58 Nationalism Quotes

Nationalism, a sentiment that embodies the collective identity and pride of a nation, resonates deeply in history and across civilizations. Whether it’s the fervent patriotism seen during times of struggle or the cultural pride that flourishes in times of peace, nationalism has both united and divided societies in profound ways. In this collection, we have meticulously selected the top 58 quotes on nationalism to highlight its multifaceted nature. From inspiring leaders who steer the course of nations to thinkers who critically analyze its impact, these quotes offer a rich tapestry of perspectives on what it means to belong to and believe in the spirit of one’s country. Join us as we explore these powerful and thought-provoking words that have shaped, and continue to shape, our world.

1. “All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers... Each one owes infinitely more to the human race than to the particular country in which he was born.” - Francois de Salignac de La Mothe- Fenelon

2. “When Hitler declared war on the United States, he was betting that German soldiers, raised up in the Hitler Youth, would always out fight American soldiers, brought up in the Boy Scouts. He lost that bet. The Boy Scouts had been taught how to figure their way out of their own problems.” - Stephen Ambrose

3. “Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious” - Oscar Wilde

4. “We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything.” - William Golding

5. “Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....” - George Bernard Shaw

6. “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” - Voltaire

7. “We have not noticed how fast the rest has risen. Most of the industrialized world--and a good part of the nonindustrialized world as well--has better cell phone service than the United States. Broadband is faster and cheaper across the industrial world, from Canada to France to Japan, and the United States now stands sixteenth in the world in broadband penetration per capita. Americans are constantly told by their politicians that the only thing we have to learn from other countries' health care systems is to be thankful for ours. Most Americans ignore the fact that a third of the country's public schools are totally dysfunctional (because their children go to the other two-thirds). The American litigation system is now routinely referred to as a huge cost to doing business, but no one dares propose any reform of it. Our mortgage deduction for housing costs a staggering $80 billion a year, and we are told it is crucial to support home ownership, except that Margaret Thatcher eliminated it in Britain, and yet that country has the same rate of home ownership as the United States. We rarely look around and notice other options and alternatives, convinced that "we're number one.” - Fareed Zakaria

8. “[Der Zoll] ist ein Gesellschaftsspiel und eine Religion, die Religion der Vaterländer.” - Kurt Tucholsky

9. “Struggles to coerce uniformity of sentiment in support of some end thought essential to their time and country have been waged by many good as well as by evil men. Nationalism is a relatively recent phenomenon but at other times and places the ends have been racial or territorial security, support of a dynasty or regime, and particular plans for saving souls. As first and moderate methods to attain unity have failed, those bent on its accomplishment must resort to an ever-increasing severity. . . . Those who begin coercive elimination of dissent soon find themselves exterminating dissenters. Compulsory unification of opinion achieves only the unanimity of the graveyard.It seems trite but necessary to say that the First Amendment to our Constitution was designed to avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings. There is no mysticism in the American concept of the State or of the nature or origin of its authority. We set up government by consent of the governed, and the Bill of Rights denies those in power any legal opportunity to coerce that consent. Authority here is to be controlled by public opinion, not public opinion by authority.If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” - Robert H. Jackson

10. “Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peaceYou may say that I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one” - John Lennon

11. “I love my country, not my government.” - Jesse Ventura

12. “The revolution in global communications thus forces all nations to reconsider traditional ways of thinking about national sovereignty.” - George Shultz

13. “No other German writer of comparable stature has been a more extreme critic of German nationalism than Nietzsche.” - Walter Kaufmann

14. “ABYSSOur country livesAmong the deadAnd dies among the livingSometimes.” - Visar Zhiti

15. “Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

16. “Patriotism is nationalism, and always leads to war.” - Helen Caldicott

17. “There has never been nationhood without falsehood.” - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

18. “As we drew nearer I saw a cathedral like a crown on the head of a city. In its white walls every window glinted in the sun. Lincoln! Of such places is England made. -"No Moon Tonight” - Don Charlwood

19. “George Orwell famously described international sport as 'war minus the shooting'. But for all Orwell's greatness as a thinker, this was one of his least felicitous lines, analogous to 'murder minus the death' or 'life minus the breathing'.” - Gideon Haigh

20. “He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals” - Henry Miller

21. “If one harbors anywhere in one's mind a nationalistic loyalty or hatred, certain facts, though in a sense known to be true, are inadmissable.” - George Orwell

22. “If nationality is consent, the state is compulsion.” - Henri Frédéric Amiel

23. “Here is your country. Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children's children. Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.” - Theodore Roosevelt

24. “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice.” - Albert Camus

25. “Why must I cling to the customs and practices of a particular country forever, just because I happened to be born there? What does it matter if its distinctiveness is lost? Need we be so attached to it? What's the harm if everyone on earth shares the same thoughts and feelings, if they stand under a single banner of laws and regulations? What if we can't be recognized as Indians any more? Where's the harm in that? No one can object if we declare ourselves to be citizens of the world. Is that any less glorious?” - Sharat Chandra Chattopadhyay

