"<p>Can we teach someone patriotism? It's like saying, "I'm going to make you love yourself with a whip and a spiked whip." Homeland is not just land and mountains, dead heroes, mother tongue, bones of our ancestors in the graveyards, bread, and landscape. Home is you, flesh and bone, in your physical and spiritual being; it gives birth to you, it buries you, and it is lived and expressed in all the miserable, magnificent, blazing, and dull moments that make up your life. And your life is also a moment in the life of your country.</p> <p>I cannot teach you patriotism: is mad who denies himself. Your country is a personality magnified and timeless in historical proportions. The homeland is destiny, even in person. Whether you "love" it or not is irrelevant. You are one. But I see and experience that you - verbally, solemnly, in writing, and on podiums - prefer to testify and profess your love of the state. You cannot expect anything from your country. The country does not give you a medal, a job, or a loaf of bread. The country is just that. But the State gives you a fine shallum, a fine dowry for your saloon coat, fine appeasing, if you serve it well, if you go about it with incense, if you confess to the world, with manly, puffed-out breast, that you love the State, even if you'll be wheeled. They don't usually break you on the execution wheel for that. That is why all love of the state is suspect. He who loves the state loves an interest. He who loves country loves a destiny. Think of that when you're thundering on the podiums and beating your chest.</p>"