“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.”

— Chelsea Manning

Letter to Barack Obama (2013)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Chelsea Manning 9

United States Army soldier and whistleblower 1987

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“Mr. President, there comes to a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now. And I will not let the PATRIOT Act, the most un-patriotic of acts, go unchallenged.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

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“I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves … too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism: "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: "Our country — when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right."”

Carl Schurz (1829–1906) Union Army general, politician

Speech expanding upon his famous statement in the Senate many years before, at the Anti-Imperialistic Conference, Chicago, Illinois (17 October 1899)

“Someone said that patriotism is the last refuge of cowards; those without moral principles usually wrap a flag around themselves, and those bastards always talk about the purity of race.”

Umberto Eco book The Prague Cemetery

Source: The Prague Cemetery

“…what really counts is not the immediate act of courage or of valor, but those who bear the struggle day in and day out — not the sunshine patriots but those who are willing to stand for a long period of time.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

"Remarks at the White House to Members of the American Legion (70)" (1 March 1962) http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/Ready-Reference/JFK-Quotations.aspx
1962

“The disease concept of homosexuality—as with the disease concept of all so-called mental illnesses, such as alcoholism, drug addiction, or suicide—conceals the fact that homosexuals are a group of medically stigmatized and socially persecuted individuals. … Their anguished cries of protest are drowned out by the rhetoric of therapy—just as the rhetoric of salvation drowned out the [cries] of heretics.”

Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist

Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 168.

“Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.”

Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena

Vol. 2, Ch. 21, § 255
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), Counsels and Maxims

“You become hard when you carry out such orders.”

Rudolf Höss (1901–1947) German war criminal, commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp

To Leon Goldensohn, April 8, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

“It will be said, "Patriotism has welded mankind into states, and maintains the unity of states." But men are now united in states; that work is done; why now maintain exclusive devotion to one's own state, when this produces terrible evils for all states and nations? For this same patriotism which welded mankind into states is now destroying those same states. If there were but one patriotism say of the English only then it were possible to regard that as conciliatory, or beneficent. But when, as now, there is American patriotism, English, German, French, Russian, all opposed to one another, in this event, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites.”

Leo Tolstoy book Patriotism and Government

Patriotism and Government

“As soon as a thought or word becomes a tool, one can dispense with actually ‘thinking’ it, that is, with going through the logical acts involved in verbal formulation of it. As has been pointed out, often and correctly, the advantage of mathematics—the model of all neo-positivistic thinking—lies in just this ‘intellectual economy.’ Complicated logical operations are carried out without actual performance of the intellectual acts upon which the mathematical and logical symbols are based. … Reason … becomes a fetish, a magic entity that is accepted rather than intellectually experienced.”

Max Horkheimer book Eclipse of Reason

Source: Eclipse of Reason (1947), p. 23.

“No one will question that this power is the most dangerous one to free government in the whole catalogue of powers. It usually is invoked in haste and excitement when calm legislative consideration of constitutional limitation is difficult. It is executed in a time of patriotic fervor that makes moderation unpopular. And, worst of all, it is interpreted by judges under the influence of the same passions and pressures. Always, as in this case, the Government urges hasty decision to forestall some emergency or serve some purpose and pleads that paralysis will result if its claims to power are denied or their confirmation delayed.”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

On the "war power"; Woods v. Cloyd W. Miller Co., 333 U.S. 138, 146 (1948) (concurring)
Judicial opinions

“Patriotism is often the cry extolled when morally questionable acts are advocated by those in power. When these cries of patriotism drown out any logically based dissension, it is usually the American soldier that is given the order to carry out some ill-conceived mission.”

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