I hate the idea of causes, and if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.

Forster made this remark in an essay written during the Second World War, when questions of loyalty, patriotism, and ideological “causes” were intensely pressured by wartime mobilization and propaganda. A liberal humanist and skeptic of mass movements, he was wary of abstract principles that demand personal sacrifice and can justify cruelty. In the essay he contrasts allegiance to impersonal entities (nation, party, cause) with the concrete claims of personal relationships and private conscience. The line became one of Forster’s most quoted provocations, often cited in debates about civil liberties, dissent, and the moral limits of patriotism.

The statement is deliberately shocking: it reverses the expected hierarchy in which country outranks private ties. Forster is not advocating treason as a program, but dramatizing his distrust of “causes” that demand unconditional loyalty and erase individual moral judgment. By elevating friendship, he defends the primacy of personal integrity, affection, and responsibility to particular people over obedience to collective abstractions. The phrase “I hope I should have the guts” underscores that such fidelity is difficult under social pressure. The quote encapsulates Forster’s humanism: ethics begins in concrete relations, and political ideals become dangerous when they override compassion and conscience.

1) “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
2) “I hate the idea of causes, and I hope I should have the guts to betray my country rather than betray my friend.”
3) Sometimes quoted without the opening clause (“I hate the idea of causes…”) and attributed simply as: “If I had to choose… I’d betray my country.”