Wendell Willkie Quotes

I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.

Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

Education is the mother of leadership.

Our way of living together in America is a strong but delicate fabric. It is made up of many threads. It has been woven over many centuries by the patience and sacrifice of countless liberty-loving men and women. It serves as a cloak for the protection of poor and rich, of black and white, of Jew and Gentile, of foreign and native born. Let us not tear it asunder. For no man knows, once it is destroyed, where or when man will find its protective warmth again.

No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.

And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.

The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. Now more than ever we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one.

But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.

If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.

I am not interested in the support of anybody who stands for any form of prejudice as to anybody's race or religion. . . . I have no place in my philosophy for such beliefs.

Tolerance is the assumption of superiority

Be honorable yourself if you wish to associate with honorable people.

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.

Freedom of the press is the staff of life, for any vital democracy.

The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one.

Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

What a man needs to get ahead is a powerful enemy.

History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.