Ambassadors of the United States

"The problem of cat versus bird is as old as time. If we attempt to resolve it by legislation who knows but what we may be called upon to take sides as well in the age old problems of dog versus cat, bird versus bird, or even bird versus worm. In my opinion, the State of Illinois and its local governing bodies already have enough to do without trying to control feline delinquency. For these reasons, and not because I love birds the less or cats the more, I veto and withhold my approval from Senate Bill No. 93."

"The whole notion of loyalty inquisitions is a national characteristic of the police state, not of democracy. The history of Soviet Russia is a modern example of this ancient practice. I must, in good conscience, protest against any unnecessary suppression of our rights as free men. We must not burn down the house to kill the rats."

"Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice."

"Words calculated to catch everyone may catch no one."

"What counts now is not just what we are against, but what we are for. Who leads us is less important than what leads us — what convictions, what courage, what faith — win or lose. A man doesn't save a century, or a civilization, but a militant party wedded to a principle can."

"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each."

"We talk a great deal about patriotism. What do we mean by patriotism in the context of our times? I venture to suggest that what we mean is a sense of national responsibility which will enable America to remain master of her power — to walk with it in serenity and wisdom, with self-respect and the respect of all mankind; a patriotism that puts country ahead of self; a patriotism which is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime. The dedication of a lifetime — these are words that are easy to utter, but this is a mighty assignment. For it is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."

"True Patriotism, it seems to me, is based on tolerance and a large measure of humility."

"The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often sinister threats to the bill of rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak, of anti-communism."

"The strange alchemy of time has somehow converted the Democrats into the truly conservative party of this country — the party dedicated to conserving all that is best, and building solidly and safely on these foundations. The Republicans, by contrast, are behaving like the radical party — the party of the reckless and the embittered, bent on dismantling institutions which have been built solidly into our social fabric. . . . Our social-security system and our Democratic Party's sponsorship of the social reforms and advances of the past two decades — conservatism at its best. Certainly there could be nothing more conservative than to change when change is due, to reduce tensions and wants by wise changes, rather than to stand pat stubbornly, until, like King Canute, we are engulfed by relentless forces that will always go too far."

"Do you remember that in classical times when Cicero had finished speaking, the people said, "How well he spoke"; but when Demosthenes had finished speaking, they said, "Let us march.""

"It was always accounted a virtue in a man to love his country. With us it is now something more than a virtue. It is a necessity. When an American says that he loves his country, he means not only that he loves the New England hills, the prairies glistening in the sun, the wide and rising plains, the great mountains, and the sea. He means that he loves an inner air, an inner light in which freedom lives and in which a man can draw the breath of self-respect. Men who have offered their lives for their country know that patriotism is not the fear of something; it is the love of something."

"The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions. But there is also, it seems to me, a moment at which democracy must prove its capacity to act. Every man has a right to be heard; but no man has the right to strangle democracy with a single set of vocal cords."

"Laws are never as effective as habits."

"Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them."

"A hungry man is not a free man."

"The time to stop a revolution is at the beginning, not the end."

"I have been thinking that I would make a proposition to my Republican friends... that if they will stop telling lies about the Democrats, we will stop telling the truth about them."

"Public confidence in the integrity of the Government is indispensable to faith in democracy; and when we lose faith in the system, we have lost faith in everything we fight and spend for."

"In the tragic days of Mussolini, the trains in Italy ran on time as never before and I am told in their way, their horrible way, that the Nazi concentration-camp system in Germany was a model of horrible efficiency. The really basic thing in government is policy. Bad administration, to be sure, can destroy good policy, but good administration can never save bad policy."

"There is no evil in the atom, only in men's souls."

"We can chart our future clearly and wisely only when we know the path which has led to the present."

"To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines—to realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen—human companionship on the job, and music in the home—to be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father—to know these things is to understand what American labor means."

"In America any boy may become President, and I suppose it's just one of the risks he takes."

"As citizens of this democracy, you are the rulers and the ruled, the law-givers and the law-abiding, the beginning and the end. Democracy is a high privilege, but it is also a heavy responsibility whose shadow stalks, although you may never walk in the sun."

"Nature is indifferent to the survival of the human species, including Americans."

"Understanding human needs is half the job of meeting them."

"The Republicans have a "me too" candidate running on a "yes but" platform, advised by a "has been" staff."

"My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular."

"Nothing so dates a man as to decry the younger generation."

"If we value the pursuit of knowledge, we must be free to follow wherever that search may lead us. The free mind is not a barking dog, to be tethered on a ten-foot chain."

"I do not believe it is man's destiny to compress this once boundless earth into a small neighborhood, the better to destroy it. Nor do I believe it is in the nature of man to strike eternally at the image of himself, and therefore of God. I profoundly believe that there is on this horizon, as yet only dimly perceived, a new dawn of conscience. In that purer light, people will come to see themselves in each other, which is to say they will make themselves known to one another by their similarities rather than by their differences. Man's knowledge of things will begin to be matched by man's knowledge of self. The significance of a smaller world will be measured not in terms of military advantage, but in terms of advantage for the human community. It will be the triumph of the heartbeat over the drumbeat. These are my beliefs and I hold them deeply, but they would be without any inner meaning for me unless I felt that they were also the deep beliefs of human beings everywhere. And the proof of this, to my mind, is the very existence of the United Nations."

"The early years of the United Nations have been difficult ones, but what did we expect? That peace would drift down from the skies like soft snow? That there would be no ordeal, no anguish, no testing, in this greatest of all human undertakings? Any great institution or idea must suffer its pains of birth and growth. We will not lose faith in the United Nations. We see it as a living thing and we will work and pray for its full growth and development. We want it to become what it was intended to be — a world society of nations under law, not merely law backed by force, but law backed by justice and popular consent."

"I have said what I meant and meant what I said. I have not done as well as I should like to have done, but I have done my best, frankly and forthrightly; no man can do more, and you are entitled to no less."

"It is an ancient political vehicle, held together by soft soap and hunger and with front-seat drivers and back-seat drivers contradicting each other in a bedlam of voices, shouting "go right" and "go left" at the same time."

"A funny thing happened to me on the way to the White House..."

"What do I believe? As an American I believe in generosity, in liberty, in the rights of man. These are social and political faiths that are part of me, as they are, I suppose, part of all of us. Such beliefs are easy to express. But part of me too is my relation to all life, my religion. And this is not so easy to talk about. Religious experience is highly intimate and, for me, ready words are not at hand. I am profoundly aware of the magnitude of the universe, that all is ruled by law, including my finite person. I believe in the infinite wisdom that envelops and embraces me and from which I take direction, purpose, strength."

"I wonder if the chief cause of discord in human affairs is not so much the undesirable nature of beliefs as it is the fighting for them, the competitive indoctrination among them. I believe in liberalism, in individualism, in freedom of conscience. And if there is anything that the whole idea of liberalism contradicts, it is the notion of competitive indoctrination. So I believe that if we really want human brotherhood to spread and increase until it makes life safe and sane, we must also be certain that there is no one true faith or path by which it may spread. Difference is in the nature of life; it is part of our moral universe. Without difference, life would become lifeless. So I reject the idea of conformity, compulsory or complacent, the faith that is swallowed like pills, whole and at once, with no questions asked."

"I believe in helping ourselves and others to see the possibilities in viewpoints other than one’s own, in urging the fullest, the most vigorous use of critical self-examination. Thus, we can learn to unite in our common search for the truth within a better and a happier world. The basic faith in liberty of conscience is by no means exclusive with us. But I believe we are its ordained guardians in this age of assault and anxiety, when so many seem to believe their doubts and to doubt their beliefs. Finally, I should like to live and not just believe these strong words of faith in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians: “Stand fast, therefore, in the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free and not be entangled with the yoke of bondage."

"A wise man does not try to hurry history. Many wars have been avoided by patience and many have been precipitated by reckless haste."

"Those who corrupt the public mind are just as evil as those who steal from the public purse."

"I have tried to talk about the issues in this campaign... But, strangely enough, my friends, this road has been a lonely road because I never meet anybody coming the other way."

"Well, speaking as a Christian, I would like to say that I find the Apostle Paul appealing and the Apostle Peale appalling."

"The Republican party makes even its young men seem old; the Democratic Party makes even its old men seem young."

