.


 * Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare—never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
 * Erich Fromm, in The Sane Society (1955)


 * If you think in terms of people divided up into countries, you won't follow me. The idea of countries is going by the boards. Young people are getting wonderfully uprooted and they're too strong to get sucked into this 'country' crap.
 * Buckminster Fuller, quoted in "The View from the Year 2000" by Barry Farrell in LIFE magazine (26 February 1971)


 * Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.
 * Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2003), Princeton University Press, p. 15.


 * Nationalism . . . invents nations where they do not exist.
 * (Gellner 1983, 55). Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.**in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13


 * The struggle for control over some or all of the territory of Palestine pits two nationalist movements against each other. In spite of their claims to uniqueness, all nationalist movements bear a remarkable resemblance to one another. Each constructs a historical narrative that traces the unbroken lineage of a group - a nation - over time. Each endows the site of the nation's birth or greatest cultural or political moment with special meaning. Each uses its purported 'special relationship' to some territory to justify its right to establish a sovereign state in that territory. This is where nationalism differs from mere nostalgia or collective memory: Whereas all sorts of religious or ethnic groups feel sentimental attachment to places nationalism converts sentiment into politics. The adherents of a nationalist movement demand exclusive sovereignty over the designated territory and, for their nation, membership in the global order of nation-states. When it comes to connecting history and geography to political rights, neither Zionism nor Palestinian nationalism is a slacker.
 * James L. Gelvin, The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War (2014), Cambridge University Press, pp. 5-6


 * The rifts between Shia and Sunni, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, Israelis and Palestinians, Tibetans and Chinese, obviously have real political, theological, or economic substance behind them, but they are often reduced to symbolism. If you study the history of nationalism, it is often a story of symbols. What flag shall we fly? What icon shall we mount? What books will we revere — or burn?
 * Jonah Goldberg, "The Border Wall Is a Symbol of Our Symbolic Politics" (28 December 2018), National Review


 * Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.
 * Emma Goldman, "What is Patriotism?" (1908)


 * The fact is that the world we live in was made by nationalism. Nationalism is the cultural framework of modernity. Modern consciousness is national consciousness. This means that we see reality through the lens of nationalism, or that reality is constructed by nationalism. This in turn means that everything that is modern—both good and bad—in politics, society, economy, personal relations, literature, science, and so on, is neither the result of an inevitably progressing civilization, nor an expression of an incorrigible human nature. All the ingredients of modernity are here because of nationalism.
 * , The World Nationalism Made


 * The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.
 * Sydney J. Harris, Strictly Personal (1953), "Purely Personal Prejudices"


 * [H]istorians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. So my profession, which has always been mixed up in politics, becomes an essential component of nationalism.


 * The apparent universal ideological domination of nationalism today is a sort of optical illusion.
 * (Hobsbawn 1990, 78); Hobsbawn, E. J. 1990. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. **in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13

I - L

 * Patriotism having become one of our topicks, Johnson suddenly uttered, in a strong determined tone, an apophthegm, at which many will start: "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." But let it be considered, that he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak of self-interest.
 * Samuel Johnson, statement of 7 April 1775, as quoted in Life of Samuel Johnson (1791) by James Boswell, p. 253


 * Nationalism is a state of mind permeating the large majority of the people and claiming to permeate all its members; it recognises the nation-State as the ideal form of political organization and the nationality as the source of all creative cultural energy and economic well-being. The supreme loyalty of man is therefore due to his nationality, as his own life is supposedly rooted in and made possible by its welfare.
 * Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism, Macmillan, 1961 (p.16). Also quoted in Andrew Vincent, Modern Political Ideologies, Wiley, 2009 (p.318).


 * Those who say that we want nationality, they are standing against Islam....We have no use for the nationalists. Moslems are useful for us. Islam is against nationality....
 * Imam Khomeini, [Mehregan Magazine, Volume 12, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring & Summer 2003, p 16.]


 * These issues that exist among people that we are Iranian and what we need to do for Iran are not correct; these issues are not correct. This issue, which is perhaps being discussed everywhere, regarding paying attention to nation and nationality is nonsense in Islam and is against Islam. One of the things that the designers of Imperialism and their agents have promoted is the idea of nation and nationality.
 * Imam Khomeini, [Mehregan Magazine, Volume 12, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring & Summer 2003, p 16.]


