“We shall always be a small minority in the world, but, when a small nation accomplishes something with its limited means, what it achieves has an immense and exceptional value, like the widow's mite. It is a deliberate and discerning love of a nation that appeals to me, not the indiscriminate love that assumes everything to be right because it bears a national label. Love of one's own nation should not entail non-love of other nations. Institutions by themselves are not enough.”

— Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk 9

First Czechoslovak president 1850–1937

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“Purism increases nationalism because it teaches that everything should be classified as Croatian or non-Croatian, and what comes from their own nation must be good, while what comes from other nations must be harmful and evil.”

Snježana Kordić Jezik i nacionalizam

El purismo aumenta el nacionalismo porque enseña a clasificar todo como croata o no croata, y a que todo lo que supuestamente proceda del propio país se diga que es bueno, mientras que de lo que proceda de otras naciones se diga que es perjudical y malo.
[Kordić, Snježana, w:Snježana Kordić, Snježana Kordić, Lengua y Nacionalismo, Madrid, Euphonía Ediciones, 2014, http://www.euphoniaediciones.com/plataforma/libros/lengua-y-nacionalismo-17-89-22-1-1, 22, 978-84-936668-8-0] (in Spanish)

“The great nations have always acted like gangsters, and the small nations like prostitutes.”

Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and editor

“…We are in one world. We are one nation. And therefore, what’s common in between us, what should be common among us, is love and peace.”

Tawakkol Karman (1979) Yemeni journalist, politician, human rights activist, and Nobel Peace Prize recipient

2010s, Democracy Now! interview (2011)

“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 Bykaŭ (1924–2003) Belarusian writer

Правілы жыцця Васіля Быкава http://belsat.eu/news/20412/ // belsat.eu (in Belarusian)

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

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Speech in the House of Commons, November 29, 1944 "Debate on the Address" http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1944/nov/29/debate-on-the-address#column_31.
The Second World War (1939–1945)
Context: A love of tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril; but the new view must come, the world must roll forward … Let us have no fear of the future.

“This war had its roots in the disregard of the rights of small nations and of nationalities which lacked the union and the force to make good their claim to determine their own allegiances and their own forms of political life. Covenants must now be entered into which will render such things impossible for the future; and those covenants must be backed by the united force of all the nations that love justice and are willing to maintain it at any cost.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

1910s, Address to Congress: Analyzing German and Austrian Peace Utterances (1918)

“In no nation are the institutions of progress more advanced. In no nation are the fruits of accomplishment more secure. In no nation is the government more worthy of respect. No country is more loved by its people. I have an abiding faith in their capacity, integrity and high purpose. I have no fears for the future of our country. It is bright with hope.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Herbert Hoover, 1874-1964 (1971)

“We shall support vigorously the principle that no country has the right to impose its will or rule on another by force.
We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms, and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers.
We shall do our share in defending peace and freedom in the world. But we shall expect others to do their share.
The time has passed when America will make every other nation's conflict our own, or make every other nation's future our responsibility, or presume to tell the people of other nations how to manage their own affairs.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1970s, Second Inaugural Address (1973)

“Some men who are not real men love other things about themselves, but the real man believes that his honor is dearer than his life; and a nation is merely all of us put together, and the nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort and the nation's peace and the nation's life itself.”

Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)

Speech in Cleveland http://books.google.com/books?id=o3j10P6YFZIC&pg=PA1090&dq=%22nation's+honor+is+dearer+than+the+nation's+comfort%22 (January 1916)
1910s

“Germany has no claims to make against the European nations except to live exactly like the others. … What we have in mind is a legal order of European national states with equal rights.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1930s
Source: Speech in Cologne (28 March 1936), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 10

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Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk 9

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