26. “So much barbarism, however, still remains in the transactions of most civilized nations, that almost all independent countries choose to assert their nationality by having, to their inconvenience and that of their neighbors, a peculiar currency of their own.” - John Stuart Mill

27. “La historia es una forma de hacer valer la comunidad imaginada. Los nacionalistas, por poner un ejemplo, aseguran que la nación siempre ha existido en esa zona convenientemente vaga de la "niebla del tiempo"(...)En realidad, examinando cualquier grupo vemos que su identidad es un proceso y no algo fijo. Los grupos se definen y redefinen a sí mismos a lo largo del tiempo y como respueta a procesos internos, un despertar religios quizá, o a presiones externas. Si uno está oprimido y victimizado(...) esa situación se convierte en parte de la imagen que uno tiene de sí mismo. Y a veces incluso conduce a una competencia bastante indecorosa por el victimismo.” - Margaret MacMillan

28. “In worshipping their nationhood men worship themselves and scorn others, and that is no healthy thing.” - C.J. Sansom

29. “Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

30. “As individuals die every moment, how insensitive and fabricated a love it is to set aside a day from selfish routine in prideful, patriotic commemoration of tragedy. Just as God is provoked by those who tithe simply because they feel that they must tithe, I am provoked by those who commemorate simply because they feel that they must commemorate.” - Criss Jami

31. “The logic behind patriotism is a mystery. At least a man who believes that his own family or clan is superior to all others is familiar with more than 0.000003% of the people involved.” - Criss Jami

32. “I have observed that the prosperity or misery of each people is in direct proportion to its liberties or its prejudices and, accordingly, to the sacrifices or the selfishness of its forefathers. -Juan Crisostomo Ibarra” - Jose Rizal

33. “Let us not ask for miracles, let us not ask for concern with what is good for the country of him who comes as a stranger to make his fortune and leave afterwards.” - Jose Rizal

34. “Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world.” - Douglas MacArthur

35. “Today many of these selfish politicians are preying on the nation itself – (belching corruption and farting discontent!)” - Faraaz Kazi

36. “Sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror, any mirror, and you wonder why that nose looks as it does, or those eyes--what is behind them, what depths can they reach. Your flesh, your skin, your lips--you know that that face which you behold is not yours alone but is already something which belongs to those who love it, to your family and all those who esteem you. But a person is more than a face or a bundle of nerves and a spigot of blood; a person is more than talking and feeling and being sensitive to the changes in the weather, to the opinions of people. A person is part of a clan, a race. And knowing this, you wonder where you came from and who preceded you; you wonder if you are strong, as you know those who lived before you were strong, and then you realize that there is a durable thread which ties you to a past you did not create but which created you. Then you know that you have to be sure about who you are and if you are not sure or if you do not know, you have to go back, trace those who hold the secret to your past. The search may not be fruitful; from this moment of awareness, there is nothing more frustrating than the belief that you have been meaningless. A man who knows himself can live with his imperfections; he knows instinctively that he is part of a wave that started from great, unnavigable expanses.” - F. Sionil José

37. “We are very defensive, and therefore aggressive, when we hold on to a particular belief, a dogmas, or when we worship our particular nationality, with the rag that is called the flag.” - Jiddu Krishnamurti

38. “MARAMI ANG MAY AYAW SA PILIPINAS, PERO WALANG NAGTATANONG KUNG GUSTO SILA NG PILIPINAS” - Bob Ong

39. “I saw exactly one picture of Marx and one of Lenin in my whole stay, but it's been a long time since ideology had anything to do with it. Not without cunning, Fat Man and Little Boy gradually mutated the whole state belief system into a debased form of Confucianism, in which traditional ancestor worship and respect for order become blended with extreme nationalism and xenophobia. Near the southernmost city of Kaesong, captured by the North in 1951, I was taken to see the beautifully preserved tombs of King and Queen Kongmin. Their significance in F.M.-L.B. cosmology is that they reigned over a then unified Korea in the 14th century, and that they were Confucian and dynastic and left many lavish memorials to themselves. The tombs are built on one hillside, and legend has it that the king sent one of his courtiers to pick the site. Second-guessing his underling, he then climbed the opposite hill. He gave instructions that if the chosen site did not please him he would wave his white handkerchief. On this signal, the courtier was to be slain. The king actually found that the site was ideal. But it was a warm day and he forgetfully mopped his brow with the white handkerchief. On coming downhill he was confronted with the courtier's fresh cadaver and exclaimed, 'Oh dear.' And ever since, my escorts told me, the opposite peak has been known as 'Oh Dear Hill.'I thought this was a perfect illustration of the caprice and cruelty of absolute leadership, and began to phrase a little pun about Kim Jong Il being the 'Oh Dear Leader,' but it died on my lips.” - Christopher Hitchens