 * [W]e get today the immoral idea of making whole nations responsible for the misdeeds of their rulers, regardless of whether these had majority support or not. This collective judgment of moral acts is one of the great maladies of the democratic age.
 * Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Liberty or Equality (40th anniversary edition), 1993, p. 158


 * [Iqbal elaborated that nationalism came into conflict with Islam] only when it begins to play the role of a political concept and claims to be a principle of human solidarity demanding that Islam should recede to the background of a mere private opinion and cease to be a living factor in the national life. ... In majority countries, Islam accomodates nationalism, for there Islam and nationalism are practically identical, in minority countries it is justified in seeking self-determination as a cultural unit.
 * Muhammad Iqbal quoted in R. Hassan 1971, 146, in Iqbal Poet Philospher of Pakistan, also in    Jain, M. (2010). Parallel pathways: Essays on Hindu-Muslim relations, 1707-1857.

M - P

 * Nationalists, to take one example of the imagined communities, like to claim that their nation has always existed back into that conveniently vague area, “the mists of time.” The Anglican Church claims that, in spite of the break with Rome during the Reformation, it is part of an unbroken progression from the early church. In reality, an examination of any group shows that its identity is a process, not a fixed thing. Groups define and redefine themselves over time and in response to internal developments, a religious awakening perhaps, or outside pressures. If you are oppressed and victimized, as gays have been and still are in many societies, that becomes part of how you see yourself. Sometimes that leads to an unseemly competition for victimhood. American blacks have watched resentfully as the commemoration of the Holocaust has taken an ever greater place in American consciousness. Was not slavery just as great a crime, some have asked?
 * Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History (2008)


 * Nationalism, like the ideas of Leo Tolstoi, is an attempt to stop the course of history. Everything leading to separation is the result of license: it smashes what is whole, breaks and pulverizes it into tiny fragments that can never be joined together again. The truth of this has become completely apparent in our century. We have been witness to the process of disintegration. What has it brought us, apart from material and spiritual impoverishment?
 * Nadezhda Mandelstam Hope Abandoned (1974) Translated from the Russian by Max Hayward


 * A great many people really care very little for their own compatriots, but they hate anything foreign.


 * Consider what Nation it is whereof ye are, and whereof ye are the governors: a Nation not slow and dull, but of quick, ingenious, and piercing spirit, acute to invent, suttle and sinewy to discours, not beneath the reach of any point the highest that humane capacity can soar to.
 * John Milton, Aeropagitica (1644)


 * Nationalism is about putting the (ethno-)nation above liberal-democratic and leftist values alike. Once one takes that step, one is not separated from other nationalists by anything irreducible.
 * Brian Reynolds Myers, "South Korea’s Nationalist-Left Front" (7 April 2019), Sthele Press


 * No one should be beaten. [Instead,] everything that bothers us should be carefully, but unyieldingly eliminated by means of deportation... A tooth without a root is considered dead. A nationalist is he who does not want the root ‘Russian’ to be deleted from the word ‘Russia.’ We have the right to be Russian in Russia and we will protect this right.
 * Alexei Navalny, as quoted in Putin crafts spectacle for re-election landslide, (18 March 2018), The Cambridge Globalist, about the orginal video Become nationalist! (17 October 2007)


 * Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
 * George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism" (1945), Polemic


 * In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion — that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware — will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct.
 * George Orwell, "Notes on Nationalism" (1945), Polemic


 * Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone - everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital.
 * Fredy Perlman, "The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism" (1984)

Q - T

 * To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death.
 * Frederick William Robertson, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 427.


 * [The newspapers] are talking of nationalism as if it were the property of an individual or as if it were confined to one group only. Nationalism is the property of all. Nobody can take possession of it just as a glittering word which attracts the hearts of stupid people.
 * Abd al-Karim Qasim (1959) The historical extempore speech at the Reserve Officers' College


 * Nationalism is a certain form of unity which grows out of historical experience. It is a sense of oneness that emerges from social groups trying to control their environment and to defend their gains against competing groups.
 * Walter Rodney,


 * I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike.
 * Theodore Roosevelt, The New Nationalism speech


 * [W]hat is nationalism? And what nationalism is actually Western invention. Imperial China had no nationalism. Where do they get their ideas of nationalism? Well, they got their ideas of nationalism from the Japanese, which emerged as a national state in the 19. Well, where did the Japanese get their ideas about nationalism, which were then translated into Chinese? They got it from the Germans. So what they imported was a 19th-century version of social Darwinism in which race is of the fundamental basis of nationality and there are very – when you hear Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders talking about cultural pollution, when you talk about the natural affinity of all Chinese people wherever they are, you begin to worry that there is this submerged, and sometimes not even so, some racialist component.
 * Stephen Rosen, interview with Bill Kristol (2016), transcript


 * [N]ationalism also is the engine that generates the power which permits countries to be benevolent if they are so inclined. Not all countries are so inclined.
 * Stephen Rosen, interview with Bill Kristol (30 November 2018), transcript


 * Individuality is a far more important thing than nationality, and in any given man deserves a thousand-fold more consideration. And since you cannot speak of national character without referring to large numbers of people, it is impossible to be both loud in your praises and honest. National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until we get disgusted with this one too. Every nation mocks at other nations, and they are all right.
 * Arthur Schopenhauer, ["The Wisdom of Life-IV;Position:Section 2- Pride". (1851).Translated by T. Bailey Saunders. (pg.35 in "The Wisdom of Life and Counsels and Maxims", Digireads.com Publishing, 2008)].


