Adlai Stevenson II on patriotism

Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.

An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff.

A free society is one where it is safe to be unpopular.

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