The Wild Flag Quotes

“Whether we wish it or not, we may soon have to make a clear choice between the special nation to which we pledge our allegiance and the broad humanity of which we are born a part. This choice is implicit in the world to come. We have a little time in which we can make the choice intelligently. Failing that, the choice will be made for us in the confusion of war, from which the world will emerge unified--the unity of total desolation.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters

“Nationalism is young and strong, and has already run into bad trouble. We take pains to educate our children at an early age in the rituals and mysteries of the nation, infusing national feeling into them in place of the universal feeling which is their birthright; but lately the most conspicuous activity of nations has been the blowing of each other up, and an observant child might reasonably ask whether he is pledging allegiance to a flag or to a shroud. A nation asks of its citizens everything--their fealty, their money, their faith, their time, their lives. It is fair to ask whether the nation, in return, does indeed any longer serve the best interests of the human beings who give so lavishly of their affections and their blood. We know, we Americans, what America means in the human heart; we remember its principles and we honor its record; but we tend to forget that it has its counterpart in sixty or seventy other places. This is mischievous business. It is bloody business. Reinforced with the atom, it may be fatal business.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters

“The answer to war is no war.”
― E.B. White, The Wild Flag: Editorials from the New Yorker on Federal World Government and Other Matters