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"The pacifist is as surely a traitor to his country and to humanity as is the most brutal wrongdoer."
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"Patriotism. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name."

"A man who says that no patriot should attack the [war] until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men."

"One of the great attractions of patriotism - it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous."

"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."

"Patriotism , as a feeling of exclusive love for one's own people, and as a doctrine of tile virtue of sacrificing one's tranquillity, one's property, and ever, one's life, in defence of one's own people from slaughter and outrage by their enemies, was the highest idea of the period when each nation considered it feasible and just, for its own advantage, to subject to slaughter and outrage the people of other nations."

"The last slaveholder has been dead for a very long time. The last soldier to endure Valley Forge has been dead much longer. To proudly claim the veteran and disown the slaveholder is patriotism A la carte."

"To believe that patriotism will not flourish if patriotic ceremonies are voluntary... is to make an unflattering estimate of the appeal of our institutions to free minds."

"I am proud to be an American, and proud that such beliefs are at the core of our country and its citizens."

"The mobilisation which Bush has been able to perform since 11 September 2001 has to be fought - at least by Americans - in the name of a wise, honourable and democratic patriotism."

"Let us be sure that those who come after will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith."
Explore more quotes by Theodore Roosevelt


"The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books."


"I would rather go out of politics having the feeling that I had done what was right than stay in with the approval of all men, knowing in my heart that I have acted as I ought not to."


"Generally the thunder-storms came in the afternoon, but once I saw one at sunrise, driving down the high mountain valleys toward us. It was a very beautiful and almost terrible sight; for the sun rose behind the storm, and shone through the gusty rifts, lighting the mountain-crests here and there, while the plain below lay shrouded in the lingering night. The angry, level rays edged the dark clouds with crimson, and turned the downpour into sheets of golden rain; in the valleys the glimmering mists were tinted every wild hue; and the remotest heavens were lit with flaming glory."


"Our duty to the whole, including the unborn generations, bids us to restrain an unprincipled present-day minority from wasting the heritage of these unborn generations. The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method."


"I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life."


"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."


"Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace."


"The leaders of thought and of action grope theirway forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly,that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of valueonly as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes fromdevotion to loftier ideals."


"We demand that big business give people a square deal in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honesdy endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal."
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