Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.
—Denis Diderot, 1774Quotes
Nothing is more narrow-minded than chauvinism or racial hatred. To me all men are equal; there are flatheads everywhere and I despise them all equally.
—Karl Kraus, 1909All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac, 1949Who sees all beings in his own self, and his own self in all beings, loses all fear.
—The Upanishads, c. 800 BCBy nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they get to be wide apart.
—Confucius, c. 500 BCThere are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866No man has any natural authority over his fellow man.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762Of troubles none is greater than to be robbed of one’s native land.
—Euripides, 431 BCMany need no other provocation to enmity than that they find themselves excelled.
—Samuel Johnson, 1751Such then is the human state, that to wish greatness for one’s country is to wish harm to one’s neighbors.
—Voltaire, 1764“Abroad,” that large home of ruined reputations.
—George Eliot, 1866In settling an island, the first building erected by a Spaniard will be a church, by a Frenchman a fort, by a Dutchman a warehouse, and by an Englishman an alehouse.
—Francis Grose, 1787