Quotes on Patriot

For what were all these country patriots born? To hunt, and vote, and raise the price of corn?

Very many and very meritorious were the worthy patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.

He was a great patriot, a humanitarian, a loyal friend; provided, of course, he really is dead.

Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

But if the laws are to be so trampled upon with impunity, and a minority is to dictate to the majority, there is an end put at one stroke to republican government, and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter.

The patriot's blood is the seed of Freedom's tree.

We dare not forget that we are the heirs of that first revolution.

I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

You cannot spill a drop of American blood without spilling the blood of the whole world.... We are not a nation, so much as a world.

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

These are the times that try men's souls.

We need an America with the wisdom of experience. But we must not let America grow old in spirit.

If we steal a man's purse we are thieves. If we steal twelve hundred islands we are patriots. If you steal a man's money you will be sent to the penitentiary. If you steal his liberty you will be sent to the White House.

The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature. --as quoted in THE RIVER OF WINGED DREAMS

If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a nation gone under.

It is heroic to prepare for war with a tyrant power. Patriots will always win the admiration of mankind for daring to meet the bloodshed of battle for their country's liberty. But the patriot who is willing to go to that sacrifice will be the first to condemn the aimless and secret shedding of blood in time of peace.

The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?

These are the things which might conceivably and truly make men forgive their enemies. We can only turn hate to love by understanding what are the things that men have loved; nor is it necessary to ask men to hate their loves in order to love one another. Just as two grocers are most likely to be reconciled when they remember for a moment that they are two fathers, so two nationals are most likely to be reconciled when they remember (if only for a moment) that they are two patriots.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

One day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

A man's feet should be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.