James Joyce on patriotism

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

(Of Shakespeare) A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.

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