Selected nationalism quotes

1. All upright Germans will be National Socialists, but only the best National Socialists will be party members!

2. It is eastwards, only and always eastwards, that the veins of our race must expand. It is the direction which Nature herself has decreed for the expansion of the German peoples. (7th February 1945)

3. I have never liked France or the French, and I have never stopped saying so. (15th February 1945)

4. The universalists, the idealists, the Utopians all aim too high. They give promises of an unattainable paradise, and by doing so they deceive mankind. Whatever label they wear, whether they call themselves Christians, Communists, humanitarians, whether they are merely sincere but stupid or wire-pullers and cynics, they are all makers of slaves. I myself have always kept my eye fixed on a paradise which, in the nature of things, lies well within our reach. I mean an improvement in the lot of the German people. (21st February 1945)

5. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

6. Today a new faith is stirring: the myth of blood, the faith that along with blood we are defending the divine nature of man as a whole.

7. No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

8. The United States is an illegitimate country, just like Israel. It has no right to exist. That country belongs to the Red man, the American Indian... It's actually a shame to be a so-called American, because everybody living there is a usurper, an invader taking part in this crime, which is to rob the land, rob the country and kill all the American Indians.

9. The Nazis hated culture itself, because it is essentially international and therefore subversive of nationalism. What they called Nazi culture was a local, perverted, nationalistic cult, by which a few major artists and many minor ones were honored for their Germanness, not their talent.

10. We Americans live in a nation where the medical-care system is second to none in the world, unless you count maybe 25 or 30 little scuzzball countries like Scotland that we could vaporize in seconds if we felt like it.

11. By the Revolution the Germans have made themselves pariahs among the nations, incapable of winning allies, helots in the service of foreigners and foreign capital, and deprived of all self-respect. In twenty years' time, the German people will curse the parties who now boast of having made the Revolution.

12. I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.

13. The English have no respect for their language, and will not teach their children to speak it.

14. The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

15. I aim to be a competitive nation.

16. Happy, thrice happy shall they be pronounced hereafter, who have contributed any thing, who have performed the meanest office in erecting this stupendous fabrick of Freedom and Empire on the broad basis of Independency; who have assisted in protecting the rights of humane nature and establishing an Asylum for the poor and oppressed of all nations and religions.

17. We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.

18. The Japanese army is now prepared to use every means within its power to subdue its opponents. The objectives of the Japanese Expeditionary Forces are, as clearly set forth in statements issued by the Japanese Government, not only to protect the vested interests of Japan and the lives and property of the Japanese residents in the affected area, but also to scourge the Chinese Government and army who have een pursuing anti-foreign and anti-Japanese policies in collaboration with Communist influences.

19. My last wish is that Germany realize its entity and that an understanding be reached between East and West. I wish peace to the world.

20. Follow the road behind the Emperor. We must build the world for Japan's sake, heaven ordered Japan to achieve this great mission.

21. The highest treason in the USA is to say Americans are not loved, no matter where they are, no matter what they are doing there.

22. I can't bear Britain in decline. I just can't.

23. During the last 100 years our people have been in a process of building up the country and the nation, of expansion, of getting additional Jews and additional settlements in order to expand the borders here. Let no Jew say that the process has ended. Let no Jew say that we are near the end of the road.

24. Heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives! You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours. You, the mothers, who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.

25. The Council of the Union of Democratic Control re-affirms its unshaken conviction that a lasting settlement cannot be secured by a peace based upon the right of conquest and followed by commercial war, but only by a peace which gives just consideration to the claims of nationality, and which lays the foundation of a real European partnership.

26. We are Englishmen; that is one good fact.

27. The English can laugh and at the same time strike you down, without the least compunction. It is the secret of their success as a nation.

28. I think we can end the divisions within the United States. What I think is quite clear is that we can work together in the last analysis. And that what has been going on with the United States over the period of that last three years, the divisions, the violence, the disenchantment with our society, the divisions - whether it's between blacks and whites, between the poor and the more affluent, or between age groups, or in the war in Vietnam - that we can work together. We are a great country, an unselfish country and a compassionate country. And I intend to make that my basis for running.

29. So, Blair keep your England, and let me keep my Zimbabwe.

30. Long live Iraq! Long live the Iraqi people! Down with the traitors!

31. Who's Britannica to tell me that the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say that it was built in 1941, that's my right as an American.

32. Totalitarianism is patriotism institutionalized.

33. The man who loves other countries as much as his own stands on a level with the man who loves other women as much as he loves his own wife.

34. Only a fool would attack us.

35. To Englishmen, life is a topic, not an activity.

36. Canada has become trouble recently. It's always the worst Americans who go there. We could have taken them over so easy. But I only want the western part, with the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right wingers. They're the only good parts of Canada.

37. We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France.

38. He who serves our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler, serves Germany, and he who serves Germany, serves God.

39. Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

40. If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

41. The Party is Hitler! Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil! Sieg Heil!

42. I didn't come into politics to change the Labour Party. I came into politics to change the country.

43. Japan's true aim was to drive the white man out of Asia.

44. To call a fight for the Zionist idea of a Jewish nation, for the federal principle of Party organisation, a 'fight for the equality of the Jews in the world family of the proletariat' is to degrade the struggle from the plane of ideas and principles to that of suspicion, incitement and fanning of historically-evolved prejudices. It glaringly reveals a lack of real ideas and principles as weapons of struggle.

45. Socialism, by organising production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the 'sympathies' of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.

46. Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas, who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in alliance with out-and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling the Jews and all 'aliens', the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all over Russia-that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence and freedom!'

47. Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers of all nations-such is the national programme that Marxism, the experience of the whole world, and the experience of Russia, teach the workers.

48. But this means that we also need to build our home and make it strong and well protected. We see, after all, what is going on in the world. 'The Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, as the saying goes. It knows who to eat and is not about to listen to anyone, it seems.'

49. The battle will decide whether Germany is to live or die. Your soldiers must fight hard and ruthlessly. There must be no pity. The enemy must be beaten, now or never. Thus will live our Germany! Forward to and over the Meuse!

50. The Israelis are mistaken if they think we do not have an alternative to negotiations. By Allah I swear they are wrong. The Palestinian people are prepared to sacrifice until either the last boy and the last girl raise the Palestinian flag over the walls, the churches and the mosques of Jerusalem.

51. Patriotism must be founded on great principals and supported by great virtue.

52. Our sole aim was, by virtue of this war, to rid ourselves of the lot of them, however many international decisions there were. Each one represented a blow to our...independence...And, just as it was our dearly held goal to lift the Capitulations and the Mt. Lebanon concessions, we also desired to destroy the signed understanding concerning the reforms in Eastern Anatolia...

53. Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition. An army and navy represent the people's toys.

54. At the night of the debate, when I was interrupted, the issue then was said to be that, what I've said, is that some way or another I'm blaming the victims. Which is preposterous. It's sort of like taking somebody who's been murdered or raped, and saying, well, let's find out who it was and what the motives were, which everybody does in crime, it's normal and natural, to say that he's blaming the rape victim, or the murder victim. It couldn't be further from the truth, and an individual like myself and the many many others who have taken this position, that we blame America, or Americans. I'm an American, you're all Americans, and to say that there's a blame placed on you for what that has happened, not these murderers who came in and killed us, is ridiculous. And the whole notion that our foreign policy has nothing to do with it, and Giuliani has never heard this, is unbelievable. It's sort of like saying, a country could be under attack for year after year after year, with sanctions, and hundreds of thousands of people dying, and, oh, they don't care, they haven't even thought about it.