"A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle."
George William Curtis


"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."
Edward Abbey

"A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot."
William Randolph Hearst

"America is much more than a geographical fact. It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality."
Adlai Stevenson

"Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."
John F. Kennedy -- are they sure Ted Kennedy is his brother?

"Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turn'd
From wandering on a foreign strand?"
Walter Scott

"Do not regard the critics as questionable patriots. What were Washington and Jefferson and Adams but profound critics of the colonial status quo?"
Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"Each must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, and which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your convictions is to be an unqualified and inexcusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let man label you as they may."
Mark Twain

"Equal rights for all, special privileges for none."
Thomas Jefferson


"Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed - else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die."
Dwight D. Eisenhower


"He loves his country best who strives to make it best."
Robert Green Ingersoll

"He who loves not his country, can love nothing."
Lord Byron



"If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace."
Hamilton Fish

"In a chariot of light from the region of the day,
The Goddess of Liberty came
She brought in her hand as a pledge of her love,
the plant she named Liberty Tree."
Thomas Paine July, 1775


"In the truest sense, freedom cannot be bestowed; it must be achieved."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you."
Dick Cheney

"It is the love of country that has lighted and that keeps glowing the holy fire of patriotism."
J. Horace McFarland

"Liberty is the breath of life to nations."
George Bernard Shaw

"Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
Mark Twain

"May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!"
Daniel Webster

"Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own."
Seneca

"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"
Thomas Jefferson


"Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong."
James Bryce

"Our hearts where they rocked our cradle,
Our love where we spent our toil,
And our faith, and our hope, and our honor,
We pledge to our native soil.
God gave all men all earth to love,
But since our hearts are small,
Ordained for each one spot should prove
Beloved over all."
Rudyard Kipling

"Patriotism is easy to understand in America; it means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country."
Calvin Coolidge


"Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."
Oscar Wilde


"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it."
George Bernard Shaw

"Some reformers may urge that in the ages distant future, patriotism, like the habit of monogamous marriage, will become a needless and obsolete virtue; but just at present the man who loves other countries as much as he does his own is quite as noxious a member of society as the man who loves other women as much as he loves his wife. Love of country is an elemental virtue, like love of home."
Theodore Roosevelt



"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson

"The winds that blow through the wide sky in these mounts, the winds that sweep from Canada to Mexico, from the Pacific to the Atlantic - have always blown on free men."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall."
John Dickinson

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
Bill Clinton

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated."
Thomas Paine


"Those who won our independence believed liberty to be the secret of happiness and courage to be the secret of liberty."
Louis D. Brandeis

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."
Martin Luthor King Jr.

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.
Joseph Addison

"When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."
Benjamin Franklin

"Who is here so vile that will not love his country?" -- the United States Senate
William Shakespeare

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."
Erma Bombeck

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."
Malcolm X