The purpose of a human being is to serve everyone, all people, and not to serve some people only, which inevitably means causing harm to others.
For a Christian, love for one’s fatherland stands in the way of love for one’s neighbor. And therefore, as love for one’s family had to be sacrificed to love for one’s fatherland in the ancient world, so too must love for one’s fatherland give way to love for one’s neighbor in the Christian world.
If we deem the blindness of those who are not trying to discover the meaning of their lives unnatural, then the blindness of those who believe in God while leading bad lives is even more terrible. Almost everyone falls under one of these kinds of blindness.
— Pascal
If a human being has lost his true nature, then anything becomes his nature; likewise, if the true good is lost, anything becomes good for him.
— Pascal
Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
— Johnson
Patriotism is not a virtue; to sacrifice one’s life for a state’s obsolete superstition cannot be our duty.
— Theodorus
In our time patriotism is used as a justification for every kind of social evil and individual meanness. It is suggested to a person that for the good of his country he should reject everything that makes his country worthy of respect: for the sake of patriotism a person must submit to every shameful cause, which, by corrupting honest individuals, leads the whole nation to ruin.
— Beecher Stowe
People commit a lot of evil out of selfishness, and even more for the sake of their family; the worst atrocities—espionage, extortionate taxation of the people and the terrible slaughter of war—are committed for the sake of patriotism, and those committing them are proud of these atrocities.
In our age of international communication, to preach exclusive love for one’s nation and constant readiness to go to war with another nation is the same as to preach, in our age, among peaceful people, an exclusive love for one’s village, and to gather armed forces in every village and build fortresses. An exclusive love for one’s fatherland, which in the past had united the people of a nation, in our time, when people are already united by means of communication, trade, industry, science, art and, most important, by moral consciousness, no longer unites people, but divides them.
Love for one’s fatherland is as natural as love for one’s family, but, just as love for one’s family, it cannot in any way be a virtue, but it can be a vice when it transgresses the boundaries that violate one’s love for one’s neighbor.
Patriotism is so unnatural to the people of our time that it can only be aroused by suggestion.
This is exactly what the authorities and those who profit from patriotism are doing: they are instilling it in those who no longer feel it and for whom it is disadvantageous. Beware of this deception.