"Many of the world’s troubles are not due just to Russia or communism. They would be with us in any event because we live in an era of revolution—the revolution of rising expectations. In Asia, the masses now count for something. Tomorrow, they will count for more. And, for better or for worse, the future belongs to those who understand the hopes and fears of masses in ferment. The new nations want independence, including the inalienable able right to make their own mistakes. The people want respect—and something to eat every day. And they want something better for their children."

"He who slings mud generally loses ground."

"What a man knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty is, for the most part, incommunicable. The laws, the aphorisms, the generalizations, the universal truths, the parables and the old saws — all of the observations about life which can be communicated handily in ready, verbal packages — are as well known to a man at twenty who has been attentive as to a man at fifty. He has been told them all, he has read them all, and he has probably repeated them all before he graduates from college; but he has not lived them all. What he knows at fifty that he did not know at twenty boils down to something like this: The knowledge he has acquired with age is not the knowledge of formulas, or forms of words, but of people, places, actions — a knowledge not gained by words but by touch, sight, sound, victories, failures, sleeplessness, devotion, love — the human experiences and emotions of this earth and of oneself and other men; and perhaps, too, a little faith, and a little reverence for things you cannot see."

"All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions. All change is the result of a change in the contemporary state of mind. Don't be afraid of being out of tune with your environment, and above all pray God that you are not afraid to live, to live hard and fast. To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. You'll have more fun, you'll do more and you'll get more, you'll give more satisfaction the more you know, the more you have worked, and the more you have lived. For yours is a great adventure at a stirring time in the annals of men."

"Unreason and anti-intellectualism abominate thought. Thinking implies disagreement; and disagreement implies nonconformity; and nonconformity implies heresy; and heresy implies disloyalty—so, obviously, thinking must be stopped. But shouting is not a substitute for thinking and reason is not the subversion but the salvation of freedom."

"In matters of national security emotion is no substitute for intelligence, nor rigidity for prudence. To act coolly, intelligently and prudently in perilous circumstances is the test of a man — and also a nation."

"We mean by "politics" the people's business — the most important business there is."

"Some of us worship in churches, some in synagogues, some on golf courses … yet we are all children of the same Judaic-Christian civilization, with much the same religious background basically."

"We hear the Secretary of State boasting of his brinkmanship — the art of bringing us to the edge of the abyss."

"The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like box tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."

"There is a new America every morning when we wake up. It is upon us whether we will it or not. The new America is the sum of many small changes — a new subdivision here, a new school there, a new industry where there had been swampland — changes that add up to a broad transformation of our lives. Our task is to guide these changes. For, though change is inevitable, change for the better is a full-time job."

"Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. But I say to you that it is not America."

"I'm not an old, experienced hand at politics. But I am now seasoned enough to have learned that the hardest thing about any political campaign is how to win without proving that you are unworthy of winning."

"I have learned that In quiet places, reason abounds, that in quiet people there is vision and purpose, that many things are revealed to the humble that are hidden from the great."

"Fill the moral vacuum, the rational vacuum, we must; reconvert a population soaked in the spirit of materialism to the spirit of humanism we must, or bit by bit we too will take on the visage of our enemy, the neo-heathens."

"Men may be born free; they cannot be born wise; and it is the duty of the university to make the free wise."

"Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be."

"We live in a time when automation is ushering in a second industrial revolution, and the powers of the atom are about to be harnessed for ever greater production. We live at a time when even the ancient spectre of hunger is vanishing. This is the age of abundance! Never in history has there been such an opportunity to show what we can do to improve the quality of living now that the old, terrible, grinding anxieties of daily bread, of shelter and raiment are disappearing."

"We must recover the element of quality in our traditional pursuit of equality. We must not, in opening our schools to everyone, confuse the idea that all should have equal chance with the notion that all have equal endowments."

"Respect for intellectual excellence, the restoration of vigor and discipline to our ideas of study, curricula which aim at strengthening intellectual fiber and stretching the power of young minds, personal commitment and responsibility — these are the preconditions of educational recovery in America today; and, I believe, they have always been the preconditions of happiness and sanity for the human race."

"You will find that the truth is often unpopular and the contest between agreeable fancy and disagreeable fact is unequal. For, in the vernacular, we Americans are suckers for good news."

"Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set."

"With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?"

"The elephant has a thick skin, a head full of ivory, and as everyone who has seen a circus parade knows, proceeds best by grasping the tail of its predecessor."

"We have confused the free with the free and easy."

"The first principle of a free society is an untrammeled flow of words in an open forum."

"She would rather light a candle than curse the darkness, and her glow has warmed the world."

"You are in the courtroom of world opinion…. All right, sir, let me ask you one simple question: Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no — don't wait for the translation — yes or no?" [The Soviet representative refuses to answer.] "You can answer yes or no. You have denied they exist. I want to know if I understood you correctly. I am prepared to wait for my answer until hell freezes over, if that's your decision. And I am also prepared to present the evidence in this room."

"Happily for us, students have not tried to overthrow the Government of the United States, but they certainly are making their views felt in public affairs. I think especially of the participation of American students in the great struggle to advance civil and human rights in America. Indeed, even a jail sentence is no longer a dishonor but a proud achievement."

"It will be helpful in our mutual objective to allow every man in America to look his neighbor in the face and see a man — not a color."

"For my part I believe in the forgiveness of sin and the redemption of ignorance."

"After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention."

"She thought of herself as an ugly duckling, but she walked in beauty in the ghettos of the world, bringing with her the reminder of her beloved St. Francis, "It is in the giving that we receive." And wherever she walked beauty was forever there."

"A politician is a statesman who approaches every question with an open mouth."

"Nixon is the kind of politician who would cut down a redwood tree, then mount the stump for a speech on conservation."

"The Republicans stroke platitudes until they purr like epigrams."

"An editor is someone who separates the wheat from the chaff and then prints the chaff."

"The great aristocrat, the beloved leader, the profound historian, the gifted painter, the superb politician, the lord of language, the orator, the wit—yes, and the dedicated bricklayer—behind all of them was a simple man of faith, steadfast in defeat, generous in victory, resigned in age, trusting in a loving providence, and committing his achievements and his triumphs to a higher power."

"A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol."

"We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave — to the ancient enemies of man — half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all."

"On this shrunken globe men can no longer live as strangers. Men can war against each other as hostile neighbors, as we are determined not to do; or they can co-exist in frigid isolation, as we are doing. But our prayer is that men everywhere will learn, finally, to live as brothers, to respect each other's differences, to heal each other's wounds, to promote each other's progress, and to benefit from each other's knowledge."

"Because we believe in the free mind we are also fighting those who, in the name of anti-Communism, would assail the community of freedom itself."

"You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad."

"A beauty is a woman you notice; a charmer is one who notices you."

"There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody."

"There are worse things than losing an election; the worst thing is to lose one's convictions and not tell the people the truth."

"The best reason I can think of for not running for President of the United States is that you have to shave twice a day."

"I am a lawyer. I think that one of the most fundamental responsibilities, not only of every citizen, but particularly of lawyers, is to give testimony in a court of law, to give it honestly and willingly, and it will be a very unhappy day for Anglo-Saxon justice when a man, even a man in public life, is too timid to state what he knows and what he has heard about a defendant in a criminal trial for fear that defendant might be convicted. That would to me be the ultimate timidity."

"The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small."

"Accuracy to a newspaper is what virtue is to a lady; but a newspaper can always print a retraction."

"Peace is the one condition of survival in this nuclear age."

"The art of government has grown from its seeds in the tiny city-states of Greece to become the political mode of half the world. So let us dream of a world in which all states, great and small, work together for the peaceful flowering of the republic of man."

"I can't say that I love it with a fierce passion — indeed as a profession it's rather disappointing since it is not a profession at all, but rather a business service station and repair shop."

"Some people approach every problem with an open mouth."

"An Independent is someone who wants to take the politics out of politics."

"It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse."

"Never run against a war hero."

"The whole basis of the United Nations is the right of all nations great or small — to have weight, to have a vote, to be attended to, to be a part of the twentieth century."

"Communism is the death of the soul. It is the organization of total conformity — in short, of tyranny — and it is committed to making tyranny universal."

"Whenever I hear one of these old guard leaders on the other side talking about cutting taxes, when he knows it means weakening the nation, I always think of that story about the tired old capitalist who was driving alone in his car one day, and finally, he said "James, drive over the bluff; I want to commit suicide.""

