Top 35 Patriotic Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.”

— Benjamin Franklin

Also featured in: Giving Up Quotes, Quotes on Liberty

2. “The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government – lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”

— Patrick Henry

3. “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”

— Albert Einstein

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes, Peace Quotes

4. “Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes

5. “Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of insuring the safety and continuance of the nation.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

6. “If you want total security, go to prison. There you’re fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom.”

— Dwight D. Eisenhower

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes

7. “I know there is a God – I see the storm coming and I see his hand in it – if he has a place then I am ready – we see the hand.”

— John F. Kennedy

8. “It is necessary for the welfare of the nation that men’s lives be based on the principles of the Bible. No man, educated or uneducated, can afford to be ignorant of the Bible.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

9. “The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”

— George Washington

10. “No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

11. “War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”

— John Stuart Mill

12. “When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon.”

— Thomas Paine

13. “Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement.”

— Ronald Reagan

14. “First of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Also featured in: History Quotes

15. “It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness...”

— Abraham Lincoln

16. “Be sincere; be brief; be seated.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

17. “Never take counsel of your fears.”

— Stonewall Jackson

18. “Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them.”

— Frederick Douglass

19. “Heroism is not only in the man, but in the occasion.”

— Calvin Coolidge

20. “Man’s greatness consists in his ability to do and the proper application of his powers to things needed to be done.”

— Frederick Douglass

21. “I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.”

— Theodore Roosevelt

22. “To say that any people are not fit for freedom, is to make poverty their choice, and to say they had rather be loaded with taxes than not.”

— Thomas Paine

23. “Don’t expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong.”

— Calvin Coolidge

Also featured in: Strong Quotes, Peace Quotes

24. “Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today's world do not have.”

— Ronald Reagan

Also featured in: Courage Quotes

25. “If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.”

— Douglas Adams

Also featured in: Family Quotes

26. “Freedom is the oxygen of the soul.”

— Moshe Dayan

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, 4th Of July Quotes

27. “If you can’t get them to salute when they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are you going to get them to die for their country?”

— George S. Patton Jr.

Also featured in: Country Quotes

28. “Education is not a problem. Education is an opportunity.”

— Lyndon B. Johnson

29. “The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly.”

— John F. Kennedy

30. “Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.”

— Frederick Douglass

31. “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.”

— Edmund Burke

Also featured in: Country Quotes

32. “Men speak of natural rights, but I challenge any one to show where in nature any rights existed or were recognized until there was established for their declaration and protection a duly promulgated body of corresponding laws.”

— Calvin Coolidge

33. “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

34. “I think Americans are very patriotic.”

— Arnold Schwarzenegger

35. “In the beginning, all the world was America.”

— John Locke

36. “All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‘Ich bin ein Berliner!’”

— John F. Kennedy

37. “Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.’ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.”

— Ronald Reagan

38. “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”

— Gerald R. Ford

39. “Can’t wait for tomorrow when I get to exercise my patriotic duty as an American: Complaining about how long it’s taking to VOTE.”

— Stephen Colbert