 * National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war.
 * Roger Scruton, England and the Need for Nations (2006)


 * Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you never met. And all of a sudden you take pride in accomplishments you had no part in whatsoever, and you brag about- and the Americans'll go "Fuck the French! Fuck the French, if we hadn't had saved their ass in two World Wars, they'd be speakin' German right now!" And you go, "Oh, was that us?" Was that me and you, Tommy, we saved the French? Jesus! I know I blacked out a little bit after that fourth shot of Jägermeister last night, but I don't remember... I know we went through the Wendy's drive-thru to get one of them "Freschetta" sandwiches that looked so alluring on the commercial, but then we ordered it and realized we had no money, and we had to ditch out before the second window, and those douchebags in line behind us with the bass music probably got our order and we laughed about that. But I don't remember savin' the French. At all! I went through the last ten calls on my cell phone and there's nothin' incoming or outgoing to the French, lookin' for muscle on a project! I checked my pants, there's no mud stains on the knees from where we were garroting Krauts in the trenches at Verdun. I think "we" didn't do anything but watch sports bloopers while we got hammered. I think "we" should shut the fuck up!
 * Doug Stanhope, No Refunds


 * As conscious beings advance in mental growth, they come to recognise that this ideal must embrace not merely their own kin or neighbours, not only their tribe or nation, not only the whole race or species, but all conscious beings whatever, no matter how foreign.
 * Olaf Stapledon, Philosophy and living


 * Perhaps the central question in our understanding of nationalism is the role of the past in the creation of the present. … For nationalists themselves, the role of the past is clear and unproblematic. The nation was always there, indeed it is part of the natural order, even when it was submerged in the hearts of its members.
 * Anthony D. Smith (1989, p. 18) As cited in: Öktem, Kerem. "Creating the Turk’s Homeland: Modernization, Nationalism and Geography in Southeast Turkey in the late 19 th and 20 th Centuries." Socrates Kokkalis Graduate Workshop. The City: Urban Culture, Architecture and Society. 2003.


 * The idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that Man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion,-in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.
 * Rabindranath Tagore. "Nationalism in the West", 1917. Reprinted in Rabindranath Tagore and Mohit K. Ray, Essays (2007, p. 465). Also cited in Parmanand Parashar, Nationalism: Its Theory and Principles in India (1996, p. 212), and Himani Bannerji, Demography and Democracy: Essays on Nationalism, Gender and Ideology.  (2011, p.179).


 * The rebellion against membership of the European Union, culminating in the British ‘Brexit’ referendum on 23 June 2016, represents a new highwater mark for anxious and distrustful popular sentiment. A little more than seventy years after the war against extreme nationalism appeared won, a small but clear majority of those who chose to vote essentially reaffirmed the near-absolute primacy of nationalism over internationalism, reversing the political direction in which the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe had appeared to be travelling since 1945. In the United States, a phrase with dubious historical pedigree, ‘America First’, has become current once more. What we are living through is not, of course, precisely a repeat of the 1930s. However, the study of the 1930s reminds us of the dangers of crass inequality, of international ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ competition, of the capacity of marginalized social groups for extreme violence based on the scapegoating of minorities, and of the many other consequences that flow from irresponsible and often sadly misjudged notions of national self-interest.
 * Frederick Taylor, 1939: A People's History (2020)


 * The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.
 * William Mackergo Taylor, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 427.


 * Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject.
 * Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2003), Penguin Books, p. 19.


 * What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative.
 * Tito, Concerning the National Question and Social Patriotism Speech held at the Slovene Academy of Arts and Sciences, November 26, 1948, Ljubljana


 * It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States, religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force.
 * Alexis de Tocqueville, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 427


 * If the great questions of the beginning of this century were mainly political, those which will convulse the world at its close will be social.
 * Alexis de Tocqueville, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 427


 * Patriotism always exists in the greatest degree in rude nations, and in an early period of society.
 * Alexander Fraser Tytler, Universal History. Vol. 1, Jordan and Wiley, 1847, p. 221

U - Z

 * So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbours. The citizen of the universe would the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer.
 * Voltaire, ["Fatherland" in "Miracles and Idolatry" (Selections from the Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764),(pg. 56), Penguin Books, 2005.]