"Ignorance is stubborn and prejudice dies hard."

"I have sometimes said that flattery is all right, Mr. President, if you don't inhale it."

"Some war hero is always getting in my way."

"Gentlemen, there is business before your house and I propose to get right to it, obeying, as far as I can, what seems to me becoming to be known as the Republican law of gravity."

"I think that one of our most important tasks is to convince others that there's nothing to fear in difference; that difference, in fact, is one of the healthiest and most invigorating of human characteristics without which life would become meaningless. Here lies the power of the liberal way: not in making the whole world Unitarian, but in helping ourselves and others to see some of the possibilities inherent in viewpoints other than one's own; in encouraging the free interchange of ideas; in welcoming fresh approaches to the problems of life; in urging the fullest, most vigorous use of critical self-examination."

"Freedom rings where opinions clash."

"That's not enough, madam; we need a majority!"

"Saskatchewan is much like Texas — except it's more friendly to the United States."

"The human race has improved everything but the human race."

"That which seems the height of absurdity in one generation often becomes the height of wisdom in the next."

"Man is a strange animal. He generally cannot read the handwriting on the wall until his back is up against it."

"Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging."

"Moving among wretched people in mean places, as I often saw him do, he had the impulses of a saint but not the serenity."

"Adlai Stevenson squats to piss."

"He was one of the most admired men of his time — and one of the most perplexing, a paradox within himself. Twice he sought his nation's highest office; yet he always thought of the presidency as a "dread responsibility." He was a politician without a politician's ways; instead of grinning gamely when, during one of his campaigns, a little girl handed him a stuffed baby alligator, Stevenson could only gape and exclaim, "For Christ's sake, what's this?" He was a man of rare humor, often expressed in self-deprecating terms. Responding to criticism that he was too intellectual, that he talked over the heads of the voters, he tossed out a Latinism: Via ovum cranium difficilis est (The way of the egghead is hard)."

"He had that quality for which the Africans, who know how to appreciate it, have found a special term. "Nommo" is the Bantu word for the gift of making life rather larger and more vivid for everyone else."

"Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

"Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me. In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."

"For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival."

"In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a white paper asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation."

"Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government. The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

"I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons."

"What he calls a "smear campaign" against the couple has catalyzed his transformation from nonpartisan diplomat — he worked closely with the first President Bush and his top aides during the first gulf war — to anti-Bush activist. … To have such a carefully nurtured identity shattered in a single stroke was traumatic, Mr. Wilson said. "Your whole network of personal relationships over 20 years are compromised," he said. … Despite conservatives' efforts to portray him as a left-wing extremist, he insisted he remained a centrist at heart. But after his tangle with the current administration, he admits "it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher.""

"Make no mistake, the point of cutting the personal income tax and the capital gains cut is to send an unmistakable message to business."

"John McCain may pay hundreds of dollars for his shoes, but we're the ones who will pay for his flip-flops."

"[President Nixon], in the face of a vote to impeach he might try, as "commander-in-chief", to use military forces to keep himself in power."

"We must reverse this psychology (of needing guns for home defense). We can do it by passing a law that says anyone found in possession of a handgun except a legitimate officer of the law goes to jail- period!"

"David Brinkley: Suppose somebody was breaking into your house at night, and you didn't have a gun. Wouldn't you wish you had one? Sam Donaldson: No, I'd call the police immediately, I'd slam the doors, I'd cower under the bed, or in the closet... Brinkley: George? George Will: I'd call Carl Rowan."

"Our country is wallowing in a miasma of political and class conflict, of greed and special interest, with regard to budget deficits, inflation and rising unemployment, the threats of both a bloody war and a devastating recession. How did we get into this mess? Because the press, during the 1980s committed one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. The media took a dive, caved in, and did not tell the American people the price they would eventually pay for Reaganomics."

"Clarence Thomas is the best only at his ability to bootlick for Ronald Reagan and George Bush... They didn't pick him because he was black. They picked him because he's a black conservative. And the thing that bothers me about his appointment -- if they had put David Duke on, I wouldn't scream as much because they would look at David Duke and reject him for what he is. If you gave Clarence Thomas a little flour on his face, you'd think you had David Duke talking."

"You don't really talk about it in terms of the U.N., you talk about it in terms of the United States and the Soviet Union. If you cannot, by diplomacy, bring the Soviet Union into an alliance with the U.S. to stop this situation it is not going to be stopped."

"Don't count out Marian Wright Edelman, because there is talk that President Clinton may want to shock the nation by putting a real black on the Supreme Court."

"Unless Gingrich and Dole and the Republicans say, ‘Am I inflaming a bunch of nuts?’, you know we're going to have some more events (like the Oklahoma City bombing). I am absolutely certain the harsher rhetoric of the Gingriches and the Doles … creates a climate of violence in America."

"A lot of the blood of America's race war victims will be on the hands and bloated bodies of Rush Limbaugh and Howard Stern."

"(Ronald Reagan is) the President who is more responsible than any for the fact that white racism is both tolerated and even fashionable again in America."

"for every Farrakhan who riles and poisons black America, there are twenty white bigots who seek to take us into organized murder and mayhem."

"(the effort to abolish affirmative action) is led mostly by conscienceless politicians, publicity-seeking bigots, whites with individual gripes who find it easy to make trouble in a litigious society, and a handful of blacks who harbor doubts about their own intellectual merits."

"(If America abandons affirmative action, the country will take a giant step towards race war because there are) armies of raging blacks and furious Hispanics who would go ballistic over effectuation of the proposed campaigns to roll back the meager gains that nonwhites have made in America during a cruel century."

"The Federal courts . . . surrendered to racist mob psychology as cravenly as any law officer ever did in the Reconstruction South under pressure from a lynch mob. Suddenly, mass bigotry was more dominant in the so called halls of justice in 1995 than it had been in 1955."

"probably 95 percent of ‘white’ Americans have some ‘Negroid blood.’"

"(T)he upsurge of violent racism in armed groups in America involves more than the United States Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. It now includes every police force in any city and county in America, the National Guard, federal agencies, and even some private ‘protective’ groups."

"I knew that the stories of the two murders would immediately grab the glands of millions of American white men, prejudicing them in ways they would never admit publicly. . . . (It) would enliven the insecurities of millions of white male psyches. The old college girl's chant, “Once you go black you never go back!” surely would take on feverish new meaning."

"A black friend of morbid wit said to me, ‘Doesn't O.J. know that we can f*** 'em now but we still can't kill 'em?’ . . ."

"Black people would in private say that Nicole was ‘white trash,’ using her blond hair, her big breasts, her teenage pussy to woo a famous, rich, middle-aged black man away from the black woman who had sustained and nurtured him through the toughest years of his life."

"Civilization? I'll stay right here [in the Congo]!"

"I am a wife-made man."

"I became an entertainer not because I wanted to but because I was meant to."

"I can't say what Danny Kaye is like in private life. There are too many of them."

"I can say what Danny Kaye is like in real life. He's nice and gentle but he has a bit of a mean streak."

"[E]xclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"The older we get the less afraid we are."

"I would like to grow less afraid of dying. I am infinitely less afraid today than I was 15 or 25 years ago. I was most afraid of dying when I was 33, because I come from a Catholic family."

"If you are anxious about death, then you don't have a sense of the oneness of things—you feel that after death, you will be no more."

"When you’re addressing power, don’t expect it to crumble willingly. If you’re going to say, "Hey now, look you guys, please look at what you did and look at yourselves and punish yourselves and at least try to square this thing, right?"— well, you’ll make slower progress at that than you would expect. I mean, even the most modest expectations are going to be unfulfilled. Think about it. Today there are still people all over the world who maintain that the Holocaust didn’t happen. There are people in the United States — people among that power echelon we speak of — who maintain that all slaves were happy. There are those power symbols that always say, "Well, it was for the good of the states. It was for the cohesion of the political process." There are myriad justifications for denial. There are also people who say, "Hey, after thirty years of affirmative action, they’ve got it made. Black people — it’s their own fault if they can’t make it today." Yeah, well, of course they say that. And they say it not just about black people. They say it in every country. We did something for you people, whoever "you" are. And we think that’s quite enough now. That’s the gist of it: we’ve done something, and we think it’s enough. It may not be perfect, but it damn sure comes close to being okay. Now let us hear you applaud that for a little while. And thank us. And you can take that hat off your head when you come in here thanking us. That’s the way it is. But let’s not get stuck there. We have miles to go before we sleep. We have lots to do, and some things just aren’t going to get done, you know?"

"A lot of black leaders, along with a lot of sympathetic white people, would say it’s too early in this country for forgiveness. We haven’t dealt with accountability yet, admission of guilt yet. And we certainly don’t have equality yet. But among the things that we must try to get done is the nurturing of a civilized, fair, principled, humane society. Now, if a part of that nurturing — part of the movement toward it, some of the efforts spent in that direction — would bring us to a new understanding, a new acceptance, even some forgiveness, what then? And not just forgiveness from the people who’ve been wronged. Forgiveness works two ways, in most instances. People have to forgive themselves too. The powerful have to forgive themselves for their behavior. That should be a sacred process."

"Compassion for other human beings has to extend to the society that’s been grinding the powerless under its heel. The more civilized the society becomes, the more humane it becomes; the more it can see its own humanity, the more it sees the ways in which its humanity has been behaving inhumanly. This injustice of the world inspires a rage so intense that to express it fully would require homicidal action; it’s self-destructive, destroy-the-world rage. Simply put, I’ve learned that I must find positive outlets for anger or it will destroy me. I have to try to find a way to channel that anger to the positive, and the highest positive is forgiveness."

"The great disease of mankind is ignorance. With knowledge you can grasp tight a belief: that you can be better, that the world can be better. With that, you can claim hope. Hope is the eternal tool in the survival kit for mankind. We hope for a little luck, we hope for a better tomorrow, we hope — although it is an impossible hope — to somehow get out of this world alive. And if we can't and don't, then it is enough to rejoice in our short time here and to remember how much we loved the view."

"The country is going through a crisis and I've been thrown up as this kind of public figure because I'm the top Negro writer in the country-whatever that means. It's like Sidney Poitier being America's only Negro movie star. That's the country's fault, not ours. But I'm still trying to speak just for me, not for twenty million people."

"let's face it, I am a Negro writer. Sidney Poitier, you know, is not simply an actor; he's a Negro actor. He's not simply a movie star; he's the only Negro movie star. And because he is in the position that he is in, he has obligations that Tony Curtis will never have. And it has made Sidney a remarkable man."

"Give me three days and three nights of hard fighting, and you will be relieved."

"I have been among the officers who have said that a large land war in Asia is the last thing we should undertake. Most of us, when we use that term, are thinking about getting into a land war against Red China. That's the only power in Asia which would require us to use forces in very large numbers. I was slow in joining with those who recommended the introduction of ground forces in South Vietnam. But it became perfectly clear that because of the rate of infiltration from North Vietnam to South Vietnam something had to be done."

"We all have a share in it, and none of it is good. There are no heroes, just bums. I include myself in that."

"First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous."

"For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?"

"The atomic explosions over Hiroshima and Nagasaki provided a new case for the decisive character of strategic bombing. The atomic bomb offered air power a new weapon with tremendously increased destructiveness and encouraged once more the belief that an ultimate weapon was in the hands of our Air Force which would allow the United States to impose a sort of Pax Americana on the world. The corollary to this belief was that conventional military forces would have little or no value in the new era."

"Nuclear weapons began to exert an important influence on military policy immediately following World War II, although their capabilities, limitations, and political implications were only vaguely understood. But it seemed clear they they represented destructiveness at a cheap price. This point was important because of the need to replace the armed forces demobilized so thoroughly and wastefully at the end of World War II in the furor to "bring the boys home." To have rebuilt similar forces in the succeeding years would have been costly both in dollars and in political "face." Neither the Truman administration nor the American people were prepared to foot such a bill, particularly that part of the program which would have been a tacit admission of lack of foresight. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the idea of relying on nuclear weapons and strategic bombing for national defense had great appeal. Such a military program appeared to offer us a way out of fighting dirty, costly wars with Communist masses on the ground. It was a way to meet manpower with mechanical power. Its apparent cheapness gave rise to the slogan, "More bang for a buck." But this reliance on Massive Retaliation overlooked the fact that atomic bangs could eventually be bought for rubles as well as dollars."

"In such a postwar climate, it was probably natural for the U.S. to do most of its defense spending for air power and atomic weapon systems. It is true that current events, such as the Communist-led civil war in Greece, the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia and the Russian blockade of Berlin, should have been reminders of the need to meet challenges to which the Atomic bomb would be no reply. However, the lesson, if perceived, was not effective and conventional forces were sacrificed to the needs of atomic power."

"But the problem of a Chief of Staff in Washington is not that simple. In the military service, an officer is not hailed before an outside authority and therefore required to indicate the advice which he had originally given his commanding general and to explain his reasons therefore. This is the position of the Chief of Staff before a Congressional committee. No sooner has he read his prepared statement supporting the position of the Defense Department than he must face a battery of interrogators bent on bringing forth his original views and contrasting them with the ultimate position of the Secretary of Defense and of the President. Very shortly a Chief of Staff will find himself in the position either of appearing to oppose his civilian superiors or of withholding facts from the Congress. Personally, I have found no way of coping with the situation other than by replying frankly to questions and letting the chips fall where they may."

"It is hard to suggest a remedy for this situation, which is one no military man enjoys. One alternative would be to refuse to permit military officers to appear before Congress and leave the defense of military matters to the civilian secretaries. This is the solution followed in Great Britain and many European countries. I doubt that it will ever be accepted in the United States, where the COngress wants to hear the facts from military men who presumably are without political motivation. A second alternative would be to take the position that the advice of the Chiefs of Staff to their civilian superiors is privileged and not to be revealed under Congressional interrogation. Thus far the Executive authority has not seen fit to raise the storm such a stand would create."

"Both of these alternatives would have the disadvantage of depriving Congress of responsible military advice needed to discharge its constitutional responsibilities toward the armed forces. Each year the matters of national security are becoming increasingly complicated and technical, yet the members of Congress must legislate wisely with respect to them. To whom can they turn other than to the Chiefs of Staff, who are responsible for our national defense? To deprive them of access to the views of the Chiefs of Staff would inevitably force them to seek irresponsible sources of advice, to the probable detriment of their legislative actions."

"All these actions will require sacrifice on the part of every one of us if we are to get over this dangerous period without intolerable risk. The simplest form of this sacrifice would be the payment of more taxes to support a larger defense budget. It is difficult to estimate how much money will be required to close the gap of our inferiority at the maximum possible rate, but I would suggest that we are talking in terms of a budget between $50 and $55 billion a year for the next five years. Once the gap is closed, subsequent budgets will not need be so high. This requirement for a bigger budget will exist regardless of any transitory shift in Soviet attitude and behavior. There is no living with communism as an inferior."

"Our military behavior must be visibly consistent with our conduct in the political, economic, and international fields. Our strategic readjustments should not be mistaken for a new spurt in an armament race with the USSR. Any serious imbalance in military power between East and West is an encouragement to war- if it favors the Communist dictatorship. Actions to correct an imbalance of power and to replace the concept of Massive Retaliation by one of Flexible Response are measures conducive not to war but to world peace. Such are the notes to be sounded by confident leaders who know what they are doing and why. Then we can prepare ourselves calmly to the battle, knowing that if it is properly prepared, the odds are high for peace."

"Our adversaries have a determination which has existed since at least 1954 to absorb South Vietnam into a Communist state against the will of the vast majority of the people in the South and to rule that state from Hanoi. It is a simple, straightforward objective, no ifs or ands about it. They also have collateral objectives which in the long run may be equally as important to us, such as their desire to demonstrate the invincibility of the "War of Liberation" and in the end to evict the United States from Southeast Asia."

"As we learned on the American frontier, it is impossible to plant corn outside the stockade until the Indians are driven away."

"It seems clear that if we are to avoid the pitfalls of overcommitment and the traps of those who would deplete our strength, we will need realistic, hard-boiled leaders in Washington, capable of discerning our vital interests and then of rallying our friends in their support."

"The ultimate guide to decision should be our estimate at the time of the nature and extent of the American interest. There may be good reasons to use our resources to resist a troublemaking power which commits aggression against a weak and friendly state if the subversion of that state would be a significant gain to the troublemaker or a significant loss to us. Even then, we should have a reasonably accurate and encouraging estimate of the chances of success before we act. We cannot afford to stake our world standing on a lost cause or on one with unduly high risks of failure."

