All the nationalists are wasms - except one, the most powerful of this century, indeed, of the entire democratic age, which is nationalism.

Even one billion Chinese do not a superpower make.

Populism is folkish, patriotism is not. One can be a patriot and a cosmopolitan. But a populist is inevitably a nationalist of sorts. Patriotism, too, is less racist than is populism. A patriot will not exclude a person of another nationality from the community where they have lived side by side and whom he has known for many years, but a populist will always remain suspicious of someone who does not seem to belong to his tribe.

Our everyday language has become encumbered, Germanic, artificial, bureaucratic, inorganic. It may not be exaggerated to say that by now American writers face but two alternatives: write English, or write gobbledygook.

Generalizations, like brooms, ought not to stand in a corner forever; they ought to sweep as a matter of course.

But then history does not only consist of documents.

All the nationalists are wasms - except one, the most powerful of this century, indeed, of the entire democratic age, which is nationalism.