"The price of greatness is responsibility. If the
people of the United States had continued in a mediocre station,
struggling with the wilderness, absorbed in their own affairs, and a
factor of no consequence in the movement of the world, they might have
remained forgotten and undisturbed beyond their protecting oceans: but
one cannot rise to be in many ways the leading community in the
civilized world without being involved in its problems, without being
convulsed by its agonies and inspired by its causes. If this has been
proved in the past, as it has been, it will become indisputable in the
future. The people of the United States cannot escape world
responsibility."
--- Winston Churchill, Sep. 6'th, 1943, accepting an honorary degree
from Harvard University
"It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war."
--- John F. Kennedy
"This Government, so long as present European
conditions continue, sees no opportunity or occasion for any peace
move to be initiated by the President of the United States. The
people of the United States would not support any move for
peace initiated by this Government that would consolidate or
make possible a survival of a regime of force and of aggression."
--- FDR, Sept. 11, 1939, in reply to Amb. Joseph Kennedy's appeal
for working out a "plan for world peace"
"It is easy for you and for me to shrug our
shoulders and say that conflicts taking place thousands of miles from
the continental United States, and, indeed thousands of miles from
the whole American hemisphere, do not seriously affect the Americas -
and that all the United States has to do is to ignore them and go
about its own business. Passionately though we may desire detachment,
we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air,
every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought, does
affect the American future."
--- FDR, Sept. 3, 1939
"Never look for nor expect gratitude but rather
get whatever comfort you can out of the belief that your effort is
constructive in purpose."
--- Winston Churchill
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile -- hoping it will eat him
last."
--- Winston Churchill
"He who allows oppression, shares the crime."
--- Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin
"It is not only for what we do that we are held responsible, but also
for what we do not do."
--- Moliere
"Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities
. . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others.
"
--- Winston Churchill
"Lead, follow, or get out of the way."
--- Thomas Paine
"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it. "
--- Winston Churchill
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