The Quotation Index

“Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.”

Winston Churchill · Give us the tools, 1941 · Primary source

“We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Abraham Lincoln · The Gettysburg Address, 1863 · Primary source

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

George Orwell · Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949 · Primary source

“There’s an old saying that victory has a hundred fathers and defeat is an orphan.”

John F. Kennedy · Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs News Conference, 1961 · Primary source

“For, in a democracy, every citizen, regardless of his interest in politics, ‘holds office’ every one of us is in a position of responsibility; and, in the final analysis, the kind of government we get depends upon how we fulfill those responsibilities. We, the people, are the boss, and we will get the kind of political leadership, be it good or bad, that we demand and deserve.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Abraham Lincoln · The Gettysburg Address, 1863 · Primary source

“I am the responsible officer of the government [regarding the failed invasion of Cuba].”

John F. Kennedy · Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs News Conference, 1961 · Primary source

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Abraham Lincoln · House Divided Speech, 1858 · Primary source

“I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

Abraham Lincoln · The Gettysburg Address, 1863 · Primary source

“Only a crisis—actual or perceived—produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.”

Milton Friedman · Capitalism and Freedom, 1982 · Primary source

“There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · A Study of History, 1934-1961 · Primary source

”History is a graveyard of aristocracies.”

Vilfredo Pareto · The Mind and Society, 1916 · Primary source

“If we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“On the whole, in imperialism nothing fails like success.”

William Ralph Inge · Outspoken Essays, 1919+1922 · Primary source

“Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”

Benjamin Franklin · Letter to the Abbés Chalut and Arnoux, 1787 · Primary source

“By noon it was clear that the Socialists would have a majority. At luncheon my wife said to me, ‘It may well be a blessing in disguise.’ I replied, ‘At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.’”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Freedom has many difficulties and democracy is not perfect, but we have never had to put a wall up to keep our people in.”

John F. Kennedy · Ich bin ein Berliner speech, 1963 · Primary source

“The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“It is compromise that prevents each set of reformers from crushing the group on the extreme opposite end of the political spectrum.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“The statesmen miscalculated again. Their fellow-countrymen had the means to carry out their policy but not the will; their pawns had the will without the means.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“There are many ways in which it can be helped, but it can never be helped by merely talking about it. We must act. We must act quickly.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt · First Inaugural Address of Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933 · Primary source

“Plainly, the central idea of secession, is the essence of anarchy.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“Two thousand years ago the proudest boast was civis Romanus sum. Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is Ich bin ein Berliner.”

John F. Kennedy · Ich bin ein Berliner speech, 1963 · Primary source

“They rushed into it with their eyes open because they could not resist the bait.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.”

Theodore Roosevelt · Letter to Henry L. Sprague, 1900 · Primary source

“We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom—symbolizing an end as well as a beginning—signifying renewal as well as change.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience have been aroused, when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · New England Reformers, 1844 · Primary source

“When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Assume that the new elite were clearly and simply to proclaim its intentions which are to supplant the old elite; no one would come to its assistance, it would be defeated before having fought a battle. On the contrary, it appears to be asking nothing for itself, well knowing that without asking anything in advance it will obtain what it wants as a consequence of its victory.”

Vilfredo Pareto · Manual of Political Economy, 1906 · Primary source

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.”

Thomas Jefferson · Declaration of Independence, 1776 · Primary source

“United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do—for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Abraham Lincoln · The Gettysburg Address, 1863 · Primary source

“The history of man is the history of the continuous replacement of certain elites: as one ascends, another declines.”

Vilfredo Pareto · The Rise and Fall of Elites, 1900 · Primary source

“The new elite which seeks to supersede the old one, or merely to share its power and honors, does not admit to such an intention frankly and openly.”

Vilfredo Pareto · The Rise and Fall of Elites, 1900 · Primary source

“Our goal is not the victory of might, but the vindication of right—not peace at the expense of freedom, but both peace and freedom, here in this hemisphere, and, we hope, around the world. God willing, that goal will be achieved.”

