Ari Shavit Quotes

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.

To make a people great it is necessary to send them to battle even if you have to kick them in the ass.

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

We decry violence all the time in this country, but look at our history. We were born in a violent revolution, and we've been in wars ever since. We're not a pacific people.

War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.

National sentiments can cause such sinful phenomena as aggressive nationalism, xenophobia, national exclusiveness and inter-ethnic enmity. At their extremes, these phenomena often lead to the restriction of the rights of individuals and nations, wars and other manifestations of violence

In patriotism, loyalty, and combat, there are no moderates.

The Israelis know that if the Iraqi or the Iranian army came across the Jordan River, I would personally grab a rifle, get in a ditch, and fight and die

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country.

We often fight wars with our young.

A state always calls itself fatherland when it is ready for murder.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

No one really wants to send their kids off to die for oil.

It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.

Men are fighting... because they are convinced that the extermination of adversaries is the only means of promoting their own well-being.

The State thrives on war - unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed - expands on it, glories in it.

I don't like war. I particularly don't like the celebration of war, which I think the administration is a little bit guilty of.

He is ready, if the occasion presents itself, to throw the whole English population in the St. Lawrence.

When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.

Weapons are created to be used. There's no place for the weak on this earth.

I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.

As a young man, every bone in my body wanted to pick up a machine gun and kill Germans. And yet I had absolutely no reason to do so. Certainly nobody invited me to do the job. But that's what I felt that I was trained to do. Now no part of my upbringing was militaristic.