Patriotism and Government
“
Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!
— Leo Tolstoy
What It Means
This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!" in the context of "Patriotism and Government" to mean that wisdom is timeless.
Source: Wikiquote: "Leo Tolstoy" (Quotes)
The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
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About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
About Leo Tolstoy
Lev Nikolayevitch Tolstoy Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й, usually rendered Leo Tolstoy, or sometimes Tolstoi (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910) was a Russian writer, philosopher and social activist (social critic), whose novels War and Peace and Anna Karenina are internationally praised classics of world literature. He was a major influence on the development of Christian anarchism and pacifism, contributing to such nonviolent resistance movements as those of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and James Bevel.
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