Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. - Sydney J. Harris

The difference between patriotism and nationalism is that the patriot is proud of his country for what it does, and the nationalist is proud of his country no matter what it does; the first attitude creates a feeling of responsibility, but the second a feeling of blind arrogance that leads to war.

Superior people are only those who let it be discovered by others; the need to make it evident forfeits the very virtue they aspire to.

"The truly terrible thing about the war spirit, about the fear and hate hysteria it generates, is that it forces us to think and talk and feel in terms of abstractions — those "communists" this time, those "fascists" last time.
But those we are fighting and killing are people — men, women and children — not political, geographic or economic abstractions. They are, in the main, as decent and fearful and confused as we are. And they regard us as abstractions as much as we do them."