Art begins when a man, with a purpose of communicating to other people a feeling he once experienced, calls it up again within himself and expresses it by certain external signs.
Leo TolstoyRead
The time is fast approaching when to call a man a patriot will be the deepest insult you can offer him. Patriotism now means advocating plunder in the interest of the privileged classes of the particular State system into which we have happened to be born.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote critiques the concept of patriotism, suggesting it has become associated with the interests of the elite rather than true love for one’s country.
Leo Tolstoy's quote reflects a profound disillusionment with the notion of patriotism, positing that true patriotism has been corrupted. He argues that in modern society, calling someone a patriot has become synonymous with supporting the exploitation and plunder of resources for the benefit of the privileged elite, thus rendering the term an insult rather than a compliment. This perspective challenges the traditional understanding of patriotism as a noble virtue, framing it instead as a tool of oppression and classism.
Themes
PatriotismCritiqueEliteClass SystemDisillusionment
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the implications of blind nationalism on society.
More from Leo Tolstoy
All quotes →Pierre looked into the sky, into the depths of the retreating, twinkling stars. "And all this is mine, and all this is in me, and all this is me!" thought Pierre. "And all this they've caught and put in a shed and boarded it up!
Leo TolstoyRead
People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.
Leo TolstoyRead
It's too easy to criticize a man when he's out of favour, and to make him shoulder the blame for everybody else's mistakes.
Leo TolstoyRead
Music is the shorthand of emotion. Emotions, which let themselves be described in words with such difficulty, are directly conveyed to man in music, and in that is its power and significance.
Leo TolstoyRead
A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor — such is my idea of happiness.
Leo TolstoyRead
Similar quotes
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
Naomi Shihab NyeRead
Reverie is commonly classified among the phenomena of psychic detente. It is lived out in a relaxed time which has no linking force. Since it functions with inattention, it is often without memory. It is a flight from out of the real that does not always find a consistent unreal world.
Gaston BachelardRead
It is the task of youth not to reshape the church, but rather to listen to the word of God.
Dietrich BonhoefferRead
It was very different when the masters of science sought immortality and power; such views, although futile, were grand: but now the scene was changed. The ambition of the inquirer seemed to limit itself to the annihilation of those visions on which my interest in science was chiefly founded. I was required to exchange chimeras of boundless grandeur for realities of little worth.
Mary Wollstonecraft ShelleyRead
Besides reasoning about matters of fact, men also make moral judgements.
C. S. LewisRead
Maybe the more emotions a person experiences in their daily lives, the longer time seems to feel to them. As you get older, you experience fewer new things, and so time seems to go by faster.
Douglas CouplandRead