These Unpatriotic quotes will motivate you.
Below you will find a collection of inspiring, happy, and encouraging Unpatriotic quotes, Unpatriotic sayings, and Unpatriotic proverbs.
Best Unpatriotic Quotes
- “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “But, you know, we have these entrenched entities – and I’m talking about both Republicans and Democrats – who believe that when you’re elected to office, you become some kind of member of the aristocracy, and that anyone who challenges you is attacking you and is unpatriotic. This is foolishness.” ~ Benjamin Carson
- “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “U.S. journalists I don’t think are very courageous. They tend to go along with the government’s policy domestically and internationally. To question is seen as being unpatriotic, or potentially subversive.” ~ Robert Fisk
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“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” ~ Howard Zinn
- “Surely, if it is the right of the people to “alter or abolish,” it is their right to criticize, even severely, policies they believe destructive of the ends for which government has been established. This principle, in the Declaration of Independence, suggests that true patriotism lies in supporting the values the country is supposed to cherish: equality, life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness. When our government compromises, undermines, or attacks those values, it is being unpatriotic.” ~ Howard Zinn
- “To announce there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand with the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “But let it not be said that we did nothing. Let not those who love the power of the welfare/warfare state label the dissenters of authoritarianism as unpatriotic or uncaring. Patriotism is more closely linked to dissent than it is to conformity and a blind desire for safety and security. Understanding the magnificent rewards of a free society makes us unbashful in its promotion, fully realizing that maximum wealth is created and the greatest chance for peace comes from a society respectful of individual liberty.” ~ Ron Paul
- “Congress shall have Power . . . to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Time to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” ~ James Madison
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“Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “Back in 2008, candidate Obama called a $10 trillion national debt ‘unpatriotic’ – serious talk from what looked to be a serious reformer. Yet by his own decisions, President Obama has added more debt than any other president before him, and more than all the troubled governments of Europe combined. One president, one term, $5 trillion in new debt.” ~ Paul Ryan
- “It must never be unpatriotic to support your country against your government. It must always be unpatriotic to support your government against your country.” ~ Steven T. Byington
- “When a whole nation is roaring patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “The problem is that the way [President] Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents – number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome – so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back. [That’s] $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic.” ~ Barack Obama
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“Conservatives truly love America and support the armed forces, while liberals are unpatriotic draft dodgers.” ~ Joe Conason
- “Unfortunately, after Sept. 11, there was an outburst in America of intense suffering and patriotism, and the Bush administration was very shrewd and effective in painting anyone who disagreed with the policies as unpatriotic or even traitorous.” ~ Jimmy Carter
- “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” ~ George Orwell
- “I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts, go unchallenged. At the very least, we should debate. We should debate whether or not we are going to relinquish our rights, or whether or not we are going to have a full and able debate over whether or not we can live within the Constitution, or whether or not we have to go around the Constitution.” ~ Rand Paul
- “There comes a time, there comes a time in the history of nations when fear and complacency allow power to accumulate and liberty and privacy to suffer. That time is now and I will not let the Patriot Act, the most unpatriotic of acts go unchallenged.” ~ Rand Paul
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“If a religion is unpatriotic, it ain’t right.” ~ Harriette Simpson Arnow
- “I believe to go along to get along is unpatriotic. I believe that agreeing with your government on everything they do is unpatriotic. I believe a patriot stands up and holds your government’s feet to the fire. Because if you do that, you will get good government.” ~ Jesse Ventura
- “To be deeply committed to negotiations, to be opposed to a particular war or military action, is not only considered unpatriotic, it also casts serious doubt on one’s manhood.” ~ Myriam Miedzian
- “The quandary of many liberals in America and elsewhere is that they have largely outgrown patriotism but are afraid to face this fact. They are afraid to be called unpatriotic. They are even more afraid to come out openly and say “I am not a nationalist, I don’t give a damn about my country. For me, there are no countries, no sides – only the side of humankind.”” ~ FM-2030
- “Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.” ~ Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
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“To announce that there must be no criticism of the president… is morally treasonable to the American public.” ~ Theodore Roosevelt
- “The people currently in charge have forgotten the first principle of an open society, namely that we may be wrong and that there has to be free discussion. That it’s possible to be opposed to the policies without being unpatriotic.” ~ George Soros
- “I don’t think the average American understands what patriotism truthfully is. That’s why when I attack our country or attack the government, it’s sometimes looked at as unpatriotic. It’s not.” ~ Patti Smith
- “The word patriotism, or its equivalents and derivations, is upon everyone’s lips at the present time. It is a magic word which is thought by most people to cover any multitude of sins. To be patriotic in whatever cause is tantamount to being virtuous, while no worse charge can be brought against a man in popular estimation than to say he is unpatriotic.” ~ Ernest Belfort Bax
- “After 9/11, many of the most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power – the journalistic responsibility to challenge the excesses of government – for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism.” ~ Edward Snowden
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“You need people with the courage to stand up and voice their opposition without being labeled unpatriotic.” ~ Wesley Clark
- “Now I am not unpatriotic, and I want to do my bit, so I hereby offer my services to my President, my country and my friends to do anything, outside of serving on a commission, that I can in this great movement. But you will have to give me some idea of where “confidence” is. And just who you want it restored to.” ~ Will Rogers
- “I am still baffled by those who feel that criticizing America is unpatriotic, a view increasingly being adopted in the United States since 9/11 as an excuse to render suspect what has always been an American right. An active, brave, outspoken (and heard) citizenry is essential to a healthy democracy.” ~ Jane Fonda
- “Actually, voting in countries like Indonesia is unpatriotic, as it only legitimizes the regime, which serves foreign political and economic interests, as well as those totally prostituted ‘elites’.” ~ Andre Vltchek
- “The Patriot Act is certainly a concern; all of those things are dangerous. I think more important than me preaching is that we as a nation have to have the debate. I don’t know what the answers are. I just know that if the idea is to say talking about it makes you unpatriotic, I’ve got to call your bluff on that.” ~ George Clooney
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“Each successive Labour Government has been the most rapacious, doctrinaire and unpatriotic conspiracy to be seen this side of the Iron Curtain.” ~ Roy Jenkins
- “Specific protection must be granted to human rights defenders and whistleblowers who have in some contexts been accused of being unpatriotic, whereas they perform, in reality, a democratic service to their countries and to the enjoyment of human rights of their compatriots.” ~ Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
- “The American ideal of sexuality appears to be rooted in the American ideal of masculinity. This idea has created cowboys and Indians, good guys and bad guys, punks and studs, tough guys and softies, butch and faggot, black and white. It is an ideal so paralytically infantile that it is virtually forbidden – as an unpatriotic act – that the American boy evolve into the complexity of manhood” ~ James A. Baldwin
- “One of the most effective tools that the Cheney-Bush junta has used to marginalize dissenting or even mildly inquisitive American citizens has been the accusation of being unpatriotic.” ~ Viggo Mortensen
- “When your troops go to war, the prime minister or the president change overnight from an administrator, dealing with taxation and welfare and health and deteriorating roads, into the commander-in-chief. And it’s just become almost unpatriotic to describe Bush’s fallacious and ill-advised and mistaken and sometimes misleading actions.” ~ Jimmy Carter
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“[There] is something fundamentally unpatriotic in the yearning to fundamentally transform your country.” ~ Jonah Goldberg
- “Of course, there are also faculty who are discouraged from speaking critically about social issues because of the increasing assumption in American society that any form of critique which calls official power into question is somehow un-American. This absurd attempt to define any critique of official power as unpatriotic has a chilling effect on faculty, especially when such views and the names of the people to whom they are ascribed are widely disseminated in right-wing and dominant media outlets.” ~ Henry Giroux
- “And what terrifies me is that we’re entering a phase where if you start to speak about this as something that can be understood historically – without any sympathy – you are going to be thought of as unpatriotic, and you are going to be forbidden. It’s very dangerous. It is precisely incumbent on every citizen to quite understand the world we’re living in and the history we are a part of and we are forming as a superpower.” ~ Edward Said
