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"A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government."

Edward Abbey

"A politician will do anything to keep his job - even become a patriot."

William Randolph Hearst

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul."

Moshe Dayan

"Heroism on command, senseless violence, and the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism - how passionately I hate them!"

Albert Einstein

"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"

Thomas Jefferson

"Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance. It is also owed to justice and to humanity. Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong."

James Bryce

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

The Declaration of Independence July 4, 1776

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."

William Faulkner

"You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it."

Malcolm X

Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States, was writing: "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the republic is destroyed."

I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this countrys most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer...

-Major-General Smedley D. Butler, U.S. Marine Corp Commander (War Is a Racket, 1935)

Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself? Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest right of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men.

~ Daniel Webster, (1782-1852), US Senator, Speech in the House of Representatives, January 14, 1814

"True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else."

- Clarence Darrow

"We must not believe the many, who say that only free people ought to be educated, but we should rather believe the philosophers who say that only the educated are free."

-Epictetus

Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.

Frederick Douglass