"The acceptance of the legitimacy of the overt use of power comes hard in some segments of our citizenship. In some of the expressions of concern over our behavior in Vietnam, we are seeing curious aspects of our national character in this regard. They often contain a note of reluctance or of regret over the use of the vast power represented by the resources of the United States at home and abroad. In some quarters there seems to even be what amounts to a certain feeling of guilt arising from our possession of this power and an uneasiness about the morality of our conduct. One consequence of this attitude in the Vietnam situation is that our government must constantly defend its actions to critics and, in so doing, is often obliged to disclose its plans and purposes to a degree which must be vastly helpful to our opponents. Inevitably in a situation such as Vietnam, where we are using limited means to gain limited ends, it is essential to keep the adversary in doubt with regard to the full scope of our intentions."

"To Diddy, The Best Taylor Soldier"

"It was one thing to decide to go to West Point, another to get there."

"When the Armistice came back no one took time to tell us about it; November 11 was just another day of drilling on the Plain. I found out that the war was over only by courtesy of our "barrack policemen", the janitor who looked after the division of the old South Barracks where my "beast" company was quartered, who reported the war's end a couple of days after the fact."

"During my cadet years, West Point was still a military cloister, linked tenuously to the outside world by the West Shore Railway, the excursion boats on the Hudson, and a winding road leading westward into New Jersey. A cadet normally entered the Academy in July and never left it on vacation until his second Christmas. In the meantime, he led a completely regimented life, arising at six, going to bed at ten and rarely having a moment without a duty to occupy it."

"I graduated on June 13, number 4 in a class of 102. General MacArthur gave me my diploma and his "Congratulations, Mr. Taylor" was the last time I heard his voice until, as the new Chief of Staff of the Army, I called on him in the Waldorf Towers in 1956. Although he had done much for the Corps of Cadets during his superintendency, oddly enough he had never made an effort to impress his personality on the cadets through direct communication with them. I do not ever recall his having made a speech to us and only a few cadets were ever asked to his house. Certainly no graduate has left greater evidence of deep affection for West Point and the Corps than MacArthur, but the cadets saw little of this during his superintendency. Upon graduation I had my choice of branch of service, and I took the engineers for two unrelated but, for me, compelling reasons. The first was that Robert E. Lee had been an engineer, and the second was that the Engineer School at Camp Humphreys, Virginia, now Fort Belvoir, was conveniently near Washington where Miss Happer lived. It became the first of the long list of Army stations at which I was to serve."

"The Army which I joined in 1922 was drab and unexhilarating after West Point. Most of our citizens assumed that World War I had ended all wars and hence regarded a standing army as useful as "a chimney in summer," to use an old English phrase. Promotion was strictly by seniority, and a large bloc of contemporary officrs taken into the Regular Army at the end of the war constituted a discouraging "hump" in the promotion list just ahead of my contemporaries and me. As a result it took me thirteen years to become a captain, and such distinguished officers as Generals Gruenther, McAuliffe, Palmer, and Wedemeyer, who graduated a few years before me, took seventeen years. Under such conditions of stagnation, many of the most promising officers resigned and sought their fortune in civil life. But for some unaccountable reason a remarkable number stayed in the service to become the military leaders of World War II."

"My family and I left Yokohoma in June, 1939, in time for me to enter the Army War College in what turned out to be the last class before the school closed for World War II. As we left Japan, I would have said that war between the two countries was certainly possible but I had no premonition that it was only two years away. On the opening day of the war college, a number of senior officers from the War Department attended to welcome the new class. The first man to speak I had never seen before, but he was just as impressive at first glance as he remained in my eyes in later life- George Marshall, the new Army Chief of Staff. What he said that day I do not remember, but the way he said it, I do. General Marshall never spoke anywhere without receiving the undivided attention of every listener to the words of a man who obviously knew what he was talking about. One could never imagine questioning the accuracy of his facts or challenging the soundness of his conclusions on any subject he undertook to discuss. He did not give the impression of great brilliance of mind, as General MacArthur did, but of calm strength and unshakeable will. I was to owe much to him- my service on his staff at the outbreak of the war, later the command of a division in Europe, and assignment as the Superintendent of West Point following the war. Bu my greatest privilege was the opportunity to see General Marshall in action at close range at the outbreak of World War II."

"So I asked him why he had poled one of his fields and not the other of his small farm. His reply showed the folly of assuming rationality in human behavior. "The Germans told us farmers to pole all our fields by June 15. My cow never liked that west field so I poled it first." In this case, the whim of a French cow was the controlling factor, not the plans of the German General Staff. As I was about to go, the farmer asked me to wait a moment, went back into the house and returned with a clip of World War I rifle ammunition. He gave it to me with the injunction "Allez me tuer un Boche." ("Go kill me a German.")"

"Market-Garden was the biggest airborne operation of World War II, which is to say of all time. The D-day assault included 20,000 parachutists, some 1,500 transport planes, and about 500 gliders, and was protected by over 1,000 Allied fighters. In this D-day landing the 101st had over 400 C-47 transport aircraft and 70 gliders carrying nearly 7,000 officers and men. The remainder of the division arrived progressively by air and ship over the next six days. Our initial mission was to secure fifteen miles of highway extending from Eindhoven to Veghel and to seize and hold the bridges in the area for use of the spearhead units of the British Second Army advancing from the south. Although our objectives were scattered, I insisted on putting all the troops arriving the first day into a compact area between Zon and Veghel in order to have them within supporting distance of each other at the outset."

"Standing in the door ready to jump behind Cassidy, I saw the plane on our wing hit by ground fire and flames start licking back from the engine under the fuselage. Cassidy was so fascinated by the sight that I had to nudge him to remind him that the jump signal was on. Later I learned that the Air Force pilots of the burning plane never wavered in their steady course to the drop zone where the parachutists jumped to safety while the pilots crashed to their deaths."

"As we jumped from our plane, as far as one could see were parachutes of many colors floating gently to earth in the warm afternoon sunshine. In contrast to the scattered drop in Normandy, there were no lonely officers roaming about looking for their units- the fields were alive with American soldiers assembling their equipment and hurrying to the rendezvous points of their companies."

"Ridgway and I climbed a ladder inside the tower to the belfry, spoke to the sergeant observer there, and looked over the landscape on the German side of the river. Then Ridgway turned to the sergeant and at length asked him to put a mortar concentration on a point of woods a few hundred yards away on the German side. The sergeant, unperturbed, cranked his field telephone and spoke to someone at the mortar position in the fields behind the church. "Joe," he said, "remember the dead horse we used as an aiming point yesterday? This target is about fifty over and 100 left. Ten rounds when you're ready." The rounds were in the air almost at once, and their accuracy was impeccable; but I was far from happy about the way my sergeant had shortcut the standard methods of adjusting fire as prescribed in the mortar manual. Although an artilleryman and not the expert on infantry weapons which Ridgway was, I was sure the "dead horse" method of adjustment was not in the book."

"When the sergeant had finally got his rounds on target and I had commended to him a thorough review of the mortar manual, I climbed down the ladder and into the courtyard just in time to rendezvous with a small German shell which exploded a few yards away, raising a cloud of dust and sending me rolling with a small fragment lodged in the sitzplatz. When I opened my eyes, there was my bug-eyed sergeant hanging out the window of the belfry calling to his radio operator, "Joe, I think the Krauts got the old man in the tail." That is how I got my Purple Heart."

"A recruit arriving in a new unit feels lonely, homesick, and insecure. Someone has to welcome him when he arrives and make him understand that he is truly wanted. That responsibility is shared by every officer in the channel of command, beginning with the division commander. I made it a point to try to meet every new soldier joining the Division, usually assembling them in small groups for a handshake and an informal talk. A standard question for a new man was why he had volunteered for parachuting and whether he enjoyed it. On one occasion, a bright-eyed recruit startled me by replying to the latter question with a resounding "No, sir." "Why, then, if you don't like jumping did you volunteer to be a parachutist?" I asked. "Sir, I like to be with people who do like to jump," was the reply. I shook his hand vigorously and assured him that there were at least two of us of the same mind in the Division."

"My days in Europe with the 101st were nearly at an end. I suddenly received orders relieving me from the Division and assigning me as Superintendent of West Point. On August 22 I took an emotion-laden leave of my troops in a division review at Auxerre. For all their hard-boiled reputation, generals can be terribly sentimental about their units and their men. Standing bareheaded at the foot of the reviewing stand, I received the last salute of these gallant soldiers, their ribbons and streamers recalling our battles together. They had put stars on my shoulders and medals on my chest. I owed my future to them, and I was grateful."

"Upon assuming command, I received no special instructions or guidance from my military superiors in Washington other than an expression of strong interest on the part of General Eisenhower in the maintenance of the Honor System and in the improvement of the teaching of military leadership. Throughout my tour, I was allowed to conduct the affairs of the Academy with minimum official interference so that, if things went wrong, I had only myself to blame."

"With the opportunity to observe the problems of the President at closer range, I have come to understand the importance of an intimate, easy relationship, born of friendship and mutual regard, between the President and the Chiefs. It is particularly important in the case of the Chairman, who works more closely with the President and Secretary of Defense than do the service chiefs. The Chairman should be a true believer in the foreign policy and military strategy of the administration he serves, or, at least, feel that he and his colleagues are assured an attentive hearing those matters for which the Joint Chiefs have a responsibility. These considerations have led me to conclude that an incoming President is well advised to change the Chiefs, not with one sweep of the new broom, but progressively as he gets a chance to know the senior officers qualified for consideration and to evaluate their compatibility with his ways of thinking and acting."

"When President Kennedy sounded me out about becoming Chairman, I was of course pleased to be considered but, at the same time, felt a certain depression at the thought of returning to the bear pit of the Pentagon where I spent four less-than-happy years as Army Chief of Staff. However, I recognized that the atmosphere had changed and that the strategic heresy of Flexible Response which I had advocated to little avail had become the orthodoxy of the Kennedy Administration. Also, I had gotten to know Secretary McNamara and, in spite of the occasional differences of view, had a high regard for him as a man of decision who tackled fearlessly the tough problems of defense and refuse to yield to the temptation to sweep them under the rug."

"Elements of the information media contributed to prolonging the war by their manner of reporting the news. It required only selective reporting, not deliberate fabrication, to create the impression that we Americans were the prime aggressors bent on expanding the war to avoid impending defeat, and that our alleged successes were really defeats which officials were trying to hide from the American public. Biased reporters found no good to say about our Vietnamese allies, whom they held up to scorn in a way which led the American people to believe that our allies were not worth the sacrifices we were making in their behalf. Such selective and slanted reporting spread defeatism among the tender-minded at home and provided enormous encouragement for Hanoi to hold fast and concede nothing."

"Of course, the media did not have to manufacture dissent and antiwar feeling in the United States; there was enough of the real article to provide them with legitimate subject matter. Every war critic capable of producing a headline contributed, in proportion to his eminence, some comfort if not aid to the enemy. Unfortunately, from 1967 onward there was no shortage of eminent figures among the opponents of the war willing to make this contribution."

"We are carrying into the next decade many unresolved problems raised by Vietnam. How can a democracy such as ours defend its interests at acceptable cost and continue to enjoy the freedom of speech and behavior to which we are accustomed in time of peace? To a Communist enemy the Cold War is a total, unending conflict with the United States and its allies- without formal military hostilities, to be sure- but conducted with the same discipline and determination as a formal war. Unless we can learn to exercise some degree of self-discipline, to accept and enforce some reasonable standard of responsible civic conduct, and to remove the many self-created obstacles to the use of our power, we will be unable to meet the hard competition waiting for us in the decade of the 1970s."

"So the future depends not only on what we do but on what other powers do. Will they join in the nuclear arms race or save their resources for later, more renumerative uses? Will they increase their productivity while we succumb to inflation and its social and economic consequences? Will they live in harmony at home while we remain riven by factionalism and terrorized by crime? Most important of all, will they choose their goals wisely and pursue them relentlessly while we flounder in aimlessness or exhaust ourselves in internecine struggles? These matters are quite as important as the decline of absolute American power in determining the equilibrium of international relations in the 1970s. One thing is sure: the international challenge tends to merge more and more with the domestic challenge until the two become virtually indistinguishable. The threats from both sources are directed at the same sources of national power which provide strength both for our national security and for our domestic welfare. It is clear, I believe, that we cannot overcome abroad and fail at home, or succeed at home and succumb abroad. To progress toward the goals of our security and welfare we must advance concurrently on both foreign and domestic fronts by means of integrated national power responsive to a unified national will."

"On Christmas Day, the Germans attacked again, but fortunately for E Company on the other side of Bastogne. The following day, Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by Lt. Col. Creighton Abrams of the 37th Tank Battalion, broke through the German lines. The 101st was no longer surrounded; it now had ground communications with the American supply dumps. Soon trucks were bringing in adequate supplies of food, medicine, and ammunition. The wounded were evacuated to the rear. General Taylor returned. He inspected the front lines, according to Winters, "very briskly. His instructions before leaving us were, 'Watch those woods in front of you!' What the hell did he think we had been doing while he was in Washington?" (Winters has a thing about Taylor. In one interview he remarked, "And now you have General Taylor coming back from his Christmas vacation in Washington..." I interrupted to say, "That's not quite fair." "Isn't it?" "Well, he was ordered back to testify..." Winters cut me off: "I don't want to be fair.")"

"Taylor exhibited his imperial drive toward the client in the South in an even more obvious way than he suggested toward the enemy in the North. In an extraordinary example of imperial language, Taylor, reprimanding the Young Turks in Saigon- Ky, Thieu, Thi, and Cang- for attempting a coup in December 1964, told them: "Do all of you understand English? (Vietnamese officials indicating they did, although the understanding of General Thi was known to be weak.) I told all of you clearly at General Westmoreland's dinner, we Americans are tired of coups. Apparently, I wasted my words. Maybe this is because something is wrong with my French because you evidently did not understand. I made it clear that all military plans which I know you would like to carry out are dependent on government stability. Now you have made a real mess. We cannot carry you forever if you do things like this. Who speaks for the group? Do you have a spokesman?""

"After Christmas, General Taylor came back and took over as commander, but nobody wanted to see Taylor. Here, the guy's the commander of the 101st Airborne, and he took time off to go and have Christmas dinner in Virginia. When we found out he was in Virginia, we couldn't believe our general had left us in a spot like that, and we didn't want to hear no excuses. The guys resented it. Oh, they did, too! Nobody liked Taylor after that."

"From late May to late June, when home on R and R, Taylor had learned that the 101st would be shifted to the war in the Pacific. On rejoining the division, he toured individual units to muster support for the move. He ended one speech with: "We've licked the best that Hitler had in France and Holland and Germany. Now where do we want to go?" It inspired the only mass incident of insubordination, although jocular, faced by Maxwell Taylor as commander. His beloved Screaming Eagles screamed, "Home!"- no doubt punctuated by a few catcalls and Bronx cheers."

"Maxwell Taylor was one of the major American military figures of the twentieth century. He was more soldier than statesman. His major involvement in the American political scene was the Vietnam tragedy, in which his role was central but not decisive. His views were generally better than the views that did prevail. Had Diem not been eliminated and had American combat troops not been committed in 1965, who knows what might have been the result? The failure of Taylor in Vietnam decision making was not in what he did, but what he failed to do. Taylor possessed a vision and, more than most, the ability to communicate it. Perhaps his vision was sometimes flawed or perhaps he failed to communicate it when it really mattered- during Vietnam. Others may judge that for themselves. Of one thing I am certain: few twentieth-century Americans have lived fuller or more dedicated lives."

"On June 23, 1964, President Johnson announced the appointment of Gen. Maxwell Taylor as U.S. ambassador to Viet Nam. General Taylor was a former Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and military advisor to President Kennedy. General Taylor's appointment underscored the importance of the U.S. government attached to the military situation in South Viet Nam. This also meant that the U.S. would apply a new strategy in the fight against the Viet Cong. General Taylor, in fact, wrote a book, The Uncertain Trumpet, in which he developed what was called the strategy of "Graduated Response." This strategy would allow the U.S. to respond in kind to Communist aggression without resorting to nuclear warfare. The flexibility of this strategy would provide the U.S. with the option at any time to "proceed or not, to escalate or not, and to quicken the pace or not." General Taylor also saw Viet Nam as a welcome opportunity to test his concept of limited war. This concept was adopted by President Kennedy. Based on this concept, President Kennedy created the famous Special Forces for the specific purpose of helping Third World countries fight against what was called brush fire or unconventional warfare against Communist insurgencies."

