nationalism

Ireland is a fatal disease fatal to Englishmen and doubly fatal to Irishmen.

What makes a nation great is not primarily its great men but the stature of its innumerable mediocre ones.

A nation is a body of people who have done great things together.

I'm troubled. I'm dissatisfied. I'm Irish.

My favourite example (of ex-patriotism) is James Joyce who left Ireland at nineteen and never came back. But he spent the rest of his life writing about Ireland from the perspective of living in Paris.

The French have a passion for revolution but an abhorrence of change.

Men may be linked in friendship. Nations are linked only by interests.

Born in inquity and conceived in sin the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress.

Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.

This two-track plan of nationalism and development (in China) is a historically powerful weapon.

... [T]he other lesson history has taught us - that tyranny and oppression are no match for compassion ... that the fanatical shouts of the bullies of the world are invariably silenced by the unified voices of decency that rise up to meet them.

I am not red or blue. I am red, white and blue. Those are the same colors in my body (my heart, blood and veins). I am only human, and the human race is the only race in which I am an active participant - mind, body and soul.

Having one king, one god, one belief, they can act single-mindedly.

I am a Dalit in Khairlanji. A Pandit in the Kashmir valley. A Sikh in 1984. I am from the North East of India when I am in Munirka. I am a Muslim in Gujarat; a Christian in Kandhamal. A Bihari in Maharashtra. A Delhi-wallah in Chennai. A woman in North India. A Hindi-speaker in Assam. A Tamilian in MP. A villager in a big city. A confused man in an indifferent world. We're all minorities.We all suffer; we all face discrimination. It is only us resisting this parochialism when in the position of majoritarian power that makes us human. I hope that one day, I can just be an Indian in India - only then can I be me.

I am pain-stricken to say, since the moment I was born, I have found nothing extraordinary in this ancient land of greatness to be exceptionally proud of. I am not a proud Indian. India at its present condition has given me no reason to feel proud.However, I do feel proud of the ancient Indians, just like I feel proud of the ancient Greeks, the Mayans, the ancient Egyptians, the Babylonians and so on. Scientists are beyond borders, just like the ancient scientists of India, whom you prefer to call as sages.

Far from marking the end of nationalism, the IPL is the ultimate triumph of that principle: a global tournament in which the same nation always wins.

I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians.