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April 10, 2026
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"I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Mannassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied. I was constrained to substitute something for it myself. And now allow me to ask "Do you really think I should permit the line from Richmond, via Mannassas Junction, to this city to be entirely open, except what resistance could be presented by less than twenty thousand unorganized troops?" This is a question which the country will not allow me to evade."
"No general surpassed him in audacity and aggressiveness. If McClellan took no risks, Lee perhaps took too many. He preferred the bold offensive, seeking in true Napoleonic fashion to destroy, not merely defeat, the enemy army. Dedicated to winning a battle of annihilation, he sometimes imprudently continued attacking beyond any reasonable prospect of success. Lee also needed to broaden his view of the war. Exhibiting a narrow parochialism, he believed Virginia was the most important war zone. He underestimated the problems Confederate commanders faced in the western and trans-Mississippi theaters and the significance of those theaters for southern survival. Yet Lee served the South well. Although costing the Confederacy dearly, his victories against great odds buoyed Confederate morale and depressed the North. Furthermore, Lee's emphasis on his native state was not entirely emotional. Richmond, the South's primary industrial center, acquired great symbolic value, and the Virginia countryside furnished men, mounts, food, and other logistical assets."
"Once he called upon General McClellan, and the President went over to the General's house — a process which I assure you has been reversed long since — and General McClellan decided he did not want to see the President, and went to bed. Lincoln's friends criticized him severely for allowing a mere General to treat him that way. And he said, "All I want out of General McClellan is a victory, and if to hold his horse will bring it, I will gladly hold his horse.""
"George Brinton McClellan had almost all of the gifts. He was young, sturdy, intelligent, and up to a certain point he was very lucky. A short man with a barrel chest, a handsome face, and the air of one who knew what all of the trumpets meant, he won (without trying much more than was necessary) the adoration and the lasting affection of some very tough fighting men who tended to be most cynical about their generals. He had too much, perhaps, and he had it too soon and too easily; life did not hammer toughness into him until it was too late, and although many men died for him, he never quite understood what their deaths meant or what he could do with their devotion. For a time he deserved his country most ably."
"I went to the White House shortly after tea where I found "the original gorilla," about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!"
"After you left, I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defence of Washington, and Manassas Junction; and part of this even, was to go to Gen. Hooker's old position. Gen. Banks' corps, once designed for Manassas Junction, was diverted, and tied up on the line of Winchester and Strausburg, and could not leave it without again exposing the upper Potomac, and the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. This presented, (or would present, when McDowell and Sumner should be gone) a great temptation to the enemy to turn back from the Rappahanock, and sack Washington. My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of Army corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected. It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell."
"Soldiers! I have heard that there was danger here. I have come to place myself at your head and to share it with you. I fear now but one thing- that you will not find foemen worthy of your steel. I know that I can rely upon you."
"And, once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow. I am powerless to help this. You will do me the justice to remember I always insisted, that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Mannassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty---that we would find the same enemy, and the same, or equal, intrenchments, at either place. The country will not fail to note---is now noting---that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy, is but the story of Manassas repeated. I beg to assure you that I have never written you, or spoken to you, in greater kindness of feeling than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you, so far as in my most anxious judgment, I consistently can. But you must act."
"Born in Pennsylvania, McClellan was thirty-five when the war began. He had been graduated from West Point in 1846, number two in his class, a magnetic and brilliant young man; he won three brevets for gallant and meritorious conduct in the Mexican War, served as War Department observer in the Crimea in the middle fifties, and then resigned from the Army, as a captain, to go into business. In business he did well, had been successful as vice-president of the growing Illinois Central Railroad, and in the spring of 1861 was president of the Eastern Division of the Ohio & Mississippi. He found himself, in the middle of May, major general of volunteers (and, a short time afterward, major general of regulars as well) commanding the Department of the Ohio- the states of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, along with a part of western Pennsylvania and the dissident section of western Virginia. It was up to him to organize and then to use the troops raised in this area, and he did these things with smooth competence."
