Yesterday, December 7, 1941Ma date that will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked b...y naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's true we Americans don't know very much about you Japanese and never did. And now I realize you know even less about us. You c...an kill us, all of us or part of us, but if you think that's going to put the fear of God into the United States of America and stop them from sending other flyers to bomb you, you're wrong--dead wrong. They'll come by night, and they'll come by day--thousands of them. They'll blacken your skies and burn your cities to the ground and make you get down on your knees and beg for mercy. You wanted it. You asked for it. You started it. And now you're going to get it. And it won't be finished until your dirty little empire is wiped off the face of the earth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What strikes one about the Autobiography is its complete lack of sentimentality. Franklin had a pronounced character which he pres...ented very acutely, but he did not think of himself as primarily a unique inner self. He was all his many roles, although he put the first above all others, as he wrote in his testament: "I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer, late Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the court of France, now President of Pennsylvania." There is much pride of achievement in this, but no vanity at all. It is also a wholly social ego.... The distance between Franklin and Hawthorne is immense. Franklin was the sum of his actions, while Hawthorne and we have romantic egos that cannot bear the notion that one's manner of acting one's roles measures true character. For Hawthorne there was a private self that was one's true, supreme, and most honest part. That is why he thought it important to take the "private and domestic view of public men," and why the discrepancy between the two made him so bitter. For Franklin the domestic self was one among several. No remnants of an immortal soul bothered him, and he needed no replacement for it. His private affections were not politically relevant.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The annexation to the United States of the adjacent parts of the continent both north and south, seems to be, according to the phr...ase of 1844, our "manifest destiny." I am not in favor of artificial stimulants to this tendency. But I think I see plainly that it is now for the interest of both Canada and the United States that properly and in order, and with due regard to the feelings of Great Britain, the two countries should come under one government. If it were known that we would probably pay the whole or part of the Canadian debts, or would assume to pay them, would it not stimulate the feeling in favor of annexation in Canada?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the... foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious and they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are and that certainly has something to do with their having tucked their capital, their capitals away.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The Federated Republic of Europe--the United States of Europe--that is what must be. National autonomy no longer suffices. Economi...c evolution demands the abolition of national frontiers. If Europe is to remain split into national groups, then Imperialism will recommence its work. Only a Federated Republic of Europe can give peace to the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I think the people over here are coming to realize what would happen if Germany and Italy won a European war. We would be out of t...he picture entirely.... If I were a German conqueror what would I do? Obviously I would have the British navy out of the way and the French army out of the way.... The first thing I would do is look around and say, "What outside territories do I want to take for myself?"... We are not quite ready to take on the United States but we can do it by indirection very nicely. We are going to dominate South America ... without violating the Monroe Doctrine. [FDR set forth a scenario of economic domination of Latin America by giving Argentina a choice of agreeing to German domination of its army by economic blackmail by virtue of the fact that Germany controlled all the agricultural markets in Europe on which Argentina depended for livelihood and the same for Brazil.] It is a perfectly open and shut thing and, if you have the complete, physical power to do it, you win.... [F]rom Hitler's point of view, it is rational. And, if any of us were in his place, with his methods, we would do it. I made myself a hump-back, dyed my skin in several places with great spots of yellow; so that, when I look'd in the glass, I was almost frighten'd at my own figure.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »