Hw Brands Quotes

Ben Franklin advises his grandson not to let even the American Revolution interrupt his studies, urging of young adulthood, "This is the time of life in which you are to lay the foundations of your future improvement and of your importance among men. If this season is neglected, it will be like cutting off the spring from the year.

The males (of the Hutchinson family that included both religious dissenter Anne and immensely wealthy and politically connected Thomas) were merchants who sought salvation through commerce.

Shiloh showed him what he could ask of his men, and indeed what he MUST ask of them.

He was not a warm person, but he seemed to be, which in politics was more important.

He was trying to find his footing in a world both familiar and foreign

Reagan to son: how really great is the challenge of proving your masculinity and charm with one woman for the rest of your life. Any man can find a twerp here and there who will go along with cheating, and it doesn’t take all that much manhood. It does take quite a man to remain attractive and to be loved by a woman who has heard him snore, seen him unshaven, tended him while he was sick and washed his dirty underwear. Do that and keep her still feeling a warm glow and you will know some very beautiful music.

where the ballot-box, more precious than any work in ivory or marble, from the cunning hand of art, has been plundered.

Fatigue could be the dealmaker's friend.

Warner Studios official in the era of silent movies: Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?

We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one,

Even when he played, he made a business of it.

He understood the code of his social class enough to affect an air of indifference about life.

Grant made the perfect candidate, a war hero with indistinct views on most political issues.

Both sides had more confidence in their opponents' weaknesses than their own strength.

In imperial relationships, getting out proves much more complicated than getting in.

He was like a man thinking on an abstract subject all the time.

The reason is that the people know that the Democratic Party is the people’s party, and the Republican Party is the party of special interest, and it always has been and always will be.

It may be that the voice of the people is the voice of God 51 times out of 100. But the remaining 49 times, it is the voice of the devil, or worse, the voice of a fool. Theodore Roosevelt

The audience perked up the more. American conservatives were a combative tribe who didn’t speak of liberals as their “friends,” but here Reagan did. His tone was serious, but it wasn’t angry, the way Goldwater’s often was. Reagan criticized Democratic leaders, but he didn’t criticize Democrats. He condemned the direction the American government was going, but he professed confidence in the American people.

Looking back on his adolescence from the vantage point of his mid-eighties, George H.W. Bush candidly admitted, "I might have been obsessed with bodies – boobs they are now called. But what seventeen-year-old kid was not? Guilty am I.

Go on and finish your studies,” Gore said. “You are poor enough, but there are greater evils than poverty. Live on no man’s favor. What bread you do eat, let it be the bread of independence. Pursue your profession. Make yourself useful to your friends and a little formidable to your enemies, and you have nothing to fear.

or creed.” These rights included: The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation; The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good education. Roosevelt

As the golden news spread beyond California to the outside world, it triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. From all over the planet they came—from Mexico and Peru and Chile and Argentina, from Oregon and Hawaii and Australia and New Zealand and China, from the American North and the American South, from Britain and France and Germany and Italy and Greece and Russia.

From all over the planet they came…. They came in companies and alone, with money and without, knowing and naïve. They tore themselves from warm hearths and good homes, promising to return; they fled from cold hearts and bad debts, never to return. They were farmers and merchants and sailors and slaves and abolitionists and soldiers of fortune and ladies of the night. They jumped bail to start their journey, and jumped ship at journey’s end. They were the pillars of their communities, and their communities’ dregs….

The House adjourned without voting on the bill, but the following year a similar bill—mandating equality in hotels and restaurants open to the public, in transportation facilities, in theaters and other public amusements and in the selection of juries—passed both chambers. The measure reached the White House about the time the two sides in Louisiana cobbled a compromise that allowed Grant to withdraw Sheridan and most of the federal troops. On March 1, 1875, the president signed the Civil Rights Act, the most ambitious affirmation of racial equality in American history until then (a distinction it would retain until the 1960s).

As when some carcass, hidden in sequestered nook, draws from every near and distant point myriads of discordant vultures, so drew these little flakes of gold the voracious sons of men. …This little scratch upon the earth to make a backwoods mill-race touched the cerebral nerve that quickened humanity, and sent a thrill throughout the system. It tingled in the ear and at the finger-ends; it buzzed about the brain and tickled in the stomach; it warmed the blood and swelled the heart; new fires were kindled on hearth-stones, new castles builded in the air. If Satan from Diablo’s peak had sounded the knell of time; if a heavenly angel from the Sierra’s height had heralded the millennial day; if the blessed Christ himself had risen from that ditch and proclaimed to all mankind amnesty — their greedy hearts had never half so thrilled. (Hubert Howe Bancroft)

1. Destruction of the unity among the Western countries, thereby isolating the United States. 2. Alienating the Western peoples from their governments so that the efforts of the Western countries to strengthen themselves will be undermined.

Louisiana is a delightful country, and though the climate too often proves fatal to a foreigner, yet generally we ascribe to the climate what is the effect of our imprudence. I have been severely attacked this summer, and had nearly died, but at length I am acclimated.” The author of these words was John Windship, a Bostonian who migrated to Louisiana not long after his graduation from Harvard in 1809.

People say, ‘If the Congress were more representative of the people it would be better.’ I say the Congress is too damn representative. It’s just as stupid as the people are, just as uneducated, just as dumb, just as selfish.

them as possible,” he said. I have often met with such treatment from people that I was all the while endeavouring to serve. At other times I have been extolled extravagantly when I have had little or no merit. These are the operations of nature. It sometimes is cloudy, it rains, it hails, again ’tis clear and pleasant, and the sun shines on us.

As individuals, we have a moral obligation no to endanger others, and that can mean endangering others with a gun, with a car, or with a virus. If a person has reason to believe that he or she may be a carrier, that person has a moral duty to be tested for AIDS; human decency requires it. And the reason is very simple: Innocent people are being infected by this virus, and some of them are going to acquire AIDS and die.

The term domino theory very simply describes what happens to our allies of we back down and let one ally be taken over by the communists because we don't want to be bothered. The enemy decides it's safe to go after others - that we represent no threat to his aggression. But even worse, our allies, no longer able to trust us, start making deals.

Nixon's opening to Moscow had permitted a grain sale that sent millions of tons of American wheat and corn to Russia at below-market prices. Critics called it the "Great Grain Robbery," but their ranks didn't include the midwestern farmers who were delighted at the boost the sale gave to prices for the rest of their crops. General Ford extended the deal in 1975, following a new shortfall in the Soviet harvest.

He quoted William Penn: "If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants." And Thomas Jefferson: "The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time." And George Washington: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

The Soviets don't want to win by war but by threat of war. They want to issue ultimatums to which we have to give in.

If God had smiled on the United States of America—and almost none doubted that He had—wouldn’t He want America to grow? Wouldn’t He want Americans to spread their blessings into neighboring lands? And wouldn’t He want this all the more, considering that the inhabitants of those neighboring lands were heathen Indians and papist Mexicans? Of course He would—or so concluded the publicists of what came to be called Manifest Destiny, the

In any event, it caused him to join the army, that historic institution of elevation for the ambitious but badly born.

Shortly after the start of the Bear Flag rebellion, Frémont’s soldiers spied a small boat of Californians crossing San Pablo Bay. Frémont sent Kit Carson, the famous scout and Indian fighter who was Frémont’s frequent partner in exploration, and some other men to intercept the boat. According to an eyewitness, Carson asked Frémont, “Captain, shall I take those men prisoner?” According to this same witness, Frémont answered, with a wave of the hand, “I have no room for prisoners.” Carson and the others rode to where the boat had landed and shot three of the Californians dead.

I looked on for a moment; a frenzy seized my soul; unbidden my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps—I took several. Houses were too small for me to stay in; I was soon in the street in search of necessary outfits. Piles of gold rose up before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye with their rich appliances; thousands of slaves bowing to my beck and call; myriads of fair virgins contending with each other for my love—were among the fancies of my fevered imagination. The Rothschilds, Girards, and Astors appeared to me but poor people. In short, I had a very violent attack of the gold fever.

Loeser’s arrival prompted an announcement by President Polk of the momentous discovery in California, an announcement that is often interpreted as the starting pistol for the Gold Rush.