"The facts are very, very disturbing because it looks like he was unhinged at times. And that's scary in an American president....Look, a lot of the things Donald Trump did as president I supported. But this presents a human being that is not fully in control of himself, let alone the country. If this is all accurate, then it's very, very disturbing."
"If the FBI and the CIA and 14 other intelligence agencies had been talking to each other, most of us feel that the attack would have been prevented."
"Here's the -- here's the bottom line. Someone's got to stop normalizing this conduct. OK? Now -- and now, whether or not -- whether or not you believe that the criminal charges are right or wrong, the conduct is beneath the office of President of the United States. And, you know, this is the great thing about this country. Booing is allowed, but it doesn't change the truth. It doesn't change the truth."
"Well, look, I do agree predominantly with what Governor DeSantis just laid out. I think that if you asked every one of us up here that we would agree predominantly with what he just laid out. Here is the difference. The difference is that we're going to have to work and make sure that we sell these ideas. And we able -- be able to put ourselves in a position where we get a majority of the vote, not only by winning the Congress and the Senate in '24, but also by having someone who has had the experience of doing it. Now I was elected as a conservative Republican in a blue state with 61 percent of the vote, with a Democratic legislature against me the entire time. And we still, through hard, strong decision-making, brought them around to our point of view. We cut taxes in New Jersey. We cut debt in New Jersey. We made sure that each and every time we were confronted with bad Democratic ideas we stood and stopped them. And when there were good ideas, we brought people together to make progress going forward. Truth and accountability are the things we need to do to fight waste. And I'd say the last thing is this, Bret. We cannot sit by any longer and allow the kind of spending that is going on in Washington. Because every dollar they spend is a dollar that these people are not allowed to spend on their children and their grandchildren. It's robbing our country and it's wrong."
"He was just beside himself. All he could think about was the campaign. He didn’t talk much about anything else. COVID would come into it, but really his focus was on the campaign.”"
"CHRISTIE: You -- you sit here talking about how you want to stand up for the rule of law..."
"I stood on the stage and watched Marco in rather indignantly, look at Governor Bush and say, someone told you that because we’re running for the same office, that criticizing me will get you to that office. It appears that the same someone who has been whispering in old Marco’s ear too. So the indignation that you carry on, some of the stuff, you have to also own then. So let’s set the facts straight. First of all, I didn’t support Sonia Sotomayor. Secondly, I never wrote a check to Planned Parenthood. Third, if you look at my record as governor of New Jersey, I have vetoed a 50-caliber rifle ban. I have vetoed a reduction this clip size. I vetoed a statewide I.D. system for gun owners and I pardoned, six out-of-state folks who came through our state and were arrested for owning a gun legally in another state so they never have to face charges. And on Common Core, Common Core has been eliminated in New Jersey. So listen, this is the difference between being a governor and a senator. See when you’re a senator, what you get to do is just talk and talk and talk. And you talk so much that nobody can ever keep up with what you’re saying is accurate or not. When you’re a governor, you’re held accountable for everything you do. And the people of New Jersey, I’ve seen it. And the last piece is this. I like Marco too, and two years ago, he called me a conservative reformer that New Jersey needed. That was before he was running against me. Now that he is, he’s changed his tune. I’m never going to change my tune. I like Marco Rubio. He’s a good guy, a smart guy, and he would be a heck of a lot better president than Hillary Rodham Clinton would ever be."
"Look, everybody on this stage wants to be the next president of the United States. And the only way that's going to happen is if we beat Joe Biden. I'm the only one on this stage who has every beaten a Democratic incumbent in an election. I did it in a deep blue state being outspent three to one. Beating a Democratic incumbent is not easy. The last Democratic incumbent president who was defeated was Jimmy Carter. And he was defeated by a conservative governor from a blue state who knew how to get results, who stood for the truth, who cared about accountability, and stood strong and hard against waste. Those are the very things that I did in my eight years as governor of New Jersey. And it's exactly what I'll do as president of the United States. Believe me, the Democrats want some other nominee who has never beaten a Democratic incumbent. I'm the one who can win this race. And if you give me the chance, I will restore our country by winning it."
