~ Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it. ~
~ Our true nationality is mankind. ~
~ Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception. ~
~ Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. ~
~ A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common fear of its neighbors. ~
~ Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress. ~
~ There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization. ~
~ Nationalism ... is like cheap alcohol. First it makes you drunk, then it makes you blind, then it kills you. ~
~ Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind. ~
~ Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect. ~
~ Blind patriotism has been kept intact by rewriting history to provide people with moral consolation and a psychological basis for denial. ~
~ Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation. ~