Sunday, 3 October 2010

Patriotism has killed Europe

One might say: Patriotism has killed Europe...European culture is much older than the European nation states. Greece, Rome, Israel, Christendom and Renaissance, the French Revolution and Germany's eighteenth century, the polyglot music of Austria and the poetry of the Slavs: these are the forces that have formed Europe...All are naturally opposed to the barbarity of so-called national pride.
The imbecile love of the "soil" kills the love of the earth. The pride of being born in a particular country, within a particular nation, wrecks the feeling of European universality."

Joseph Roth, "Europe is Possible Only Without the Third Reich" (1934) from The White Cities

I stumbled upon this quote on http://bibliophilicblogger.blogspot.com/


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