- “What is quite worrisome is the absence of analysis and reflection. Take the word “terrorism.” It has become synonymous now with anti-Americanism, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being critical of the United States, which, in turn, has become synonymous with being unpatriotic. That’s an unacceptable series of equations.” ~ Edward Said
- “Louis Brandeis started off by embracing the Theodore Roosevelt notion that hyphenated Americanism was unpatriotic. You couldn’t have dual loyalties. But then he thinks and he reads and he becomes the head of the American Zionist movement after having previously been a secular Jew in this amazing intellectual evolution.” ~ Jeffrey Rosen
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“It’s not unpatriotic to denounce an injustice committed on our behalf, perhaps it’s the most patriotic thing we can do.” ~ E. A. Bucchianeri
- “The tactic of leading people into… a war that doesn’t make any sense by telling them they are under attack, and if they raise any objection they’re unpatriotic, is a very old tactic. And it doesn’t intimidate me.” ~ Tommy Lee Jones
- “If it is unpatriotic to tear down the flag, which is a symbol of the country, why isn’t it more unpatriotic to desecrate the country itself-to pollute, despoil and ravage the air, land and sea.” ~ Ralph Nader
- “The fact that there are singer-songwriters dealing with substantive issues is encouraging. It’s important for young people to perceive that there are acceptable avenues of dissent, because we live in a world where dissent is hard-pressed; treated as if it were unpatriotic. I’ve always liked the concept of the loyal opposition. It allows for dissent to be a respectable part of the whole.” ~ Mary Travers
- “In 2003 I was saying, where are the ties [between Iraq] and al-Qaida? Where are the ties to 9/11? I knew it; where the f**k were these Democrats who said, ‘We were misled’? That’s the kind of thing that drives me crazy: ‘We were misled.’ F**k you, you weren’t misled. You were afraid of being called unpatriotic.” ~ George Clooney
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“After September 11, it became unpatriotic to question any homeland-security or defense spending, and that let things get out of control.” ~ Jeff Flake
- “Being critical of the nation is a far cry from being unpatriotic or anti-American. In fact, most social criticism . . . is based on a love of America’s ideals and a concern we’re not living up to them.” ~ Robert Reich
- “Home. One place is just like another, really. Maybe not. But truth is it’s all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I’m no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me. Everywhere you go there’s nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I’m at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic. I was at home in England. I would be at home in the desert. In Afghanistan or far Typee. All mine, it all belongs to me. My world.” ~ Michael Shaara
- “Millions of citizens are deeply disturbed that the military-industrial complex too often shapes national policy, but they do not want to be considered unpatriotic.” ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “It’s a robust time, probably the most fertile time for the underground and for revolution since Nixon. I’m not talking about political overthrow; I’m talking about just general cultural revolution. Bush has polarised the country and is creating this breeding ground for an opposition. In the next couple of months, they’ll probably make it unpatriotic to be Democrat. It’s pretty crazy.” ~ Neil Young
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“Global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends.” ~ Pat Sajak
- “But could not our situation be compared to one of a menacing epidemic? People are unable to view this situation in its true light, for their eyes are blinded by passion. General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic.” ~ Albert Einstein
- “The war against Iraq is as disastrous as it is unnecessary; perhaps in terms of its wisdom, purpose and motives, the worst war in American history… Our military men and women…were not called to defend America but rather to attack Iraq. They were not called to die for, but rather to kill for, their country. What more unpatriotic thing could we have asked of our sons and daughters…?” ~ William Sloane Coffin
- “How lovely.” The old lady sighed. “An office romance. I always wanted an office romance. Of course I never really had a job, which made the situation more challenging. Oh, I worked on an assembly line during World War II, but there weren’t very many men around and as my husband was off serving his country, an office romance would have been unpatriotic, don’t you think?–Mrs. Ford” ~ Susan Mallery
- “I do think there is an enhanced awareness of insecurity and vulnerability that induces anxiety that creates pressure on teachers and administrators to offer simplistic explanations and to be resistant to expressions of attitudes that can be viewed as unpatriotic, which is further interpreted as applicable to any tendency to challenge the government when it claims to be acting overseas to avoid repetitions of 9/11 or to encroach on domestic freedom to identify suspicious persons and behaviors.” ~ Richard A. Falk
