Ambrose Bierce - Country Quotes

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The partisan strife in which the people of the country are permitted to periodically engage does not tend to the development of ugly traits of character, but merely discloses those that preexist.

Ambrose Bierce
What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

Ambrose Bierce
Australia, n. A country lying in the South Sea, whose industrial and commercial development has been unspeakably retarded by an unfortunate dispute among geographers as to whether it is a continent or an island.

Ambrose Bierce
Diplomacy, n. The patriotic art of lying for one's country.

Ambrose Bierce
Every patriot believes his country better than any other country... In its active manifestation-it is fond of killing-patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive... Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part... Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone.

Ambrose Bierce
What is a democrat? One who believes that the republicans have ruined the country. What is a republican? One who believes that the democrats would ruin the country.

Ambrose Bierce
Vote, v. The instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool of himself and a wreck of his country.

Ambrose Bierce
If every hypocrite in the United States were to break his leg to-day the country could be successfully invaded to-morrow by the warlike hypocrites of Canada.

Ambrose Bierce
Hope is an explorer who surveys the country ahead. That is why we know so much about the Hereafter and so little about the Heretofore.

Ambrose Bierce
EXILE, n. One who serves his country by residing abroad, yet is not an ambassador.

Ambrose Bierce
Aborigines, n.: Persons of little worth found cumbering the soil of a newly discovered country. They soon cease to cumber; they fertilize.

Ambrose Bierce
READING, n. The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang.

Ambrose Bierce
MINISTER, n. An agent of a higher power with a lower responsibility. In diplomacy, an officer sent into a foreign country as the visible embodiment of his sovereign's hostility.

Ambrose Bierce
No country is so wild and difficult but men will make it a theater of war.

Ambrose Bierce
PLEBEIAN, n. An ancient Roman who in the blood of his country stained nothing but his hands. Distinguished from the Patrician, who was a saturated solution.

Ambrose Bierce