"Look, of course -- the job of the president of the United States is to level with the American people about everything. The job of the president of the United States is to stand for truth. The job of the president of the United States is to be a role model for our children and our grandchildren. And so, whether it was UFOs or this problem of education, and Tim's right, by the way, and I started this in 2010 by going right after the teachers unions in New Jersey and drove them down to an all-time low popularity rating because they're putting themselves before our kids. That is our biggest threat to our country, not UFOs."
"His were the eyes of a man who has gazed into the abyss, and the abyss gazed back, and then he endorsed the abyss. It was not a thousand-yard stare. That would understate the vast and impenetrable distance it encompassed."
"All right, I'd like to answer the question you asked and not give a pre canned speech. Mike Pence stood for the Constitution. And he deserves not grudging credit. He deserves our thanks as Americans for putting his oath of office and the Constitution of the United States before personal political and unfair pressure. And the argument that we need to have in this party, before we can move on to the issues that Ron talked about, is we have to dispense with the person who said that we need to suspend the Constitution to put forward his political career. Mike Pence said no, and he deserves credit for it. OK."
"You know, I'm proud of the fact, Bret, that I'm the only person along with Governor Hutchinson up on this stage who has actually run a United States Attorney's Office. I ran the fifth largest office in America, in a -- in a state where there is significant urban crime. And the problem is not going to be solved by more money. The problem is that these prosecutors in these localities, in the states, are refusing to do their job, and to arrest violent criminals. So, what a President Christie would do is appoint an Attorney General who would instruct each of the 93 US attorneys that they are to take over the prosecution of violent crime in every one of those cities that are failing to do so. We have plenty of room in the federal prisons to lock up these violent criminals and clean up what's going on all across this country in these individual cities. Secondly, what we need to make sure that each and every one of these criminals understand is that the laws apply to everybody, and when Hunter Biden fills out a fake application, a false application, for a gun permit, and then is facing a 10-year mandatory minimum, which was mandated by legislation sponsored by his father, and then you have a Justice Department that walks away from those charges. We're telling people that the law doesn't apply to everybody. In a Christie administration, he would go to jail for 10 years."
"All right, look, I did go to Ukraine. And I went to Ukraine, because I wanted to see for myself, what Vladimir Putin's army was doing to the free Ukrainian people. And let me tell you, I want you all to look around this arena tonight. And imagine that every one of these seats was filled. And if every one of them was filled, there would still be 2500 more children outside to make over 20,000 who have been abducted, stolen, ripped from their mothers and fathers and brought back to Russia to be programmed to fight their own families. They have gouged out people's eyes, cut off their ears and shot people in the back of the head, men, and then gone into those homes and raped the -- the daughters and the wives who were left as widows and orphans. This is -- this is the Vladimir Putin -- this is the Vladimir Putin, who Donald Trump called brilliant and a genius. If we don't stand up against this type of autocratic killing in the world, we will be next."
"After a weeklong stay in a hospital icu due to COVID according to Christie says he was wrong not to wear mask in White House"
"After watching and listening to Judge Sotomayor's performance at the confirmation hearings this week, I am confident that she is qualified for the position of Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Elections have consequences. One of those consequences are judicial appointments. While Judge Sotomayor would not have been my choice, President Obama has used his opportunity to fill a seat on the Supreme Court by choosing a nominee who has more than proven her capability, competence and ability. I support her appointment to the Supreme Court and urge the Senate to keep politics out of the process and confirm her nomination. Qualified appointees should be confirmed and deserve bi-partisan support. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito deserved that support based on their work as Circuit Court Judges. So does Judge Sotomayor. As a result, I support her confirmation. This is a historic moment and her inspiring success story should not only make the Latino community proud, but all Americans."
"Look, Martha, the first thing we need to do is to stop any more from coming. That's the first thing we need to do. Then, the next thing we need to do with the folks that are here is to, again, as we've talked about all night, tonight, we have to have one order in this country, we have to enforce the law. And what that means is to make sure that people who come here illegally are not rewarded for being here illegally. We have so many wonderful people from around the world, who are waiting in line following the law to try to come here and pursue the American dream. And those people are waiting and waiting and waiting. Because we haven't dealt with the problem of the folks who are here. We have to have them detained. We have to make sure that they are not rewarded for having broken the law. And one last thing on this fentanyl issue, with China, we can't take our eye off of that ball. Yes, it's important that we secure the border, very important as I just said, but China is sending these chemicals to these drug cartels for them to create the fentanyl that is killing hundreds of thousands of our citizens. The Chinese are engaging in an act of war against us killing our citizens. We better make that priority one in our conversations with China and to try to straighten that relationship out because if we don't, we're going to lose more and more of our citizens."
"I believed that when I entered the White House grounds, that I had entered a safe zone, due to the testing that and I and many others underwent every day,I was wrong"
"CHRISTIE: I've had enough -- I've had enough already tonight of a guy who sounds like ChatGPT standing up here. And the last person in one of these debates, Bret, who stood in the middle of the stage and said, "what's a skinny guy with an odd last name doing up here" was Barack Obama. And I'm afraid we're dealing with the same type of amateur standing on the stage tonight."
"[..] the quintessential limousine liberal democrat, Jon Corzine."
"When you’re dealing with people who think that Sponge Bob Square Pants is more important than social security, you have a problem."
"I do not know how to avoid the conclusion that a man who is capable of taking the illusions of religion so literally and is so sure of a special personal intimacy with the Almighty is unfitted for relations with ordinary children of men."
"With the exception of Gladstone, probably no man in supreme power in the life of any nation was so profoundly imbued by the Christian faith."
"Democratic President Woodrow Wilson's Cabinet segregated government offices. Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed KKK member Hugo Black to the Supreme Court. Roosevelt opposed federal lynching laws. Lester Maddox, George Wallace and Orval Faubus, all Democratic governors, were fervent racists. Democratic Attorney General Robert Kennedy had Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr. wiretapped, much like we do today to suspected terrorists and criminals. The Democratic Party keeps black Americans and all minority groups in poverty with 'entitlement' programs and policies preventing advancement."
"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."
"Woodrow Wilson spoke fluently and freely on all subjects as a "liberal," but his sorry deeds belied his words. "Self-determination" and "make the world safe for democracy" were the most vulnerable. Demonstrations and delegations of advocates of peace, "Hands off Russia," freedom for Ireland, amnesty for political prisoners and last, but not least, "Votes for Women," confronted him at every turn. His administration was faced with the great steel strike of 1919-20. His plans to join the League of Nations were defeated by the Senate. Members of his administration resigned in protest over various issues-a secretary of state over war, a collector of the New York port over suffrage, the issue that perhaps plagued him most."
"The Women's Party picketed almost continuously from January 1917 until March 19, 1919. They picketed the White House and Capitol, held military parades, return receptions for Wilson after his trips to Europe and receptions when he departed. They picketed him in Washington, Boston and New York. Only the Irish had attempted such tactics. Later, a Children's Crusade for Amnesty picketed President Harding. Suffrage banners were addressed to foreign visitors and President Wilson's speeches on "freedom" and "democracy" at home and abroad were burned by the suffragists in a "watch-fire of freedom" urn."
"We don't need Karl Marx's conception of a grand warfare between the classes to see that it is in the interest of complex management, economic or political, to dumb people down, to demoralize them, to divide them from one another, and to discard them if they don't conform. Class may frame the proposition, as when Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, said the following to the New York City School Teachers Association in 1909: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.""
"In those days, 1913 and 1914, the leadership of the Nation was in the hands of a great President who was seeking to recover for our social system ground that had been lost under his conservative predecessor, and to restore something of the fighting liberal spirit which the Nation had gained under Theodore Roosevelt. It seemed one of our great national tragedies that just when Woodrow Wilson was beginning to accomplish definite improvements in the living standards of America, the World War not only interrupted his course, but laid the foundation for twelve years of retrogression. I say this advisedly because it is not progress, but the reverse, when a nation goes through the madness of the twenties, piling up paper profits, hatching all manner of speculations and coming inevitably to the day when the bubble bursts."
