6 Quotes by Michael Billig

The sports pages are men's pages, although they are not presented as such. /.../ On foreign fields, the men win their trophies, or lose their honour, doing battle on the nation's behalf. The readers, mainly men, are invited to see these male exploits in terms of the whole homeland, and, thus, men's concerns are presented as if defining the whole national honour.The parallel between sport and warfare seems obvious...

All societies that maintain armies maintain the belief that some things are more valuable than life itself.

If the future remains uncertain, we know the past history of nationalism. And that should be sufficient to encourage a habit of watchful suspicion.

Metonimijska slika banalnog nacionalizma nije zastava kojom se svesno maše u trenucima raspaljenih strasti; to je zastava koja visi nezapaženo na javnoj zgradi.

A banal mysticism, which is so banal that all the mysticism seems to have evaporated long ago, binds 'us' to the homeland - that special place which is more than a place, more than a geophysical area.

Whatever the issue, there is always something else to be said, another voice to be heard.