If you're good at a sport, they attach the medals to your shirt and then they shine in some museum. That which is earned by doing good deeds is attached to the soul and shines elsewhere. - Gino Bartali
The cheapest sort of pride is national pride; for if a man is proud of his own nation, it argues that he has no qualities of his own of which he can be proud; otherwise he would not have recourse to those which he shares with so many millions of his fellowmen. The man who is endowed with important personal qualities will be only too ready to see clearly in what respects his own nation falls short, since their failings will be constantly before his eyes. But every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud adopts, as a last resource, pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and glad to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority. - Schopenhauer
I prefer someone who burns the flag and then wraps themselves up in the Constitution over someone who burns the Constitution and then wraps themselves up in the flag. - Molly Ivins
Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a bible. - Sinclair Lewis (likely misattr.)
Who owns the land? - Jeff Ott
Me tabula sacer votiva paries indicat uvida suspendisse potenti vestimenta maris deo. - Horace (Odes I.V.)
Odi et amo. Quare id faciam fortasse requiris? Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior. - Catullus (85)
Majority rule don't work in mental institutions. - Fat Mike
If one morning I walked on top of the water across the Potomac River, the headline that afternoon would read: 'President Can't Swim.' - Lyndon B. Johnson
The overwhelming question, obviously, is why anyone would enjoy listening to people get fooled into becoming more and more offended and upset. To which there seems no good answer. At some point we simply have to bow our heads in acceptance of the fact that some Americans enjoy stuff that seems like it ought to make any right-thinking person want to open a vein. There are, after all, functional US adults who like evangelical television, the Home Shopping Network, and radio Muzak. It is the Democratic Adventure. - David Foster Wallace
Wait, what are you talking about? We decided? My best interest? How do You know what My best interest is? How can You say what My best interest is? What are you trying to say? I'm crazy? When I went to Your schools? When I went to Your churches? When I went to Your institutional learning facilities? So how can You say I'm crazy? - Mike Muir & Louiche Mayorga ("Institutionalized" by Suicidal Tendencies)
It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be taken to be good without limitation, except a good will. - Immanuel Kant (GMS 4:394)
If you miss me at the back of the bus You can't find me nowhere Come on over to the front of the bus; I'll be riding up there. - Pete Seeger
I’ve shot a gun myself and I’ve seen them fall. And what is inside us at such a moment? You want to help them get up. - Freddie Oversteegen
Kinder un gelt machen a shaineh velt. ("Children and money make a pretty world.") - Yiddish proverb
Ich hub mein eigene tsurris. ("I have my own problems.") - My grandmother
The Man has a branch office in each of our brains, his corporate emblem is a white albatross, each local rep has a cover known as the Ego, and their mission in this world is Bad Shit. - Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
Words, words, words. What do they even fucking mean? - Natalie Wynn
all right we are two nations - John Dos Passos, U.S.A.
No man is an Iland, intire of itselfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Manor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee. - John Donne
So convenient a thing is it to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for every thing one has a mind to do. - Benjamin Franklin
You learned a lesson, not to rely on anyone Now you don't even rely on yourself You learned a lesson, not to trust anyone Now you don't even trust yourself You learned a lesson, not to love anyone Now you don't even love yourself - Crimpshrine
You are a bird, securely bound, That sings the song of voiceless ground, - Theodore Roethke, Bound
This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it-that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. - Hunter S. Thompson (attr. in The Boys on the Bus by Tim Crouse)
And our Flag shall be the same that our Fathers fought under in the Revolution. - John Brown, Provisional Constitution, Article XLVI
Hail, fellow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man; - Jonathan Swift, My Lady's Lamentation and Complaint
Great nations, like great men, should keep their word. - Justice Black, Federal Power Commission v. Tuscarora Indian Nation
Here's to Cheshire, here's to Cheese; Here's to the Pears and the Apple Trees, and; Here's to the lovely Strawberries. - The Frog's Courtship
boss i am disappointed in some of your readers they are always asking how does archy work the shift so as to get a new line or how does archy do this or do that they are always interested in technical details when the main question is whether the stuff is literature or not - Don Marquis, archy and mehitabel ("mehitabel was once cleopatra")
I'd rather be a lamppost on Park Row than the Governor of California. - Al Smith
And we are right, I think you'll say To argue in this kind of way; - Pish-Tush (The Mikado)
Love is strange. In your heart, it has no shape or weight. You can't measure its size or its depth. No one has every actually seen it, but it aches without a doubt. - Yukino Miyazawa (Kare Kano)
In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. - Legend of the Galactic Heroes
The Bronx? No Thonx - Ogden Nash