With the Union my best and dearest earthly hopes are entwined.
Time is passing. Yet, for the United States of America, there will be no forgetting September the 11th. We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.
Let America first praise mediocrity even, in her children, before she praises. . . the best excellence in the children of any other land.
The greatest lesson we can learn from the past. . . is that freedom is at the core of every successful nation in the world.
I've seen a lot of patriots and they all died just like anybody else if it hurt bad enough and once they were dead their patriotism was only good for legends; it was bad for their prose and made them write bad poetry. If you are going to be a great patriot i. e. loyal to any existing order of government (not one who wishes to destroy the existing for something better) you want to be killed early if your life and works won't stink.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.
There will be trying times during Obama's presidency, and liberty will need staunch defenders. Can Obama reshape liberalism to be, as it was under F. D. R. , a fighting faith, unapologetically patriotic and strong in the defense of liberty? That would be a service to our country.
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty.
First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
We can draw lessons from the past, but we cannot live in it.
Arms in the hands of citizens may be used at individual discretion. . . in private self-defense.
I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office.
We Canadians are not given as a people to great patriotic displays.
Liberals don't mind discussing who is more patriotic if patriotism is defined as redistributing income and vetoing the Pledge of Allegiance. Only if patriotism is defined as supporting America do they get testy and drone on about 'McCarthyism. '
I met with many of - a number of [Syrian] refugees in Berlin the other day, and I was struck by how educated, intelligent, and patriotic they are. They want to go back. They love their country. And there are so many of them still in Jordan and in refugee camps in Lebanon and in Turkey, that if you could create the climate within which they could begin to come back, I believe there is such a history of secularism within Syria, even tolerance within Syria, that if we can deal with ISIL, yes. That's the key. And with ISIL there, not a chance.
I can train a monkey to wave an American flag. That does not make the monkey patriotic.
Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America is the only idealistic nation in the world.
A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.
The three-martini lunch is the epitome of American efficiency. Where else can you get an earful, a bellyful and a snootful at the same time?