American Indians, for example, had resisted every effort by the English to teach them the arts of civilization. Franklin thought this striking, yet hardly inexplicable. “They visit us frequently,” he told Collinson, “and see the advantages that arts, sciences, and compact society procure us. They are not deficient in natural understanding, and yet they have never shewn any inclination to change their manner of life for ours, or to learn any of our arts.” The reason was plain enough: “In their present way of living, almost all their wants are supplied by the spontaneous productions of nature, with the addition of very little labour, if hunting and fishing may indeed be called labour when game is so plenty.” Significantly, when an Indian child was brought up in white ways, the education often failed to stick. “If he goes to see his relations and make one Indian ramble with them, there is no persuading him ever to return.” More significantly, the opposite was not true. White children raised as Indians demonstrated no desire, after visits to English settlements, to stay there. “In a short time they become disgusted with our manner of life, and the care and pains that are necessary to support it, and take the first good opportunity of escaping again into the woods, from whence there is no reclaiming them.” In one case an Englishman raised with the Indians inherited a substantial estate; he came home to test his new circumstances but soon abandoned them, leaving the estate to a younger brother and carrying off only a gun and a coat. Franklin related yet another story that further illustrated his point. Some years earlier one of the colonies had concluded a treaty with the Six Nations (the Iroquois confederacy of the lower Great Lakes region). All that remained was the exchange of civilities. The English commissioners offered to underwrite the education of half a dozen of the brightest Indian lads at the College of William and Mary, the finest educational institution in the region. The Indians responded that they were most grateful for this kind offer but must decline. Some Indian youths had been educated in this way several years before and had returned good for nothing, being unable to hunt, trap, or fight. The Indians made a counteroffer: to take a dozen English children to the Indians’ great council, where they would be raised as real and useful men.

For this reason the initiative toward the union Franklin proposed ought to be entrusted to a handpicked cadre of perhaps half a dozen men of insight, public spirit, and persuasive skills. Such a group would travel from colony to colony explaining the benefits of union and rebutting criticism. “I imagine such an union might thereby be made and established, for reasonable sensible men can always make a reasonable scheme appear such to other reasonable men, if they take pains, and have time and opportunity for it.” Like the Association Franklin had devised for Philadelphia, this should be an organization that grew upward from below, rather than downward from above. “A voluntary union entered into by the Colonies themselves, I think, would be preferable to one imposed by Parliament.

Franklin appreciated the possibility of self-delusion in such matters. He regularly examined his motives. For the present at least, regarding the struggle with the proprietors, he was satisfied. “I am persuaded that I do not oppose their views from pique, disappointment, or personal resentment, but, as I think, from a regard to the public good. I may be mistaken in what is that public good; but at least I mean well.” The proprietors quite clearly did not. “I am sometimes ashamed for them, when I see them differing with their people for trifles, and instead of being adored, as they might be, like demi-gods, become the object of universal hatred and contempt.

Franklin never lost the conviction that virtue conferred right and ought to confer power. Yet neither did he lose the ability to question whether his view of virtue was the only accurate one. “Forgive your friend a little vanity,” he asked Collinson, “as it’s only between ourselves.” The people loved him today, and concurred in his view of virtue, but they might change their minds tomorrow. “You are ready now to tell me that popular favour is a most uncertain thing. You are right. I blush at having valued myself so much upon it.

He told of visiting Nancy in the recovery room. “She was asleep when Dick and I got there. Suddenly, as we were standing by her bed, there was a little movement of her body. Her eyes didn’t open, but I heard a tiny voice say, ‘My breast is gone.’ Barely conscious because of her anesthesia, Nancy somehow had sensed we were there. She was devastated by the loss of her breast—not because she was worried about herself, but because she was worried about me and how I would feel about her as a woman. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘I love you.’ Then I leaned over and kissed her softly, and repeated that it made no difference to me. But seeing that sadness in her eyes, it was all I could do to avoid breaking up again.

Reagan’s critics often dismissed the role of conviction in his persuasiveness; they attributed his speaking skill to his training as an actor. But this was exactly wrong. Reagan wasn’t acting when he spoke; his rhetorical power rested on his wholehearted belief in all the wonderful things he said about the United States and the American people, about their brave past and their brilliant future. He believed what Americans have always wanted to believe about their country, and he made them believe it too.

Adams disagreed. “I told Calhoun I could not see things in the same light.” And as he later reflected on the day’s discussion, he realized how thoroughly he disagreed with nearly everything Calhoun and the other Southerners said by way of defense of slavery. “It is, in truth, all perverted sentiment—mistaking labor for slavery, and dominion for freedom. The discussion of this Missouri question has betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract, they admit that slavery is an evil, they disclaim all participation in the introduction of it, and cast it all upon the shoulders of our old Grandam Britain. But when probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom of their souls pride and vainglory in their condition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen who labor for subsistence. They look down upon the simplicity of a Yankee’s manners, because he has no habit of overbearing like theirs and cannot treat negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery that it taints the very sources of moral principle. It establishes false estimates of virtue and vice; for what can be more false and heartless than this doctrine which makes the first and holiest rights of humanity to depend upon the color of the skin? It perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanctioned by the Christian religion, that slaves are happy and contented in their condition, that between master and slave there are ties of mutual attachment and affection, that the virtues of the master are refined and exalted by the degradation of the slave; while at the same they vent execrations upon the slave-trade, curse Britain for having given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes convicted of crimes for the terror of the example, and write in agonies of fear at the very mention of human rights as applicable to men of color.” Adams had never pondered slavery at such length, and the experience made him fear for the future of the republic. “The impression produced upon my mind by the progress of this discussion is that the bargain between freedom and slavery contained in the Constitution of the United States is morally and politically vicious, inconsistent with the principles upon which alone our Revolution can be justified; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to maintain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master; and grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property to be secured or restored to their owners, and persons not to be represented themselves, but for whom their masters are privileged with nearly a double share of representation. The consequence has been that this slave representation has governed the Union.

to me it appears the best grounded hope: hope of the future, built on experience of the past.

Take one thing with another, and the world is a pretty good sort of world; and ’tis our duty to make the best of it and be thankful. One’s true happiness depends more upon one’s own judgement of one’s self, on a consciousness of rectitude in action and intention, and in the approbation of those few who judge impartially, than upon the applause of the unthinking

The island was the home of Chief Oolooteka, the local Cherokee leader; by the chief's house the brothers discovered young Sam sprawled beneath a tree, reading Homer. They urged him to return to civilization, but he refused, saying (according to his later recollection) that he liked "the wild liberty of the Red Men better than the tyranny of his own brothers.

THE WORLD was alarmed, Harry Truman was livid. And he blamed Douglas MacArthur for getting him into this mess. In his five years as president, Truman had tolerated repeated slights and affronts from MacArthur

Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.

Allowing the extension of slavery, leading to the creation of new slave states, would magnify the voting advantage the Constitution had granted to slaveholders from the start. Slaves could not vote, but three-fifths of their number counted toward representation in the lower house of Congress. As a result, white Southerners wielded more power per person than white Northerners. Lincoln cited two states: South Carolina and Maine. Each had six representatives and therefore eight presidential electors. “In the control of the government, the two states are equals precisely.” But Maine had more than twice as many white people as South Carolina. “Thus each white man in South Carolina is more than the double of any man in Maine.

God worked in mysterious ways; Lincoln wasn’t perfect, but he was perfectly suited to his task. “Taking him for all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, and surveying the end from the beginning, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln.

These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right.

I have often been asked how I felt when I first found myself on free soil,” he wrote later. The answer was simple yet profound. “A new world had opened upon me,” he said. “I lived more in one day than in a year of my slave life.

Douglas noted the uproar with wry resignation. “I could travel from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigy,” he observed.

He noted that the same summer that witnessed the Constitutional Convention saw the passage of the Northwest Ordinance barring slavery north of the Ohio River.

Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined.

It was about the end of December, 1857, or the beginning of January, 1858, when we reached Cedar county, the journey thus consuming about a month of time. We stopped at a village called Springdale, in that county, where in a settlement principally composed of Quakers, we remained.

At Grinnell, named for Josiah Grinnell, Iowa’s leading abolitionist, the reception couldn’t have been more supportive.

also stressed the dignity of the white working man. “I hold that if there is any one thing that can be proved to be the will of God by external nature around us, without reference to revelation, it is the proposition that whatever any one man earns with his hands and by the sweat of his brow, he shall enjoy in peace,” Lincoln told his Cincinnati audience. “I say that whereas God Almighty has given every man one mouth to be fed, and one pair of hands adapted to furnish food for that mouth, if anything can be proved to be the will of Heaven, it is proved by this fact, that that mouth is to be fed by those hands, without being interfered with by any other man who has also his mouth to feed and his hands to labor with.

Franklin’s theology had changed over the years, from borderline atheism to rationalistic deism. At times in his later years he would approach Christianity. Throughout, however, Franklin’s God remained as reasonable as Franklin himself. In Philadelphia before leaving for London this latest time, Franklin heard from his old friend, the evangelist George Whitefield. Franklin replied:

He quoted William Penn: “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.” And Thomas Jefferson: “The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.” And George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.

