"The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But 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 glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority."

"Patriotism is an extension of the natural love of home... The term suggests that the sentiment is conceived on the model of love from child to parent, presumably because it is held to be a kind of piety, not reducible to any rescindable agreement or acquired affection. That would not make patriotism irrational, any more than love of parents is irrational, but it would do something to explain why the patriot himself may be able to give no reasoned basis for his emotion."

"No one loves his country for its size or eminence, but because it is his own."

"Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it."

"this was what patriotism meant to me- to be at home inside my own head long enough to accept its infinite freedom and move forward anywhere, to mysteries coming."

"That is a true sentiment which makes us feel that we do not love our country less, but more, because we have laid up in our minds the knowledge of other lands and other institutions and other races, and have had enkindled afresh within us the instinct of a common humanity, and of the universal beneficence of the Creator."

"What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? … A patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime."

"The shift in emphasis is related to popular notions of "independence", patriotism, and the Englishman's "birthright". The Gordon Rioters of 1780 and the "Church and King" rioters in Birmingham in 1791 had this in common: they felt themselves, in some obscure way, to be defending the "Constitution" against alien elements who threatened their "birthright". They had been taught for so long that the Revolution settlement of 1688, embodied in the Constitution of King, Lords and Commons, was the guarantee of British independence and liberties, that the reflex had been set up — Constitution equals Liberty—upon which the unscrupulous might play. And yet it is likely that the very rioters who destroyed Dr. Priestley's precious library and laboratory were proud to regard themselves as "free-born Englishmen". Patriotism, nationalism, even bigotry and repression, were all clothed in the rhetoric of liberty. Even Old Corruption extolled British liberties; not national honour, or power, but freedom was the coinage of patrician, demagogue and radical alike. In the name of freedom Burke denounced, and Paine championed, the French Revolution: with the opening of the French Wars (1793), patriotism and liberty occupied every poetaster: "Thus Britons guard their ancient fame, Assert their empire o'er the sea, And to the envying world proclaims, One nation still is brave and free— Resolv'd to conquer or to die, True to their KING, their LAWS, their LIBERTY.""

"Patriotism … for rulers is nothing else than a tool for achieving their power-hungry and money-hungry goals, and for the ruled it means renouncing their human dignity, reason, conscience, and slavish submission to those in power. … Patriotism is slavery."

"https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/breve/ECE10009065/det-mener-partierne-om-miljoeet/15.11.2017.Kristian Thulesen Dahl. The amount of plastic in the oceans is one of the major environmental challenges. Therefore, it is a good thing to get more focus on recycling. Many municipalities are currently running waste sorting, and it is a good thing to allow Danes to sort their waste. Among other things, plastic, which can be recycled."

"http://ft.dk/?/samling/20061/MENU/00000002.htm (Pia Kjærsgaard, during the opening debate of the Danish Folketing (October 4, 2001).) We know the problem lies in those Muslim groups that come from the Middle East, and that other immigrant groups are harmless. So if Denmark shall not lock itself in totally, we have to distinguish between ethnic and religious groups. In fact I mean simply Muslims from all countries and not just in the Middle East."

"Not in their wildest imagination would anyone [in 1900] have imagined, that large parts of Copenhagen and other Danish towns would be populated by people who are at a lower stage of civilisation, with their own primitive and cruel customs like honour killings, forced marriages, halal slaughtering and blood-feuds. This is exactly what is happening now. Thousands upon thousands of persons, who apparently - civilisationally, culturally and spiritually - lives in the year of 1005 instead of 2005, that have come to a country [Denmark] left the dark ages hundreds of years ago."

"Where Christianity rules, matters are related to the love of the tings that one holds dear. On the other hand, where Islam rules, matters are related to a higher self righteousness which logically culminates in an all consuming hatred and a scary urge to exterminate other people."

"http://www.globalen.dk/single-post/2015/06/16/Dyrenes-Beskyttelse-plaget-af-underskud-Enhedslisten-og-DF-vil-hjælpe16.06.2015.There is no doubt that the bustle of the Animal Protection Center - and, for that matter, with other animal welfare organizations - shows that there is a need for political action in this area. In the Danish People's Party we have fought for the creation of an animal rescue police for many years, "wrote Dennis Flydtkjær, animal welfare rapporteur for DF, in a written reply to the Globale."

