Some time ago, I came across a collection of sayings about patriotism which make perfect sense. One thing that one can do, as a simple exercise, is substitute "patriotism"/"country" by "religion" and the aphorisms still make sense. So when I hear someone say things like "my country is the best", I get a stomach-ache. (And I don't care if that country is the US, Greece, the UK, Sweden, Russia, or the Republic of Vanuatu.)
“Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.”
- George Bernard Shaw
“Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.”
- Bertrand Russell
“Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.”
- Oscar Wilde
“Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?”
- Blaise Pascal
“Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable signification is nothing else but a means of obtaining for the rulers their ambitions and covetous desires, and for the ruled the abdication of human dignity, reason, and conscience, and a slavish enthralment to those in power.”
- Leo Tolstoy
