The policy of this country is a canal under American control. The United States cannot consent to the surrender of this control to... any European power.... The capital invested by corporations or citizens of other countries in such an enterprise must in a great degree look for protection to one or more of the great powers of the world. No European power can intervene for such protection without adopting measures on this continent which the United States would deem wholly inadmissible. If the protection of the United States is relied upon, The United States must exercise such control as will enable this country to protect its national interests.... An interoceanic canal across the American Isthmus ... would be the great ocean thoroughfare between our Atlantic and our Pacific shores, and virtually a part of the coastline of the United States. Our merely commercial interest in it is greater than that of all other countries, while its relations to our power and prosperity as a nation, to our means of defense, our unity, peace, and safety, are matters of paramount concern to the people of the United States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No doubt for the average man nationalism is no more than one of the faiths that live together in actual if illogical partnership i...n his heart and mind (illogical in the sense that some of these faiths, say Christianity and national patriotism, may have mutually incompatible ethical ideals). Yet it is hard to exaggerate the extent to which for many modern Western men the worship of the nation-state occupies a major part of their conscious relations with groups outside the family.... The ritual surrounding the flag, patriotic hymns, the reverent reading of patriotic texts, the glorification of national heroes (saints), the insistence on the nation's mission, the nation's basic consonance with the scheme of the universe--all of this is so familiar to most of us that unless we are internationalist crusaders in favor of a world-state or some other proposed means for securing universal peace we never even notice it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Murder in the murderer is no such ruinous thought as poets and romancers will have it; it does not unsettle him, or fright him fro...m his ordinary notice of trifles: it is an act quite easy to be contemplated, but in its sequel, it turns out to be a horrible jangle and confounding of all relations.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the accumulated wealth of the past generations is thus tainted,--no matter how much of it is offered to us,--we must begin to c...onsider if it were not the nobler part to renounce it, and to put ourselves in primary relations with the soil and nature, and abstaining from whatever is dishonest and unclean, to take each of us bravely his part, with his own hands, in the manual labor of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I count him a great man who inhabits a higher sphere of thought, into which other men rise with labor and difficulty; he has but t...o open his eyes to see things in a true light, and in large relations; whilst they must make painful corrections, and keep a vigilant eye on many sources of error.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The climate of Ohio is perfect, considered as the home of an ideal republican people. Climate has much to do with national charact...er.... A climate which permits labor out-of-doors every month in the year and which requires industry to secure comfort--to provide food, shelter, clothing, fuel, etc.--is the very climate which secures the highest civilization.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am satisfied the present Chinese labor invasion (it is not in any proper sense immigration--women and children do not come) is p...ernicious and should be discouraged. Our experience in dealing with the weaker races--the negroes and Indians, for example--is not encouraging. We shall oppress the Chinamen, and their presence will make hoodlums and vagabonds of their oppressors. I therefore would consider with favor suitable measures to discourage the Chinese from coming to our shores. But I suspect that this bill is inconsistent with our treaty obligations.... If it violates the National faith, I must decline to sign it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The two polar aspects of the contemporary American character collided that day in Dallas--a consideration which, in going beyond p...olitics, goes far to explain why it had to be Kennedy. For John Kennedy was everything that Lee Oswald was not. He existed directly in the vivid center of reality, he was potent in every way, his life and personality were one continuous action and interaction; he was neither dualistic, separated, nor helpless; he had never been prevented from experiencing himself as alive and consequential. Oswald struck back at everything he was not, but in a sense he was performing a Kennedy-like act (as far as he could imagine one), and was attempting to become the sort of man he killed by the very act of killing. And so all that was starved, thwarted and hopeless in our national life took its pathetic and sullen revenge on all that was most vital, potent, and attractive.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One is not idle because one is absorbed. There is both visible and invisible labor. To contemplate is to toil, to think is to do. ...The crossed arms work, the clasped hands act. The eyes upturned to Heaven are an act of creation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »