(Brazil:) I've never beheld such a paradise. The people are enchanting and--a mercy on this earth of ours--this is the only place ...where there isn't any race question. Negroes and whites and Indians, three-quarters, oneeighth, the wonderful Mulatto and Creole women, Jews and Christians, all dwell together in a peace that passes describing. The Jewish immigrants are in seventh heaven; all of them have jobs and feel at home.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 »
The California fever is not likely to take us off.... There is neither romance nor glory in digging for gold after the manner of t...he pictures in the geography of diamond washing in Brazil.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What we are told of the inhabitants of Brazil, that they never die but of old age, is attributed to the tranquility and serenity o...f their climate; I rather attribute it to the tranquility and serenity of their souls, which are free from all passion, thought, or any absorbing and unpleasant labors. Those people spend their lives in an admirable simplicity and ignorance, without letters, without law, without king, without any manner of religion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All my life I have lived and behaved very much like [the] sandpiper--just running down the edges of different countries and contin...ents, "looking for something" ... having spent most of my life timorously seeking for subsistence along the coastlines of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? Where should we be today?... Is it right to be watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What childishness is it that while there's breath of life in our bodies, we are determined to rush... to see the sun the other way around?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Over there, in Europe, all was shame and anger. Here it was exile or solitude, among these languid and agitated madmen who danced ...in order to die.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »