Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations. 1989.
NUMBER:
346
AUTHOR:
Stephen Decatur (1779–1820)
QUOTATION:
Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
ATTRIBUTION:
STEPHEN DECATUR, toast at a dinner in Norfolk, Virginia, April 1816.—Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, Life of Stephen Decatur, p. 295 (1848).
Niles’ Weekly Register, published in Baltimore, Maryland, gave a slightly different version in its April 20, 1816, issue (p. 136). A number of the toasts at the dinner for Decatur were included, probably reprinted from a Virginia newspaper, and Decatur’s appeared as: “Our country—In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.”
