E. B. White on patriotism

Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half the time.

Advice to young writers who want to get ahead without annoying delays: don’t write about Man, write about ‘a’ man.

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