Date: Wed, 19 Jun 2002 23:15:10 -0700 From: mitchrubin@cox.net ("mitchrubin") Subject: [aapjevents] quotes To: aapjevents@yahoogroups.com Reply-To: aapjevents@yahoogroups.comBelow are some quotes we may want to pick and choose from for the July 4 dissent is patriotism signs
In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together"
-- President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address, 1961
I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. James A. Baldwin
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me."
-- Martin Niemoller, German anti-Nazi pastor during World War II
The citizen who sees his society's democratic clothes being worn out and does not cry it out, is not a patriot, but a traitor." --Mark Twain (this is where I'm comin' from BigBlue)
They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. Benjamin Franklin (1759)
It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense,we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties. .which make the defense of the Nation worthwhile. > - Justice Earl Warren
Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black and white - and we're all precious in God's sight. ~ Jesse Jackson
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free.
Emma Lazarus
"The first casualty of war is truth." Rudyard Kipling
"The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic." John Dewey
" I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. "-- Abraham Lincoln, American president, 1861-1865
" We must use our vast resources of wealth to aid the undeveloped countries of the world. We have spent far too much of our national budget in establishing military bases around the world and far too little in establishing bases of genuine concern and understanding. " n Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Our loyalties must transend our race, our tribe, our class, and our nation; and this means we must develop a world perspective." n Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
"I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and willingly accepts the penalty by staying in jail to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustices is in reality expressing the very highest respect for law." Martin Luther King, Jr.In his "Letter from Birmingham City Jail," written in the spring of 1963
Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal. " Martin Luther King, Jr.
Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest. " n Martin Luther King, Jr.
Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception. Mark Twain- "Chronicle of Young Satan"
To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, " Our country, right or wrong," and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation. -Mark Twain "Glances at History," 1906
"Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am Caesar." -- Julius Caesar
We have a bastard Patriotism, a sarcasm, a burlesque; but we have no such thing as a public conscience. Politically we are just a joke. Mark Twain- marginalia written in Clemens' copy of The Future in America; A Search After Realities by H. G. Wells
I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. Socrates
The most tragic paradox of our time is to be found in the failure of nation-states to recognize the imperatives of internationalism. Earl Warren
Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all others because you were born in it. George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. Henry David Thoreau
"The rights of the public to the natural resources outweigh private rights and must be given first consideration" - Theodore Roosevelt, well-known Republican (pre-Reagan
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies... if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of currency...the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent that their fathers conquered." - --Thomas Jefferson
I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison
"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." Louis Brandeis, Supreme Court justice from 1916-1939
"Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead. anthropologist
Ntionalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism" is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism" I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one's own nation, which is the concern with the nation's spiritual as much as with its material welfare --never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excluds the love for others is not love, love for one's country which is not part of one's love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship. Erich Fromm ~
"We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the world - no longer a Government of free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of small groups of dominant men."
--Woodrow Wilson [U.S. President during World War I]