The severest test of character is not so much the ability to keep a secret as it is, when the secret is finally out, to refrain from disclosing that … - Sydney J. Harris

Patriotism is wanting what is best for your country. Nationalism is thinking your country is best, no matter what it does.

Ordinary people, caught in the trap of their routine lives, are not villains any more than eccentrics or rebels are villains. Essentially, both kinds of people are struggling to be good, through a maze of conflicts and a haze of shadows.

...when the createdness of the other person is not viewed as necessary as our own — then there is no reason (beyond expediency) to treat the other as a person. All injustice and cruelty come, basically, from this distorted view of reality.