“But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
Spoken by Dr Stephen Maturin in the first of Patrick O’Brian‘s Aubrey & Maturin novels, Master and Commander. Stephen, part Irish & part Catalan, is discussing his disillusion following the failure of the 1798 rebellion.
The Incisal Edge 