“Instead of narrowing our allegiances to only include our favored nation, let us sing an anthem to the marvelous human being.”

“What struck me as I began to study history was how nationalist fervor--inculcated from childhood on by pledges of allegiance, national anthems, flags waving and rhetoric blowing--permeated the educational systems of all countries, including our own. I wonder now how the foreign policies of the United States would look if we wiped out the national boundaries of the world, at least in our minds, and thought of all children everywhere as our own. Then we could never drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, or napalm on Vietnam, or wage war anywhere, because wars, especially in our time, are always wars against children, indeed our children.”

“Let us be those creative dissenters who will call our beloved nation to a higher destiny. To a new plateau of compassion, to a more noble expression of humanness.”

“our acquaintances—not our friends—are our greatest source of new ideas and information. the internet lets us exploit the power of these kinds of distant connections with marvellous efficiency.”

“If the human species is differentiated from the beasts by the marvel of consciousness, then we enact our humanity and the very authenticity of our being by straining to "know" through awareness the "unthinkable" experience of others.”

“Patriotic duty and the disease of nationalism lure us to deny our common humanity”