“My Country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
— G K Chesterton (1874-1936) [http://wist.info/chesterton-gilbert-keith/628/]
A quotation that came to mind multiple times today.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith – The Defendant, ch. 16 “A Defence of Patriotism” | WIST
“My Country, right or wrong” is a thing no patriot would think of saying except in a desperate case. It is like saying, “My mother, drunk or sober.”
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I've heard the original quote with the addendum "when wrong, to be made right"
"Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong."
— Stephen Decatur
"I cannot ask of heaven success, even for my country, in a cause where she should be in the wrong. Fiat justitia, pereat coelum. My toast would be, may our country be always successful, but whether successful or otherwise, always right."
— John Quincy Adams
"The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, 'My country, right or wrong.' In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
— Carl Schurz
"An empty phrase, a silly phrase. It was shouted by every newspaper, it was thundered from the pulpit, the Superintendent of Public Instruction placarded it in every schoolhouse in the land, the War Department inscribed it upon the flag. And every man who failed to shout it or who was silent, was proclaimed a traitor — none but those others were patriots. To be a patriot, one had to say, and keep on saying, 'Our Country, right or wrong,' and urge on the little war. Have you not perceived that that phrase is an insult to the nation?"
— Mark Twain
Thank you!