"We all remember well known examples of what an ill-advised shift from liberal to conservative leadership can do to an incompleted liberal program. Theodore Roosevelt, for example, started a march of progress during his seven years in the Presidency but, after four years of President Taft, little was left of the progress that had been made. Think of the great liberal achievements of Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom and how quickly they were liquidated under President Harding. We have to have reasonable continuity in liberal government in order to get permanent results."
"In his address to Congress on January 8th, President Wilson said: "It is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened whereby we may be privileged to assist the people of Russia to attain their utmost hope of liberty..." He professed to be speaking for the American people, and we hope that he was. He was speaking for us. And we would only wish to add two things to his words before the world. First, that the people of Russia, a vast majority of them comprised in the Left Wing of the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Bolsheviki, have set before themselves a hope of liberty that involves the ownership and control of all land, plants, and machinery by those who work them, and the abolition of profits and wage-dependence altogether. We should like to add in parenthesis after the words, utmost hope of liberty, the words, (See the Communist Manifesto). And then, second, we should like to add for ourselves, that it is our heartfelt desire and hope that some way may be opened to awaken in the people of the United States that same "utmost hope of liberty," and that we may be privileged to assist them to attain it."
"To the people of the United States, the death of Woodrow Wilson, President of the United States from March 4, 1913, to March 4, 1921, which occurred at 11:15 o'clock today at his home at Washington, District of Columbia, deprives the country of a most distinguished citizen, and is an event which causes universal and genuine sorrow. To many of us it brings the sense of a profound personal bereavement... His early profession as a lawyer was abandoned to enter academic life. In this chosen field he attained the highest rank as an educator, and has left his impress upon the intellectual thought of the country. From the Presidency of Princeton University he was called by his fellow citizens to be the Chief Executive of the State of New Jersey. The duties of this high office he so conducted as to win the confidence of the people of the United States, who twice elected him to the Chief Magistracy of the Republic. As President of the United States he was moved by an earnest desire to promote the best interests of the country as he conceived them. His acts were prompted by high motives and his sincerity of purpose can not be questioned. He led the nation through the terrific struggle of the world war with a lofty idealism which never failed him. He gave utterance to the aspiration of humanity with an eloquence which held the attention of all the earth and made America a new and enlarged influence in the destiny of mankind."
"The League of Nations had no sooner been created than it received an almost mortal blow. The United States abandoned President Wilson’s offspring. The President himself, ready to do battle for his ideals, suffered a paralytic stroke just as he was setting forth on his campaign, and lingered henceforward a futile wreck for a great part of two long and vital years, at the end of which his party and his policy were swept away by the Republican Presidential victory of 1920. Across the Atlantic on the morrow of the Republican success isolationist conceptions prevailed. Europe must be left to stew in its own juice, and must pay its lawful debts. At the same time tariffs were raised to prevent the entry of the goods by which alone these debts could be discharged. At the Washington Conference of 1921, far-reaching proposals for naval disarmament were made by the United States, and the British and American Governments proceeded to sink their battleships and break up their military establishments with gusto. It was argued in odd logic that it would be immoral to disarm the vanquished unless the victors also stripped themselves of their weapons. The finger of Anglo-American reprobation was presently to be pointed at France, deprived alike of the Rhine frontier and of her treaty guarantee, for maintaining, even on a greatly reduced scale, a French Army based upon universal service."
"In testimony of the respect in which his memory is held by the Government and people of the United States, I do hereby direct that the flags of the White House and of the several Departmental buildings be displayed at half staff for a period of thirty days, and that suitable military and naval honors under orders of the Secretary of War and of the Secretary of the Navy may be rendered on the day of the funeral."
"It's not that Jackson had a "dark side," as his apologists rationalize and which all human beings have, but rather that Jackson was the Dark Knight in the formation of the United States as a colonialist, imperialist democracy, a dynamic formation that continues to constitute the core of US patriotism. The most revered presidents-Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, both Roosevelts, Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, Clinton, Obama-have each advanced populist imperialism while gradually increasing inclusion of other groups beyond the core of descendants of old settlers into the ruling mythology. All the presidents after Jackson march in his footsteps. Consciously or not, they refer back to him on what is acceptable, how to reconcile democracy and genocide and characterize it as freedom for the people."
