Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the paradox of patriotism that promotes censorship and violence against dissenting voices.
Barbara Kingsolver's quote challenges the prevalent notion of patriotism, highlighting how it often suppresses free speech and punishes those who voice criticism or dissent. By linking various forms of bigotry and hostility to the symbolism of the American flag, she questions the definition of patriotism and its implications on society, suggesting that true patriotism is often at odds with the values of liberty and justice for all.
Themes
PatriotismFree SpeechCriticismViolenceCensorshipBigotry
In practice
Example use cases
During a discussion on civil rights, one might reference this quote to illustrate the dangers of blind nationalism.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
Barbara KingsolverRead
I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Similar quotes
The book, 'Citizen,' begins with daily encounters, little moments, places where language reveals how racism determines how we interact.
Claudia RankineRead
I have always been ahead of my time.
Nikola TeslaRead
Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God’s grace and God’s grace alone for our celebration. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people—for beggars. We don’t want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there.
R. C. SproulRead
If I obey Jesus Christ, the redemption of God will flow through me to the lives of others, because behind the deed of obedience is the reality of Almighty God.
Oswald ChambersRead
In the search for reality, energy creates its own discipline. But mere discipline, without full comprehension of all this, has no meaning, it is a most destructive thing.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiRead
If anything had or could have a value equal to gold and silver, it would require no tender law; and if it had not that value it ought not to have such a law; and, therefore, all tender laws are tyrannical and unjust and calculated to support fraud and oppression.
Thomas PaineRead