Politics & Power Quote by William Ralph Inge

Nationhood, Inge suggests, is less a proud civic achievement than a shared mental trick: a soothing story about where we came from, stapled to an uglier story about who threatens us. The line works because it collapses two revered pillars of nationalism - ancestry and solidarity - into their least flattering operating parts: myth-making and resentment. “Delusion” punctures the piety around bloodlines and founding legends; it implies that the past is curated not for accuracy but for comfort, a selective genealogy that turns accident into destiny. The second clause sharpens the blade. “Common hatred” is not incidental; it’s the adhesive. Neighbours aren’t distant abstractions. They’re close enough to compete with, to resemble, to embarrass us by existing as an alternate version of ourselves. Inge is pointing to the psychology of borders: proximity breeds comparison, and comparison breeds grievance.

As a clergyman writing in an era bookended by imperial confidence and mechanized war, Inge had front-row seats to how “sacred” national narratives can become secular religions. His framing borrows the cadence of moral diagnosis: not “pride,” not “patriotism,” but delusion and hatred - sins with social lives. The subtext is a warning to liberal modernity: if nations are built on fictions and enmities, they will keep demanding rituals of loyalty and periodic sacrifices, especially when the myths start to fray. The wit is chilly: he doesn’t argue against nations so much as expose their emotional fuel source.