All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity — their links with their dead and the unborn.
All the nationalists are wasms — except one, the most powerful of this century, indeed, of the entire democratic age, which is nationalism.
Americans are like a rich father who wishes he knew how to give his son the hardships that made him rich.
An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.
Bulls get rich, bears get rich, but pigs get slaughtered An Irishman is never at his best except when fighting.
England is paradise for women, and hell for horses: Italy is a paradise for horses, hell for women.
Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.
How I like the boldness of the English, how I like the people who say what they think!
I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.
If you want to eat well in England, eat three breakfasts.
In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.
Irish Americans are no more Irish than Black Americans are Africans.
It is a well-known fact that we always recognize our homeland when we are about to lose it.
It is easier for a Russian to become an atheist than for anyone else in the world.
Italians come to ruin most generally in three ways, women, gambling, and farming. My family chose the slowest one.
Much may be made of a Scotchman, if he be caught young.
Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.
Nationalist pride, like other variants of pride, can be a substitute for self-respect.
Nations whose nationalism is destroyed are subject to ruin.
No man has a right to fix the boundary of the march of a nation; no man has a right to say to his country, ''Thus far shalt thou go and no further.''