flag quotes

It comes as a great shock around the age of five, six or seven to discover that the flag to which you have pledged yourallegiance, along with everybodyelse, has not pledged its allegiance to you. It comes as a shock to see Gary Cooper killing off the Indians and, although you are rooting for Gary Cooper, that the Indians are you.

-James Arthur Baldwin
  Speech at Cambridge Union,17 Feb, arguing for the motion that 'The  American Dream is at the expense of the  American Negro'.

The people's flag is deepest red; It shrouded oft our martyred dead. And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, Their heart's blood dyed its every fold. Then raise the scarlet standard high! Within its shade we'll live or die. Tho'cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here.

-James Connell
  'The Red Flag', official anthem of the Labour Party.

   By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood And fired the shot heard around the world.

- RalphWaldo Emerson
  'Concord Hymn', opening lines. This poem was sung on 4  Jul1837 at the dedication of the monument commemorating the battle of19  Apr1775.

I will not have another war. If there is another and we are threatenedwith being brought intoit,Iwill gotoTrafalgar Square and wave a red flag myself sooner thanallow this country to be brought in.

-GeorgeV
   To David Lloyd George,10 May.

The Dutch may havetheir Holland, the Spaniard have his Spain, TheYankee to the south of us must south of us remain; For not a man dare lift a hand against the men who brag That they were born in Canada beneath the British flag.

- Pauline Johnson
  'Canadian Born', collected in Flint and Feather (1912).

O say, can you see, by the dawn's early light, What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the clouds of the fight, O'er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming! Keynes And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof through thenight that our flag was still there; O! say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?

- Francis Scott Key
  'The Star-Spangled Banner', originally published as'The Defence of Fort M'Henry' in the Baltimore Patriot, 20 Sep; it commemorates the bombardment of Fort McHenry, Baltimore, by the British,13^14 Sep.

We have room in this country but for one flag, the Stars and Stripes.We have room for but one loyalty, loyalty to the United States.We have room for but one language, the English language.

-Theodore Roosevelt
  Message to theAmerican Defense Society two days before his death, 3 Jan.

To-day I find from my observations of the sun†that I am now camped in the centre of Australia. I have marked a tree and planted the British flag there. There is a high mount about two miles and a half to the north-north- east.Iwish it had been inthe centre; but on itto-morrow I will raise a cone of stones, and plant the flag there, and name it 'Central Mount Stuart'.

-John McDouall Stuart
  Journalentry, 22 Apr. Onreaching the centre of Australia, at Small Gum Creek. Collected inW. Hardman (ed) Journals ofJohn McDou'all Stuart during theYears1858,1859,1860,1861and1862.

'Shoot, if you must this old grey head, But spare your country's flag,'she said.

-John Greenleaf Whittier
  'Barbara Frietchie', l.35^36.