40. “... that kind of patriotism which consists in hating all other nations ...” - Elizabeth Gaskell

41. “Comment l'Histoire pourrait-elle mieux servir la vie qu'en attachant à leur patrie et aux coutumes de leur patrie les races et les peuples moins favorisés, en leur donnant des goûts sédentaires, ce qui les empêche de chercher mieux à l'étranger, de rivaliser dans la lutte pour parvenir à ce mieux? Parfois cela paraît être de l'entêtement et de la déraison qui visse en quelque sorte l'individu à tels compagnons et à tel entourage, à telles habitudes laborieuses, à tels stérile coteau. Mais c'est la déraison la plus salutaire, celle qui profite le plus à la collectivité. Chacun le sait, qui s'est rendu compte des terribles effets de l'esprit d'aventure, de la fièvre d'émigration, quand ils s'emparent de peuplades entières, chacun le sait, qui a vu de près un peuple ayant perdu la fidélité à son passé, abandonné à une chasse fiévreuse de la nouveauté, à une recherche perpétuelle des éléments étrangers. Le sentiment contraire, le plaisir que l'arbre prend à ses racines, le bonheur que l'on éprouve à ne pas se sentir né de l'arbitraire et du hasard, mais sorti d'un passé — héritier, floraison, fruit — , ce qui excuserait et justifierait même l'existence : c'est là ce que l'on appelle aujourd'hui, avec une certaine prédilection, le sens historique.Deuxième Considération intempestive. ch. 3” - Friedrich Nietzsche

42. “bukankah tidak ada yang lebih suci bagi seorang pemuda daripada membela kepentingan bangsanya?” - Pramoedya Ananta Toer

43. “There is a peculiar pathos in the extinction of a nation.” - Homer B. Hulbert

44. “tetapi berbahagialah orang yang kuat menderita segala kesengsaraan untuk keperluan nusa dan bangsa” - Pramoedya Ananta Toer

45. “I hold life sacred, even more since I’ve tasted freedom,... But I've lost my fear of death... But if you join me, I will gladly give my life for you. Because this land and its people have lost too much.” - Lily Blake

46. “Nasionalis yang sedjati, jang nasionalismenya itu bukan timbul semata-mata suatu copie atau tiruan dari nasionalisme barat akan tetapi timbul dari rasa tjinta akan manusia dan kemanusiaan” - Sukarno

47. “If he is weak enough to grow smaller to fit himself to his covering, then it becomes a process of gradual suicide by shrinkage of the soul.” - Tagore Rabindranath

48. “L'histoire est le produit le plus dangereux que la chimie de l'intellect ait élaboré. Ses propriétés sont bien connues. Il fait rêver, il enivre les peuples, leur engendre de faux souvenirs, exagère leurs réflexes, entretient leurs vieilles plaies, les tourmente dans leur repos, les conduit au délire des grandeurs ou à celui de la persécution, et rend les nations amères, superbes, insupportables et vaines.L'histoire justifie ce que l'on veut. Elle n'enseigne rigoureusement rien, car elle contient tout, et donne des exemples de tout.” - Paul Valery

49. “All societies that maintain armies maintain the belief that some things are more valuable than life itself.” - Michael Billig

50. “All nationalists have the power of not seeing resemblances between similar sets of facts. A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage — torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians — which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by 'our' side . . . The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them” - George Orwell

51. “INDONESIA tidak akan pernah bisa menjadi INDONESIA tanpa Papua, Maluku, Nusa Tenggara, Sulawesi.” - Glenn Fredly

52. “Nationalism is a form of cultural self-centeredness, and as a collective thought-form, can only exist because the dominant in-group is itself comprised of self-centered and narcissistic individuals.” - Bryant McGill

53. “Extreme nationalism objectifies and dehumanizes those from other countries.” - Bryant McGill

54. “nasionalisme terurai dalam sikap belaka dan bukan program konkret, setumpuk keluhan dan bukan kekuatan yang terorganisasi, gambar dan bunyi yang memadati gelombang udara dan percakapan, namun tanpa perwujudan jasadi.” - Barack Obama

55. “I do not belong to a nation because I speak the same language as they do; I belong to them because I feel the same pain as they did.” - M.F. Moonzajer

56. “We must plant trees, grow gardens instead of lawns, ride bicycles when we can and support responsible local businesses over big brands.” - Bryant McGill

57. “Nationalism as we know it, is the result of a form of state-sponsored branding.” - Bryant McGill

58. “The existence of excessive nationalism is a symptom of a deeper problem in the collective consciousness, which is continually being exploited.” - Bryant McGill