"Unfortunately, while the 7th Division scored significant tactical successes, the country was convulsed by new political turmoil. On December 23, 1964, some young generals arrested five members of the National High Council, a body of respected politicians created in the fall of 1963 to advise and oversee the civilian government. The latter was headed at that time by Chief of State Phan Khac Suu and Prime Minister Tran Van Huong. The arrested members were accused of pro-Communist sentiments by the military. The following day, General Maxwell Taylor summoned the "Young Turks" who emerged as the new leaders of South Viet Nam and reprimanded them for having created a "real mess" in Saigon. General Taylor complained that in one year he had had to deal with five governments, meaning five different sets of senior generals and five different sets of province chiefs. It was ironic for General Taylor to complain because he was partially to blame for the next political upheaval which was to trigger the departure of General Khanh."

"In the late 1950s, when Taylor was the Army chief under the Eisenhower administration, I served in his office as the deputy secretary of the General Staff and made several official trips overseas with him. (The secretary of the General Staff at the time, then Major General William Westmoreland, coordinated the activities of the Army staff and in effect was chief of staff to the Army Chief.) General Taylor was an impressive figure, known as an intellectual, a soldier statesman, and a talented linguist. But it was an unhappy period for Taylor, who did not see eye-to-eye with the commander-in-chief or the other military chiefs as to the proper role of the Army. After he left the Army, Taylor laid out his deep misgivings about the national military establishment in a highly critical book, The Uncertain Trumpet, which caught the attention of many prominent people, including John F. Kennedy. Particularly intense and somewhat aloof during this period, Taylor appeared to those who did not know him as cold, humorless, and unbending. But he had another side- he could be friendly, a genial host, and a witty conversationalist with a well developed sense of humor. For many people, however, these more endearing qualities were not revealed until after he had retired from public life at the end of Johnson's presidency."

"Looking back at this period (1965-1967), I have often wondered why General Taylor was seemingly unable to convince President Johnson that the U.S. strategy was a losing one. Taylor had been successively President Kennedy's special adviser, chairman of the JCS, U.S. ambassador to Saigon, and President Johnson's special consultant. (Taylor calls this latter position a "lame duck" consultant, partially answering my question.) Clearly Taylor not only knew the problems and pitfalls but also was in a position to wield great influence. The nagging question, though, remains- why was he not more successful in bringing about a sounder strategic approach to the war?"

"A great transformation came over West Point. Many of the staff and faculty who had been there previously were non-combat experienced and had been called up from civilian life. Then in came the new superintendent, General Maxwell D. Taylor, who brought to the Department of Tactics a collection of the finest officers that I have ever known before, or since."

"As so often happens in history, a major war affords opportunities for leadership and prominence that infrequently occur on a comparable scale in peacetime. If one thinks of Maxwell D. Taylor only as a soldier, he certainly ranks- at least in my view- among the top dozen American military leaders in World War II. There were seven "five star" officers: Marshall, Eisenhower, King, MacArthur, Arnold, Bradley, and Nimitz. These men, each of whom was ten years older or more than Taylor, are remembered as the "great captains" who led our country to victory. Of the seven, three also earned larger places in our history. In the long reach, Marshall may be remembered even more for the reconstruction plan that bears his name than as the senior Army officer of World War II. Eisenhower, commander of the Allied forces in the war against Germany, served as President in what may be viewed as the "golden era" of the United States, when its leadership of the free world was not questioned. And MacArthur is remembered in part for his postwar role as the father of the Japanese constitution. Maxwell Taylor similarly occupies a larger place in our history. When his full career is viewed, it is clear that his service to our country, in war and peace, was the most diverse of World War II's famous generals."

"It was abundantly clear from his letters that, virtually to the end, he remained deeply interested in national and world events. Yet he never ceased to engage in self-deprecating humor. I have a file containing a decade of correspondence with my dear friend. It is a file that I will keep. Max's death on April 19 was not unexpected and I am sure he would have viewed it as merciful. At the moving funeral service at Fort Meyer, Ambassador Philip Bonsal, a respected diplomat and longtime friend of the Taylors', spoke eloquently of General Taylor's "example", and correctly said that his friendship would remain a constant treasure in the lives of all of us who knew him. His younger son Tom's superb tribute brought tears to the eyes of most of us. He emphasized the closeness of the Taylor family- a closeness not often found in the lives of the world's great leaders. It typifies the mind and spirit that I was privileged to know. Maxwell Taylor's place in history will be a large one."

"A soldier's soldier and a statesman's statesman."

"Sword and Plowshares, written three years before Saigon fell, was almost prescient in anticipating Hanoi's ability to exploit political weakness in Washington to achieve its objective. In it, Taylor characterized his country as being in a period of "declining power", its armed forces of little use in the absence of the political will to employ them when needed. He continued to downplay the threat of a nuclear war- the one form of aggression to which the United States was still prepared to respond. But he foresaw a period of diminished U.S. credibility, in which its allies, uncertain of Washington's ability to deliver on its commitments, would be increasingly vulnerable to Communist pressure."

"America tends to remember its artists and sports heroes for their triumphs; it is far less generous with its politicians and soldiers. Nevertheless, Maxwell Taylor deserves to be remembered, and to be remembered for more than being a valiant soldier and a valued presidential counselor. For his was a voice that held- when such views seemed hopelessly out of fashion- that the United States is more than a collection of interest groups; that it has enduring security requirements that it must deal with rationally; and that citizenship in twentieth-century America carries with it obligations as well as privileges."

"On December 22 the commander of German forces that had encircled Bastogne called upon Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe to surrender the 101st Airborne Division "to save the encircled U.S.A. troops from total annihilation." McAuliffe, a superb combat commander from the old army, was temporarily in command of the Screaming Eagles while General Taylor was in Washington, D.C., on official business. McAuliffe issued a monosyllabic reply: "Nuts!" to the enemy's demand for unconditional and immediate surrender. For those of us along the main line of resistance, we took quiet pride in McAuliffe's tough stance. I, for one, was happy that McAuliffe and not Taylor commanded the defense of Bastogne. While Taylor was always immaculately attired and had a regular retinue of aides and reporters in his wake, McAuliffe was a soldier's soldier who understood ground combat at the grunt level. As such, McAuliffe commanded my utmost respect."

"I decided to run to become the Lafayette township committee woman, and I served in that position for nine years. It’s probably the most grassroots neighborhood, neighbor-to-neighbor kind of politics one can do. It’s very important to keep in touch with the real people out there and to learn at the most basic level how to activate and turn out the grassroots"

"Public service, serving my community and my country, are very much a part of who I am, and I will always, always consider service of some nature to my community, and to my state and to my country. So, who knows what the future will bring."

"I was blessed by parents who had come from pretty limited, modest circumstances, and had risen to the top of their fields. My father, in the field of economics, became a governor of the Federal Reserve. My mother coming from Jamaican immigrants to Maine, rose to be a leader in the corporate world, and a person who was known as the mother of Pell Grants. So I was blessed to have parents who taught me from a very early stage that I could do what I set out to do. And while I lived in a society, you know, having been born here in Washington in the 1960s, where clearly racism and prejudice were a major factor, they taught me in a very unusual way not to allow that to diminish my own sense of self. So whether I was a rare minority in a predominantly white elite girls school here in Washington D.C., or at Stanford or Oxford where I did my graduate studies, I was accustomed to not being in any way oblivious to the fact that I was a minority. I was very conscious of that, but I didn't allow it to diminish my sense of worth and my sense of commitment to doing my best…"

"Well I was concerned, back even at that early age of not quite 28, that as an African American woman entering the field of national security and foreign policy for the first time, that if I accepted a job in African policy at that stage without having demonstrated my ability to work on a wider range of issues, I feared, I think legitimately, ... that I might well get pigeonholed in Africa. That people in this predominantly white national security establishment would see me as black working on Africa — and therefore not capable of, or suited to do, anything else. And I made that choice. Looking back on it, it was quite a bracing thing to do to turn down at that age a substantive policy job."

"I was close to President Obama and he was a target…I'm an African American woman. I don't take crap off of people. And I'm confident in my own skin… Putting all that together, put it in a political context of the campaign, and maybe I was an attractive target."