 * [N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated.
 * George Washington, farewell address (1796)


 * Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert those pillars of human happiness, those firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.
 * George Washington, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 426.


 * I believe in nationality; not in terms of race or of divine commissions for world conquest, but simply this: mankind inevitably organizes itself into communities according to its geographical distribution; these communities by sharing a common history develop common characteristics and inspire a local loyalty; the individual family develops most happily and fully when it accepts these local limits. I do not think that British prosperity must necessarily be inimical to anyone else, but if, on occasions, it is, I want Britain to prosper and not her rivals.
 * Evelyn Waugh, Robbery Under Law:The Mexican Object-Lesson (1939), reprinted in Patrick Deane, History in Our Hands : A Critical Anthology of Writings on Literature, Culture and Politics from the 1930s, Leicester University Press, 1998
 * It's been argued such ideas lead to : ,


 * Arbeiter horch, sie ziehn ins Feld, Und schreien für Nation und Rasse. Das ist der Krieg der Herrscher der Welt Gegen die Arbeiterklasse.
 * Workers, hearken, they are going to war And they yell "For nation and race!" This war is the rulers of the world's Against the working class!‎
 * Erich Weinert, Der heimliche Aufmarsch (1929)


 * For one cannot serve the national spirit merely by getting a lump in the throat whenever one catches sight of the Union Jack, or by seeing red when a newspaper reports that some foreign power has acted aggressively towards England. These reactions bear the same relation to true love of country that a chance encounter between a man and a woman who meet in the street bears to a happy marriage.
 * Rebecca West, "The Necessity and Grandeur of the International Ideal" (1935), reprinted in Patrick Deane, History in Our Hands : A Critical Anthology of Writings on Literature, Culture and Politics from the 1930s, Leicester University Press, 1998.


 * No advanced thought, no mystical philosophy, no glittering abstractions, no swelling phrases about freedom, not even science with its marvelous inventions and discoveries, can help us much in sustaining this republic; still less can godless theories of creation, or any infidel attempt to rule out the Redeemer from His rightful supremacy in our hearts, afford any hope of security. That way lies despair.
 * Robert Charles Winthrop, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 425.


 * I am a Muslim minister. The same as they are Christian ministers, I'm a Muslim minister. And I don't believe in fighting today on any one front, but on all fronts. In fact, I'm a Black Nationalist freedom fighter. Islam is my religion but I believe my religion is my personal business. It governs my personal life, my personal morals. And my religious philosophy is personal between me and the God in whom I believe, just as the religious philosophy of these others is between them and the God in whom they believe. And this is best this way. Were we to come out here discussing religion, we'd have too many differences from the out start and we could never get together. So today, though Islam is my religious philosophy, my political, economic and social philosophy is black nationalism. You and I – As I say, if we bring up religion, we'll have differences, we'll have arguments, and we'll never be able to get together. But if we keep our religion at home, keep our religion in the closet, keep our religion between ourselves and our God, but when we come out here we have a fight that's common to all of us against a enemy who is common to all of us.
 * Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," 1965


 * The political philosophy of black nationalism only means that the black man should control the politics and the politicians in his own community. The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone. By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another Negro in the community, and get you and me to support him, so that he can use him to lead us astray, those days are long gone too. The political philosophy of black nationalism only means that if you and I are going to live in a black community – and that's where we're going to live, 'cause as soon as you move into one of their….soon as you move out of the black community into their community, it's mixed for a period of time, but they're gone and you're right there all by yourself again.
 * Malcolm X, "The Ballot or the Bullet," 1965


 * As for the point of view of doctrine and Islam, the Muslim umma and its mujahid vanguard do not make alliances and hold animosities on the basis of tribalism and nationalism, nor to help the Arabs against the Persians, or the Kurds against the Arabs, or the Amazighs against the Arabs. Rather, Islam commands us to fight for Allah's word to be supreme. We ally ourselves to the helpers of Islam, even if they be Afghans, Persians, Turks or Kurds, and we are hostile to its enemies who collude with the Crusaders and Jews, even if they are pure-blooded Hashemite, Qurayshite Arabs…I ask my Muslim bothers in general and the callers and the mujahideen and their media organizations in particular to highlight the concept of Islamic brotherhood and disown all partisanship, loyalties, and animosities based on nationalism, and I ask them not to allow the wrongdoing of a faction or entity to motivate to speak evil of that party's entire people or race.
 * Shaykh Ayman Zawahiri, "Lessons, Examples, and Great Events in the Year 1427," February 13, 2007,, PDF Version