Some Interesting Quotes
This isn't from some list on the Internet - when I'm reading and something catches my eye, I source it and type into notepad. Feel free to fact check.
Eat your sacred cows.
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"I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race, has come in and taken their place."
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1937
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it, and if I could do it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also so that"
-- Abraham Lincoln
"Democracy is the most vile form of government ... democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
-- James Madison
"I do not intend to be a half patriot ... Either Senators are for recognizing the Communist Party for what it is, or they will continue to trip over the niceties of legal technicalities and details."
-- Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey introducing a bill to make the Communist party illegal
"I don't mean to sound sappy, but the thing that I feel most overwhelmingly is just how humbling it is to be alongside the American troops that are here. The American troops that are here, I believe from what I've seen them do, that they can do any military mission that is assigned to them, and I believe that whatever the U.S. military tries to do."
-- Rachel Maddow, July 6, 2010
"Whether you were for it or against it or whatever your opinions of it are to date, every American ought to be pulling for this mission [the invasion of Iraq] to succeed."
-- Bill Clinton, December 7, 2005
"America has never fought a war against a democracy, and our closest friends are governments that protect the rights of their citizens."
-- Barack Obama, December 10, 2009
"Whether we like it or not, we most go on slaughtering the natives in English fashion, and taking what muddy glory lies in wholesale killing til they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow."
-- New York Tribune editorial, 1899
“The execution of Saddam Hussein was an opportunity to set the world a good example of civilized behaviour."
-- Richard Dawkins, January 3, 2007
"When the United States leads, the United Nations will follow. When it suits our interest to do so, we will do so. When it does not suit our interests, we will not."
-- John Bolton, future U.N. Ambassador, 1994
"It is alarming and also nauseating to see Mr. Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer of the type well-known in the East, now posing as a fakir, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal palace to parley on equal terms with the representative of the King-Emperor."
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1931, commenting on Mahatma Gandhi's meeting with the Viceroy of India
"The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war."
-- John F. Kennedy. Address at The American University, Washington D.C. (10 June 1963)
"If America wants concessions, she must fight for them. We must purchase our power with our blood."
-- James Monroe (attr.)
"Whenever you have an efficient government you have a dictatorship."
-- Harry S Truman, lecture at Columbia University, 28 April 1959
"President Bush and his secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, are transforming American policy in this realm, and while some of the implementation has been spotty, the general thrust is clear and laudable."
-- Fareed Zakaria, June 6, 2005
“The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.”
-- Thomas Friedman, New York Times op-ed, Nov. 30, 2003
"I am quite satisfied with my views on India, and I don't want them disturbed by any bloody Indians."
-- Sir Winston Churchill, 1947
"The United States is good. We try to do our best everywhere."
-- Madeleine Albright, October 23, 1999
"America must always be the world's paramount military power"
-- John Kerry, May 27, 2004
"One may dislike Hitler's system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as indomitable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."
-- Sir Winston Churchill, as quoted in The Strand Magazine (November 1935)