Acheson stepped conceptually back. “We must ask ourselves: What do we want in Korea?” He looked around the room. “The answer is easy,” he said. “We want to terminate it. We don’t want to beat China in Korea—we can’t. We don’t want to beat China any place—we can’t. They can put in more than we can.” American policy in Korea must keep the broader challenge in mind. “Our great objective must be to hold an area, to terminate the fighting, to turn over some area to the Republic of Korea,

Truman nodded agreement with what Acheson and the others had said. The Soviet Union, not China, was America’s principal enemy; Europe was the heart of America’s forward defense; Korea was symbolically important but not strategically vital; America must not alienate its allies. The president was pleased at the consensus in the highest councils of the administration. He left the meeting satisfied—but still uncertain. He knew that MacArthur had his own ideas about American strategy and

He began with the importance of collective action in Korea. “For the first time in all history, men of many nations are fighting under a single banner to uphold the rule of law in the world,” he said. “This is an inspiring fact. If the rule of law is not upheld we can look forward only to the horror of another war and ultimate chaos. For our part, we do not intend to let that happen.” Since World War II the communists had engaged in subversion; in Korea they had turned to brutal aggression. The United States had no choice other than to act swiftly and boldly. “If the history of the 1930s teaches us anything, it is that appeasement of dictators is the sure road to world war. If aggression were allowed to succeed in Korea, it would be an open invitation to new acts of aggression elsewhere.

Since the eighteenth century American defense had rested upon a War Department and a separate Navy Department. The separation reflected America’s distinctive approach to war and the country’s peculiar position in the world. America’s founders believed war would be an occasional endeavor best conducted by part-time soldiers: citizens called to arms on the rare occasions when geographically isolated America was attacked from abroad.

Julius Caesar, the general who made himself dictator. The Constitution guarded against Caesarism by designating the president of the United States the commander-in-chief of America’s armed forces; no general, however popular or ambitious, must overrule the president. American practice hedged against Caesarism by hollowing out the army between wars; the citizen-soldiers were sent home, leaving potential Caesars no one to command.

Bradley admitted. “The swiftness and magnitude of the victory were mind-boggling. We had been on the point of despair, bracing for a ‘Dunkirk’ at Pusan and/or a disaster at Inchon. A mere two weeks later the North Korean Army had been routed and all South Korea had been regained. MacArthur was deservedly canonized as a ‘military genius.’ Inchon was his boldest and most dazzling victory. In hindsight, the JCS seemed like a bunch of Nervous Nellies to have doubted.

There was considerable doubt in my mind that MacArthur had committed a clear-cut case of military insubordination as defined in Army Regulations,” Bradley wrote. Bradley was painfully aware that the joint chiefs had been sufficiently vague with MacArthur that an insubordination charge—of willful violation of a direct order—might be impossible to prove. Bradley, like Marshall, wanted time to think things over.

I have never seen the order committing Napoleon to exile, but I dare say it exuded greater warmth and was couched in terms reflecting higher honor than that which authorized MacArthur to spend the public funds necessary to take him to an oblivion of his own selection.

Taft drove to the heart of the matter. “The principal purpose of the foreign policy of the United States is to maintain the liberty of our people. Its purpose is not to reform the entire world or spread sweetness and light and economic prosperity to peoples who have lived and worked out their own salvation for centuries according to the best of their ability.

OMAR BRADLEY REMEMBERED the first week of April 1951 as the time when the administration felt more fearful than ever about the possibility of the outbreak of World War III.

More than Korea was at stake, the president asserted. “The attack upon Korea makes it plain beyond all doubt that communism has passed beyond the use of subversion to conquer independent nations and will now use armed invasion and war.” The aggression must not be allowed to spread, as to Formosa.

We here fight Europe’s war with arms, while there it is still confined to words. If we lose the war to communism in Asia, the fate of Europe will be gravely jeopardized. Win it, and Europe will probably be saved from war and stay free.

The millions of Americans cheering and shouting for MacArthur wanted the general to lead them, like a modern Moses, out of the wilderness of uncertainty that seemed to be Americans’ lot in the contemporary struggle against communism.

The Communist threat is a global one. Its successful advance in one sector threatens the destruction of every other sector. You cannot appease or otherwise surrender to communism in Asia without simultaneously undermining our efforts to halt its advance in Europe.

Once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end. War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision.” More applause. “In war there is no substitute for victory.” Still more applause.

Truman’s combination of firmness and patience had held freedom’s ground without provoking war. It was hard to imagine any chief executive doing better.