"For one cannot serve the national spirit merely by getting a lump in the throat whenever one catches sight of the Union Jack, or by seeing red when a newspaper reports that some foreign power has acted aggressively towards England. These reactions bear the same relation to true love of country that a chance encounter between a man and a woman who meet in the street bears to a happy marriage."

"Arbeiter horch, sie ziehn ins Feld, Und schreien für Nation und Rasse. Das ist der Krieg der Herrscher der Welt Gegen die Arbeiterklasse."

"I believe in nationality; not in terms of race or of divine commissions for world conquest, but simply this: mankind inevitably organizes itself into communities according to its geographical distribution; these communities by sharing a common history develop common characteristics and inspire a local loyalty; the individual family develops most happily and fully when it accepts these local limits. I do not think that British prosperity must necessarily be inimical to anyone else, but if, on occasions, it is, I want Britain to prosper and not her rivals."

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert those pillars of human happiness, those firmest props of the duties of men and citizens."

"[N]othing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated."

"So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbours. The citizen of the universe would the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer."

"Patriotism always exists in the greatest degree in rude nations, and in an early period of society."

"If the great questions of the beginning of this century were mainly political, those which will convulse the world at its close will be social."

"It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society. In the United States, religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism; whence it derives a peculiar force."

"What are the phenomena of nationalism? Here are some of them: 1) National egoism, from which many other negative traits of nationalism are derived, as for example — a desire for foreign conquest, a desire to oppress other nations, a desire to impose economic exploitation upon other nations, and so on; 2) national-chauvinism which is also a source of many other negative traits of nationalism, as for example national hatred, the disparagement of other nations, the disparagement of their history, culture, and scientific activities and scientific achievements, and so on, the glorification of developments in their own history that were negative and which from our Marxist point of view are considered negative."

"Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject."

"The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed."

"The rebellion against membership of the European Union, culminating in the British ‘Brexit’ referendum on 23 June 2016, represents a new highwater mark for anxious and distrustful popular sentiment. A little more than seventy years after the war against extreme nationalism appeared won, a small but clear majority of those who chose to vote essentially reaffirmed the near-absolute primacy of nationalism over internationalism, reversing the political direction in which the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe had appeared to be travelling since 1945. In the United States, a phrase with dubious historical pedigree, ‘America First’, has become current once more. What we are living through is not, of course, precisely a repeat of the 1930s. However, the study of the 1930s reminds us of the dangers of crass inequality, of international ‘beggar-my-neighbour’ competition, of the capacity of marginalized social groups for extreme violence based on the scapegoating of minorities, and of the many other consequences that flow from irresponsible and often sadly misjudged notions of national self-interest."

"The idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that Man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion,-in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out."

"Perhaps the central question in our understanding of nationalism is the role of the past in the creation of the present. … For nationalists themselves, the role of the past is clear and unproblematic. The nation was always there, indeed it is part of the natural order, even when it was submerged in the hearts of its members."

"As conscious beings advance in mental growth, they come to recognise that this ideal must embrace not merely their own kin or neighbours, not only their tribe or nation, not only the whole race or species, but all conscious beings whatever, no matter how foreign."

"Nationalism does nothing but teach you how to hate people that you never met. And all of a sudden you take pride in accomplishments you had no part in whatsoever, and you brag about- and the Americans'll go "Fuck the French! Fuck the French, if we hadn't had saved their ass in two World Wars, they'd be speakin' German right now!" And you go, "Oh, was that us?" Was that me and you, Tommy, we saved the French? Jesus! I know I blacked out a little bit after that fourth shot of Jägermeister last night, but I don't remember... I know we went through the Wendy's drive-thru to get one of them "Freschetta" sandwiches that looked so alluring on the commercial, but then we ordered it and realized we had no money, and we had to ditch out before the second window, and those douchebags in line behind us with the bass music probably got our order and we laughed about that. But I don't remember savin' the French. At all! I went through the last ten calls on my cell phone and there's nothin' incoming or outgoing to the French, lookin' for muscle on a project! I checked my pants, there's no mud stains on the knees from where we were garroting Krauts in the trenches at Verdun. I think "we" didn't do anything but watch sports bloopers while we got hammered. I think "we" should shut the fuck up!"

