A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbours.

Inge reduces national identity to two corrosive ingredients: a flattering fiction about shared origins (“a delusion about its ancestry”) and an external enemy (“a common hatred of its neighbours”). The point is not that nations have no real history, but that national cohesion often depends on selective memory—myths of purity, antiquity, or destiny—paired with antagonism that sharpens in-group solidarity. The aphorism is a critique of nationalism as an emotional and moral project: it binds people less by civic principles than by imagined kinship and hostility. Its sting lies in implying that what feels like patriotic unity may be built on error and resentment rather than truth and ethical commitment.