A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.
~ George William Curtis

Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.
~ Adlai Stevenson

... ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
~ John F. Kennedy

When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea.  He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect.  ~Adlai Stevenson

Love your country.  Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the home that God has given you that by striving to perfect yourselves therein you may prepare to ascend to him.  ~Giuseppe Mazzini

May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!  ~Daniel Webster

This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave.  ~Elmer Davis

If our country is worth dying for in time of war let us resolve that it is truly worth living for in time of peace.  ~Hamilton Fish

The cement of this union is the heart-blood of every American.  ~Thomas Jefferson

If you are ashamed to stand by your colors, you had better seek another flag.  ~Author Unknown

Then join hand in hand, brave Americans all!
By uniting we stand, by dividing we fall.
~John Dickinson

Ours is the only country deliberately founded on a good idea.  ~John Gunther

America is much more than a geographical fact.  It is a political and moral fact - the first community in which men set out in principle to institutionalize freedom, responsible government, and human equality.  ~Adlai Stevenson

Oh, it's home again and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that's westward bound to plough the rolling sea
To the blessed land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.
~Henry Van Dyke

Sometimes people call me an idealist.  Well, that is the way I know I am an American.  America is the only idealistic nation in the world.  ~Woodrow Wilson

This, then, is the state of the union:  free and restless, growing and full of hope.  So it was in the beginning.  So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith.  ~Lyndon B. Johnson


America is another name for opportunity.  Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Off with your hat, as the flag goes by!
And let the heart have its say;
you're man enough for a tear in your eye
that you will not wipe away.
~Henry Cuyler Bunner

This country will not be a good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a good place for all of us to live in.  ~Theodore Roosevelt


Of all the supervised conditions for life offered man, those under USA's constitution have proved the best.  Wherefore, be sure when you start modifying, corrupting or abrogating it.  ~Martin H. Fischer


He loves his country best who strives to make it best.  ~Robert G. Ingersoll

My God!  How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!  ~Thomas Jefferson


I wish that every human life might be pure transparent freedom.  ~Simone de Beauvoir

Our country is not the only thing to which we owe our allegiance.  It is also owed to justice and to humanity.  Patriotism consists not in waving the flag, but in striving that our country shall be righteous as well as strong.  ~James Bryce


Our great modern Republic.  May those who seek the blessings of its institutions and the protection of its flag remember the obligations they impose.  ~Ulysses S. Grant


For what avail the plough or sail, or land or life, if freedom fail?  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men love their country, not because it is great, but because it is their own.  ~Seneca


Territory is but the body of a nation.  The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its soul, its spirit, its life.  ~James Garfield


I believe in America because we have great dreams - and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.  ~Wendell L. Wilkie

I think there is one higher office than president and I would call that patriot.  ~Gary Hart

"I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal'".
- Martin Luther King Jr.

"But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here."
- Abraham Lincoln
Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863

"The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil Constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors: they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood, and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men." -- Samuel Adams