Denis Diderot on patriotism

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

Poetry must have something in it that is barbaric, vast and wild.

In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.

Ask not what your country can do for you⁠—ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy1917–1963John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural Address (1961)

‘My country, right or wrong’ is a thing that no patriot would think of saying, except in a desperate case. It is like saying, ‘My mother, drunk or sober’.

G. K. Chesterton1874–1936The Defendant (1901), “A Defence of Patriotism”

Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.

Oscar Wilde1854–1900