"So much for “Democracy Dies in Darkness”. This is the most hypocritical, chicken shit move from a publication that is supposed to hold people in power to account."

"There is particular danger at the moment that powerful political alignments in the United States are pushing strongly to exacerbate the developing crisis with Russia. The New York Times, which broke the story that the Kremlin had been paying the Afghan Taliban bounties to kill American soldiers, has been particularly assiduous in promoting the tale of perfidious Moscow. Initial Times coverage, which claimed that the activity had been confirmed by both intelligence sources and money tracking, was supplemented by delusional nonsense from former Obama National Security Advisor Susan Rice, who asks “Why does Trump put Russia first?” before calling for a “swift and significant U.S. response.” Rice, who is being mentioned as a possible Biden choice for Vice President, certainly knows about swift and significant as she was one of the architects of the destruction of Libya and the escalation of U.S. military and intelligence operations directed against a non-threatening Syria."

"From what I was taught at home, I already knew what I was doing and how to act and how to dress and how to speak. I came from a safe, solid home."

"Wars, segregation, everything that the entire world is going through, emotionally, mentally and physically, it’s in a sad state right now…There’s segregation going on in the States, and segregation going on in the UK. There’s segregation going on everywhere, it’s still the same."

"I’m not a marcher, I’m a doer…I believe I was the first [African American woman] to win a Grammy in the pop arena, which was basically almost designated for white people..So it was kind of unheard of. I was probably the first person in a lot of areas."

"Performing. That gratification you get when people are enjoying themselves or you see an arm go around a shoulder or somebody grab a hand. It's nice to know that you're part of that particular moment of their lives."

"Somehow, acting brings out parts of your personality that maybe you didn’t know were there, or the character brings out some little part of you that has been dormant for your whole life, you know? And then when you get the chance to play these characters, some-times things come out of you that are quite surprising and that you don’t even know are inside of you. It’s an amazing thing to experience that."

"I love simple things, I’m not really that turned on by the grandiosity of celebrity and fame. I love beautiful things... and I so appreciate all of the amazing experiences I get to have, and the finer things in life. But the things that really make me happy and re-ally touch my heart are just incredibly simple. I think I’ve always been that way my whole life."

"I never really liked too much attention, which can be good and bad, if someone gives me a compliment it just goes in one ear and out the other, and if someone says something really horrible it’s the same. I just learned not to value my self-esteem and who I am as a person on the popularity of a film or how famous I am at the time. I guess I had the perspective of how it can be there one time and not another. And life is the most exciting part, really living, you know?"

"I see and appreciate beauty in my weird little way. It’s easy to buy presents or make romantic gestures, but the more simple things demonstrate you really know someone – that’s what I find sexy and romantic. Being romantic is knowing what makes the person you love happy."

"I love being engaged, but I don’t really have a desire to get married, I always felt like marriage should be more of a reward... For surviving your relationship... I feel everyone’s got it backwards"

"I accuse Leopold's officials of tyranny, i accuse Leopold's government of excessive cruelty, ox chains eaten to the necks of prisoners and produce sores about which flies circle, the courts are aborted unjust and delinquent, not one state official knows the language of the natives, your majesties' government is engaged in slave trade, wholesale and retail."

"The United States has a special responsibility, because it introduced this African government on the International arena."

"Leopold's Congo state is guilty of crimes against humanity."

"I do believe it's very important for the government of Honduras to continue their relationship with the government of Taiwan. I think it can be beneficial, obviously. It has been in the past, and I think it will continue to be so."

"The past eight years of conflict in Ukraine have already inflicted profound and lasting harm to children. With the escalation of the conflict, the immediate and very real threat to Ukraine’s 7.5 million children has grown. Homes, schools, orphanages, and hospitals have all come under attack. Civilian infrastructure like water and sanitation facilities have been hit, leaving millions without access to safe water. For many, life has moved underground as families seek safety in shelters, subways, or basements, often for hours on end. Women are giving birth in makeshift maternity wards with limited medical supplies. Most stores are closed, making it hard for people to buy essential items, including basic necessities for children like diapers and medication. And even if stores were open, millions of people are too afraid to venture outside for food or water because of continuous shelling and shooting. The intensification of the armed conflict is posing severe human costs, which are increasing exponentially by the day."

"As the fighting has now reached densely populated areas and across the country, we expect child casualties to increase. We also expect the displacement crisis to continue growing rapidly. As of yesterday, UNHCR was reporting an excess of 1.7 million refugees fleeing to hosting countries. Half of the people on the move are children. UNICEF is working closely with UNHCR to reach them with protection and assistance in receiving countries."

"Not at all. Even during the period that the United States was out of the Paris Agreement, our companies continued to innovate. We continued to reduce our carbon output. I’m from California which has two important roles. One, it’s a state like Greece with a strong grassroots focus on the quality of the environment. It’s also a state, because it is the fifth or sixth largest economy in the world which actually has the ability to set the standards on its own in our federal system, which then ripple out across the United States and across the rest of the world. California has moved very aggressively on energy transition, very aggressively on deployment of wind power and solar, and frankly, is a perfect match for Greece because we have a very similar geography, we have a very similar climate, and we also face the same imperative to protect our climate. For me, it was so poignant that at exactly the moment that I was looking through the smoke-filled skies of Athens, I was also reading the stories from home in California where we have literally the largest fires that my home state has ever confronted, driven by exactly the same extreme weather events which are a consequence of manmade climate change."

"Perhaps more than ever, the modern world requires the Holy See's "soft power" of persuasion rather than coercion, to drive a diplomacy based on ideas and fundamental human rights—and needs to provide a possibility of conflict resolution without military intervention."

"The family of man must accept responsibility for the suffering of other members of the family. Over 150,000 bodies are buried in the foothills of Burundi. I write with a feeling of great sadness, for I see no end to the business. The work of reducing age-old hatreds and fears is long and difficult. Armenia, Ireland, Malaysia, Cyprus, Canada and Belgium comprise a sad and unended litany of horror. Perhaps there are lessons to be retrieved from the Burundi experience."

"It was very clear the key office for an ambassador is the Department of State, the Office of Foreign Affairs. So you get right down to a small number of people. My own personal style was not too over do it but to keep in touch and to be available."

"I'd say the aspect of the communism of the Chinese or Russians which wasn't marketable was the atheism. The Africans were sort of a naturally spiritual people and it was hard to communicate that."

"For some, the implementation of cultural diplomacy is not done on a playing field when all participants are free of impediments, as minor as they may seem in comparison to the past. I do not mean to imply that in these relationships we should indicate any special concern or in any way indicate a desire to compensate for the past, but these are the facts that mature and well-balanced people should be aware of and take into consideration."

"He was more than a diplomat who served as a U.S. ambassador, he was a person who was convinced that there was a way to make things better. He spent his time working to bring people together, and always with the goal for a more peaceful world. He felt that the protocols that exist in life are a way to show good manners and to be respectful of people, and it didn’t matter what political party you belonged to."

"The effectiveness of Tom Melady was enhanced by his prior experience as an ambassador in Central Africa and as a university president. He was able to move between the different interests of the Church internationally and he offered something special."

"He made a significant contribution, not only teaching, but going out of his way to mentor both students and interns."

"I am committed to interdisciplinary scholarship that crosses traditional sector lines. The Wilson Center provides an ideal setting for such work."

"Hattie Babbitt has been a distinguished public servant, and the Center is delighted that she will be joining its community of public policy scholars"

"She will be an asset for the Center, and I know many of our scholars will want to draw on her extensive experience. Her work on issues of globalization, the information technology revolution, and the U.S. response capability to these post-Cold War developments dovetails with several key themes being emphasized in the Center's ongoing work."

"His tact and firmness and his Catholic faith were of immense service to all in solving many complicated questions of these early days. He was devoted to his Church, and was very charitable but unostentatiously so. He helped many deserving students to a Catholic education."

"With the political opposition well in hand, they went after the religious groups. Now I should like to make it very clear that attack on religion is not so much a matter of conflict between church and state as between the secular religion of Marxist materialism and the traditional religion of the churches based on moral and spiritual values. It is an attack on Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and Moslem alike, and it isn't just an attack on the churches, but on all free institutions and human freedoms. It is materialism versus morality. It is violence and treachery versus order and humanity. Communist morality has been expressed in these words of Lenin, "everything is moral which is necessary for the annihilation of the old exploiting social order, and for uniting the proletariat.""