Nationalism: Rabindranath Tagore Reflects on Patriotism

by Rabindranath Tagore

In the ancient days Sparta paid all her attention to becoming powerful; she did become so by crippling her humanity, and died of the amputation.

This bartering of your higher aspirations of life for profit and power has been your own free choice, and I leave you there, at the wreckage of your soul, contemplating your protuberant prosperity.

But in this scientific age money, by its very abnormal bulk, has won its throne. And when from its eminence of piled-up things it insults the higher instincts of man, banishing beauty and noble sentiments from its surroundings, we submit.