So I was feeling very Patriotic today so I watched "John Wayne's Tribute to America" and it really got me thinking about our country and how great it real is! We live in a free country were we can make a real difference in how we are governed! Right now I am not to happy with the way the government is doing thing or the direction we are heading but I am glad to know I live in this Country where it is my job to change it if I don't like it! I found some quotes that I liked and thought that I would share them, so here they are!

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."
— Mark Twain

"Patriotism is proud of a country's virtues and eager to correct its deficiencies; it also acknowledges the legitimate patriotism of other countries, with their own specific virtues. The pride of nationalism, however, trumpets its country's virtues and denies its deficiencies, while it is contemptuous toward the virtues of other countries. It wants to be, and proclaims itself to be, "the greatest", but greatness is not required of a country; only goodness is."
— Sydney J. Harris

"These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value."
— Thomas Paine (Works of Thomas Paine)

"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president or any other public official, save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country. In either event, it is unpatriotic not to tell the truth, whether about the president or anyone else."
— Theodore Roosevelt

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
— John Stuart Mill

"The greatest patriotism is to tell your country when it is behaving dishonorably, foolishly, viciously."
— Julian Barnes (Flaubert's Parrot)

"Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were willing to die to make that desperate vision into a reality for people like us, whom they would never live to see. "
— Naomi Wolf (The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot)

"My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor."
— Herbert Hoover

"Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost."
— Robert A. Heinlein (Starship Troopers)

"My kind of loyalty was loyalty to one's country, not to its institutions or its officeholders. The country is the real thing, the substantial thing, the eternal thing; it is the thing to watch over, and care for, and be loyal to; institutions are extraneous, they are its mere clothing, and clothing can wear out, become ragged, cease to be comfortable, cease to protect the body from winter, disease, and death."
— Mark Twain (The Innocents Abroad: or, The New Pilgrims' Progress)



Hope these quotes make you feel that responsibility that all of us as Americans have to make and keep this country Great for all who follow us!

Thank you,

Your Brother in Arms
Sir Kay