Harry Truman was a man of the ordinary people of America; Dean Acheson was everything ordinary Americans loved to hate.

How could this American so well understand the Asian concept of face, and be so magnanimous, as to spare the soldiers the humiliation of having to turn over their weapons to an enemy? MacArthur countermanded an order by the U.S. Navy forbidding Japanese fishing vessels to venture across Tokyo Bay, lest some launch mines against the American ships there. The Japanese needed to eat, he explained matter-of-factly.

His white hands were smooth as wax, only blemished by the brown spots of age,” wrote Faubion Bowers, a major who often rode guard in the front seat. “His fingers were exquisitely manicured, as if lacquered with polish. He held them in his lap, peacefully. His profile, which I knew better than his full face, was granitic. He was always immaculately clean-shaven, and I never saw a nick on him. He had large bones, an oversize jaw that jutted a little. From face to walk, from gesture to speech, he shone with good breeding….He was really very beautiful, like fine ore, a splendid rock, a boulder.

He made a checklist of objectives: “Destroy the military power. Punish war criminals. Build the structure of representative government. Modernize the constitution. Hold free elections. Enfranchise the women. Release the political prisoners. Liberate the farmers. Establish a free labor movement. Encourage a free economy. Abolish police oppression. Develop a free and responsible press. Liberalize education. Decentralize the political power. Separate church from state.

When famine threatened the devastated country, he commandeered three million tons of food from U.S. Army stores. Congress conducted an inquiry, which MacArthur brushed aside. “Give me bread or give me bullets,” he told the inquisitors.

Truman’s bold stroke in firing MacArthur ended his own career as surely as it terminated MacArthur’s, but it sustained hope that humanity might survive the nuclear age. The courage of Truman’s decision had never been in question; six decades later, its wisdom was apparent as well.

became apparent that General MacArthur had grown so far out of sympathy with the established policies of the United States that there was grave doubt as to whether he could any longer be permitted to exercise the authority in making decisions that normal command functions would assign to a theater commander. In this situation, there was no other recourse but to relieve him.

Bradley judged it absolutely crucial for the committee—and Congress and the American people—to correctly identify the central struggle of the present era. “One of the great power potentials of this world is the United States of America and her allies. The other great power in this world is Soviet Russia and her satellites. As much as we desire peace, we must realize that we have two centers of power supporting opposing ideologies.

Far from complaining about the limited nature of the war, MacArthur should have been grateful for it.

When she died, he didn’t simply put away his feelings for her; he walled off a wing of the emotional house in which he lived. He would marry again and become devoted to his second wife. He would overflow with paternal feelings for his children. But he would never again visit that part of his personality where he had courted Alice.

Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labour. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something the world wants done brings.

When I speak, I speak to the point, and when I act in earnest, I act to the point. If a man minds his own business, I let him alone, but if he crosses my path, he must get out of the way.

Franklin’s inquisitive mind craved stimulation, consistently gravitating toward whatever community of intellects asked the most intriguing questions; his expansive temperament sought souls that resonated with his own generosity and sense of virtue. In five years in England he had found more of both than in a lifetime in America. “Of all the enviable things England has,” he told Polly Stevenson, “I envy most its people. Why should that petty island, which compared to America is but like a stepping stone in a brook, scarce enough of it above water to keep one’s shoes dry; why, I say, should that little island enjoy in almost every neighbourhood more sensible, virtuous and elegant minds than we can collect in ranging 100 leagues of our vast forests?” He left such people reluctantly and, he trusted, temporarily.

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit of the people, no one man has any more intrinsic right to official station than another. Offices were not established to give support to particular men at the public expense. No individual wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment to nor continuance in office is a matter of right.

Let this constitution go forth from this convention, and from the new state, a model instrument of liberal and enlightened principles.

you do not get what is the foundation of the very liberty that we breathe, that the people are entitled to have the facts, that the judgment of the government itself is subject to their opinion and to their control, and in order to exercise that, they are entitled to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, Senator.

Liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once and stop. You do not do that. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them.

what white Southerners called “redemption” and others deemed simply the return to power of the Democrats, who sufficiently intimidated, cheated and otherwise discouraged Republicans, including most of the freedmen, that they counted for little in Southern politics. With any Democratic presidential nominee guaranteed the South, any Republican had to perform overwhelmingly in the North.

Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. “’tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King’s dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established.” Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. “We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer ’tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed.” And

Publicity is the engine of politics.