Wendell Lewis Willkie (February 18, 1892 – October 8, 1944) was a corporate lawyer in the United States and a dark horse candidate who became the Republican Party nominee for president in 1940. A member of the liberal wing of the party, he crusaded against those domestic policies of the New Deal that he thought were inefficient and anti-business. Willkie, an internationalist, needed the votes of the large isolationist element, so he waffled on the bitterly debated issue of America's role in World War II, losing support from both sides. His opponent, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, won the 1940 election with 55% of the popular vote and 85% of the electoral vote. Afterward, Roosevelt found Willkie to be compatible politically with his plans and brought him aboard as an informal ambassador-at-large. Willkie criss-crossed the globe and brought home a vision of "One World" freed from imperialism and colonialism. Following his journeys, Willkie wrote One World; a bestselling account of his travels and meetings with the Allied heads of state, as well as ordinary citizens and soldiers in regions such as Russia and Iran. His liberalism lost him supporters in the Republican Party and he dropped out of the 1944 race, then several months later died of a heart attack. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A good catchphrase can obscure analysis for fifty years.
A true world outlook is incompatible with a foreign imperialism, no matter how high-minded the governing country.
And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.
Education is the mother of leadership.
Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.
For 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.
Free men are the strongest men.
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.
I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals.
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.
In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.
In no direction that we turn do we find ease or comfort. If we are honest and if we have the will to win we find only danger, hard work and iron resolution.
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.
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.
No man has a right in America to treat any other man 'tolerantly,' for tolerance is the assumption of superiority.
No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.
The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.
The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.
The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.
Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
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.
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(October 8 is also the birthday of Frank Herbert and Harvey Pekar.)
Categories: Quotes of the day, Wendell Willkie
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