"National loyalty involves a love of home and a preparedness to defend it; nationalism is a belligerent ideology, which uses national symbols in order to conscript the people to war."

"Individuality is a far more important thing than nationality, and in any given man deserves a thousand-fold more consideration. And since you cannot speak of national character without referring to large numbers of people, it is impossible to be both loud in your praises and honest. National character is only another name for the particular form which the littleness, perversity and baseness of mankind take in every country. If we become disgusted with one, we praise another, until we get disgusted with this one too. Every nation mocks at other nations, and they are all right."

"[N]ationalism also is the engine that generates the power which permits countries to be benevolent if they are so inclined. Not all countries are so inclined."

"[W]hat is nationalism? And what nationalism is actually Western invention. Imperial China had no nationalism. Where do they get their ideas of nationalism? Well, they got their ideas of nationalism from the Japanese, which emerged as a national state in the 19. Well, where did the Japanese get their ideas about nationalism, which were then translated into Chinese? They got it from the Germans. So what they imported was a 19th-century version of social Darwinism in which race is of the fundamental basis of nationality and there are very – when you hear Xi Jinping and other Chinese leaders talking about cultural pollution, when you talk about the natural affinity of all Chinese people wherever they are, you begin to worry that there is this submerged, and sometimes not even so, some racialist component."

"I do not ask for overcentralization; but I do ask that we work in a spirit of broad and far-reaching nationalism when we work for what concerns our people as a whole. We are all Americans. Our common interests are as broad as the continent. I speak to you here in Kansas exactly as I would speak in New York or Georgia, for the most vital problems are those which affect us all alike."

"Nationalism is a certain form of unity which grows out of historical experience. It is a sense of oneness that emerges from social groups trying to control their environment and to defend their gains against competing groups."

"[The newspapers] are talking of nationalism as if it were the property of an individual or as if it were confined to one group only. Nationalism is the property of all. Nobody can take possession of it just as a glittering word which attracts the hearts of stupid people."

"To avert national decay, then, the moral character must be guarded. The mighty heart of the nation must be kept sound, so that its pulses, when once roused, will, like the ocean in its strength, sweep all before it. So long as the moral tone is preserved, the sun of our glory will not set; there will come no national decay and death."

"Nationalism was so perfectly suited to its double task, the domestication of workers and the despoliation of aliens, that it appealed to everyone - everyone, that is, who wielded or aspired to wield a portion of capital."

"In societies such as ours, it is unusual for anyone describable as an intellectual to feel a very deep attachment to his own country. Public opinion — that is, the section of public opinion of which he as an intellectual is aware — will not allow him to do so. Most of the people surrounding him are sceptical and disaffected, and he may adopt the same attitude from imitativeness or sheer cowardice: in that case he will have abandoned the form of nationalism that lies nearest to hand without getting any closer to a genuinely internationalist outlook. He still feels the need for a Fatherland, and it is natural to look for one somewhere abroad. Having found it, he can wallow unrestrainedly in exactly those emotions from which he believes that he has emancipated himself. God, the King, the Empire, the Union Jack — all the overthrown idols can reappear under different names, and because they are not recognised for what they are they can be worshipped with a good conscience. Transferred nationalism, like the use of scapegoats, is a way of attaining salvation without altering one's conduct."

"Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception."

"No one should be beaten. [Instead,] everything that bothers us should be carefully, but unyieldingly eliminated by means of deportation... A tooth without a root is considered dead. A nationalist is he who does not want the root ‘Russian’ to be deleted from the word ‘Russia.’ We have the right to be Russian in Russia and we will protect this right."

"Nationalism is about putting the (ethno-)nation above liberal-democratic and leftist values alike. Once one takes that step, one is not separated from other nationalists by anything irreducible."