Nationalism Quotes (6 quotes)
Human nature, as manifested in tribalism and nationalism, provides the momentum of the machinery of human evolution.
From Essays on Human Evolution (1946, 1947), 76.
If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say I am a German and Germany will declare I am a Jew.
In Speech (6 Apr 1922) to the French Philosophical Society, Sorbonne. Quoted in Alice Calaprice, The Quotable Einstein (1996), 8.
Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.
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Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race.
Helen Dukas and Banesh Hoffmann, Albert Einstein, The Human Side (1979), 38.
The only condition more appalling, less practical, than world government is the lack of it in this atomic age. Most of the scientists who produced the bomb admit that. Nationalism and the split atom cannot coexist in the planet.
In 'Talk of the Town', The New Yorker (1 Jun 1946), 17.
We do live in a conceptual trough that encourages such yearning for unknown and romanticized greener pastures of other times. The future doesn’t seem promising, if only because we can extrapolate some disquieting present trends in to further deterioration: pollution, nationalism, environmental destruction, and aluminum bats. Therefore, we tend to take refuge in a rose-colored past ... I do not doubt the salutary, even the essential, properties of this curiously adaptive human trait, but we must also record the down side. Legends of past golden ages become impediments when we try to negotiate our current dilemma.
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