"Woodrow Wilson has now joined his worthy colleagues in the jingo movement, echoing their clamor for preparedness and their howl of "America for Americans." The difference between Wilson and Roosevelt is this: Roosevelt, a born bully, uses the club; Wilson, the historian, the college professor, wears the smooth polished university mask, but underneath it he, like Roosevelt, has but one aim, to serve the big interests, to add to those who are growing phenomenally rich by the manufacture of military supplies."
"It is like writing history with lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."
"Gossips are only sociologists upon a mean and petty scale."
"Raymond Fosdick came to my room and awakened me last night to tell me the following story and ask me what he should do about it: When he reached the 23rd street ferry on his way to the boat at 6 A.M. December 4, he noticed hundreds of young men and women and old men and women hurrying off the ferry boat and away into the darkness. He asked his tax driver who they were and was told that they were sweat shop workers. He happened to meet one of them buying a morning paper and asked the man how long he worked a day. The man replied: “Fourteen hours. But do you see that boat (pointing across the river towards the George Washington) there’s a man aboard her that is going to Europe to change all that.” I advised Fosdick to tell the story to the President and to advise him that he must see to it that a bill of industrial human rights was written into the treaty of peace – a bill providing for world wide maximum hours of labor (at least in civilized countries) minimum wages, unemployment insurance, etc. Fosdick did this today. The President replied that it frightened him to think how much the common people of the world expect of him. That he did not consider it possible to take up any such matters at the peace conference. That he hoped the international labor conference on which he looked with much favo[r] would press for these matters."
"The war sharpened Liberal dissatisfaction with the traditional methods of conducting foreign policy. ... They found in President Wilson a man after their own hearts. His views and theirs coincided at many points: a just peace without annexations or indemnities; the map of Europe redrawn on the principle of self-determination; "open covenants openly arrived at", arbitration and the rule of law; disarmament and the replacing of exclusive alliances by a League of Nations; above all, a devotion to the ideal of the brotherhood of man."
"The European War, which began in 1914, is now generally recognized to have been a war between two rival empires, an old one and a new, the new becoming such a successful rival of the old, commercially and militarily, that the world-stage was, or was thought to be, not large enough for both. Germany spoke frankly of her need for expansion, and for new fields of enterprise for her surplus population. England, who likes to fight under a high-sounding title, got her opportunity in the invasion of Belgium. She was entering the war 'in defense of the freedom of small nationalities'. America at first looked on, but she accepted the motive in good faith, and she ultimately joined in as the champion of the weak against the strong. She concentrated attention upon the principle of self-determination and the reign of law based upon the consent of the governed. "Shall", asked President Wilson, "the military power of any small nation, or group of nations, be suffered to determine the fortunes of peoples over whom they have no right to rule except the right of force?" But the most flagrant instance of violation of this principle did not seem to strike the imagination of President Wilson, and he led the American nation- peopled so largely by Irish men and women who had fled from British oppression- into the battle and to the side of the nation that for hundreds of years had determined the fortunes of the Irish people against their wish, and had ruled them, and was still ruling them, by no other right than the right of force."
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated governments in the civilized world: no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
Young though he was, his radiant energy produced such an impression of absolute reliability that Hedgewar made him the first sarkaryavah, or general secretary, of the RSS.
- Gopal Mukund Huddar
Largely because of the influence of communists in London, Huddar's conversion into an enthusiastic supporter of the fight against fascism was quick and smooth. The ease with which he crossed from one worldview to another betrays the fact that he had not properly understood the world he had grown in.
Huddar would have been 101 now had he been alive. But then centenaries are not celebrated only to register how old so and so would have been and when. They are usually celebrated to explore how much poorer our lives are without them. Maharashtrian public life is poorer without him. It is poorer for not having made the effort to recall an extraordinary life.
I regret I was not there to listen to Balaji Huddar's speech [...] No matter how many times you listen to him, his speeches are so delightful that you feel like listening to them again and again.
By the time he came out of Franco's prison, Huddar had relinquished many of his old ideas. He displayed a worldview completely different from that of the RSS, even though he continued to remain deferential to Hedgewar and maintained a personal relationship with him.