“Patriotism … is a word which always commemorates a robbery.”
—Mark Twain, Notebook, May 26, 1896
Mark Twain had a way of cutting through the fog. In his 1896 notebook, he laid bare the history of conquest with characteristic bluntness: every patch of land we call sacred was once taken from someone else. The flags we wave, he suggests, are less emblems of virtue than markers of the last successful raid.
“There isn’t a foot of land in the world which doesn’t represent the ousting and re‑ousting of a long line of successive ‘owners’ who each in turn, as ‘patriots’ with proud swelling hearts defended it against the next gang of ‘robbers’ who came to steal it and did—and became swelling‑hearted patriots in their turn.”
It’s a cynical view, but not an untrue one. Twain challenges us to see through the noble-sounding justifications that often accompany conquest. He doesn’t offer a solution—just a mirror.
Seventy-six years later, humanity launched itself beyond that mirror.
In 1972, as Apollo 17 hurtled toward the Moon, the astronauts turned their cameras back toward Earth. What they captured is now known as the Blue Marble—the first fully illuminated image of our planet, suspended in space, borderless and whole.
For the first time in history, we saw ourselves the way no patriot could: not as Americans, or Soviets, or Chinese, but as earthlings, clinging to a fragile sphere floating in the void. No lines, no walls, no flags—just one home.
That photo did something Twain could not have predicted. It collapsed the idea of us versus them under the weight of perspective. Suddenly, it was harder to justify the old tribal rivalries when you could see, with your own eyes, how thin the line was between air and space—how vulnerable we all are.
Twain’s quote remains true as a diagnosis. But the Blue Marble offers a possible prescription. Patriotism doesn’t have to be discarded—but perhaps it needs to be reimagined. Not as pride in a border, but as stewardship of a planet. Not as tribal loyalty, but as mutual responsibility.
Because from out there, it’s clear: no one owns the Earth. We all borrow it. And we all go down together if we forget that.
