I find patriotism not only a refuge of scoundrels but of idiots and those who like to buy their thinking ready-made each morning in the vacuous newspapers. Every decade or so governments create wars and whip up a frenzy, so that we will not notice the shortcomings of our own side and will not question the assumptions of our society and demand more rational institutions and laws.

—Marge Piercy

war news government patriotism

About Marge Piercy

Marge Piercy (born March 31, 1936) is an American writer. Her work includes Woman on the Edge of Time; He, She and It, which won the 1993 Arthur C. Clarke Award; and Gone to Soldiers, a New York Times Best Seller and a sweeping historical novel set during World War...

More quotations from Marge Piercy

[Long hair] is considered bohemian, which may be why I grew it, but I keep it long because I love the way it feels, part cloak, part fan, part mane, part security blanket.

—Marge Piercy

He… treats his emotions like mice that infest our basement or the rats in the garage, as vermin to be crushed in traps or poisoned with bait.

—Marge Piercy

This nation is founded on blood like a city on swamps / yet its dream has been beautiful and sometimes just / that now grows brutal and heavy as a burned-out star.

—Marge Piercy

A new idea is rarely born like Venus attended by graces. More commonly it's modeled of baling wire and acne. More commonly it wheezes and tips over.

—Marge Piercy

More quotations tagged with “patriotism”

The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.

The flag is the embodiment, not of sentiment, but of history.

—Woodrow Wilson

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much liberty than those attending too small a degree of it.

—Thomas Jefferson

Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

—Winston Churchill

When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and purity of its heart.

—Samuel Johnson

History

16 Jan 2016 Added