John F. Kennedy · Address During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 · Primary source

“Not all Senators would agree—but few would deny that the desire to be re-elected exercises a strong brake on independent courage.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

Thomas Jefferson · Declaration of Independence, 1776 · Primary source

“I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearth-stone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“One of the best ways of enslaving a people is to keep them from education… The second way of enslaving a people is to suppress the sources of information, not only by burning books, but by controlling all the other ways in which ideas are transmitted.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · My Day, 1935-1962 · Primary source

“I heartily accept the motto,—‘That government is best which governs least;’ and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“There will never be a really free and enlightened State, until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“Now the trumpet summons us again—not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need—not as a call to battle, though embattled we are—but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“The President has paid dear for his White House. It has commonly cost him all his peace.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“As long as I have any choice, I will only stay in a country where political liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“For what Pericles said to the Athenians has long been true of this commonwealth: ’We do not imitate—for we are a model to others.’”

John F. Kennedy · The City Upon a Hill Speech, 1961 · Primary source

“Any system of government will work when everything is going well. It’s the system that functions in the pinches that survives.”

John F. Kennedy · Why England Slept, 1940 · Primary source

“Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.”

John F. Kennedy · The City Upon a Hill Speech, 1961 · Primary source

“Perhaps if the American people more fully comprehended the terrible pressures which discourage acts of political courage, which drive a Senator to abandon or subdue his conscience, then they might be less critical of those who take the easier road—and more appreciative of those still able to follow the path of courage.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility—I welcome it.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“A dog starv’d at his master’s gate
Predicts the ruin of the state.”

William Blake · Auguries of Innocence, 1803 · Primary source

“Of our political revolution of ’76, we all are justly proud. It has given us a degree of political freedom, far exceeding that of any other nation of the earth. In it the world has found a solution of the long mooted problem, as to the capability of man to govern himself. In it was the germ which has vegetated, and still is to grow and expand into the universal liberty of mankind.”

Abraham Lincoln · Temperance Address, 1842 · Primary source

“History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

Ronald Reagan · Address to the Nation and Other Countries on United States-Soviet Relations, 1984 · Primary source

“With malice toward none; with charity for all.”

Abraham Lincoln · Second Inaugural Address, 1865 · Primary source

“When the conduct of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is an old and a true maxim, that a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall.”

Abraham Lincoln · Temperance Address, 1842 · Primary source

“The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. One could say that it has affected us quantitatively, not qualitatively.”

Albert Einstein · Ideas and Opinions , 1954 · Primary source

“Wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength, and wars usually cease when the fighting nations agree on their relative strength.”

Geoffrey Blainey · The Causes of War, 1973 · Primary source

“We choose to go to the Moon. We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”

John F. Kennedy · Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort, 1962 · Primary source

“Knowlege is power.”

Thomas Jefferson · Letter to George Ticknor, 1817 · Primary source

“A civil war was most likely to develop into an international war when one side in the civil war had ideological, racial or other links with an outside nation.”

Geoffrey Blainey · The Causes of War, 1973 · Primary source

“I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“We have had our failures, but so have others, even if they do not admit them. And they may be less public.”

John F. Kennedy · Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort, 1962 · Primary source

“To be sure, we are behind, and will be behind for some time in manned flight. But we do not intend to stay behind, and in this decade, we shall make up and move ahead.”

John F. Kennedy · Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort, 1962 · Primary source

“Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, ‘Because it is there.’ Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the Moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.”

John F. Kennedy · Address at Rice University on the Nation’s Space Effort, 1962 · Primary source

“A man does what he must—in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures—and that is the basis of all human morality.”

John F. Kennedy · Profiles in Courage, 1956 · Primary source

“While the breakdown of diplomacy reflects the belief of each nation that it will gain more by fighting than by negotiating, the breakdown of war reflects the belief of each nation that it will gain more by negotiating than by fighting.”

Geoffrey Blainey · The Causes of War, 1973 · Primary source

“The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon [Sparta], made war inevitable.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“The greatest danger of all would be to do nothing.”

John F. Kennedy · Address During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 · Primary source

“I am more afraid of our own blunders than of the enemy’s devices.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

“When nations prepare to fight one another, they have contradictory expectations of the likely duration and outcome of the war. When those predictions, however, cease to be contradictory, the war is almost certain to end.”

Geoffrey Blainey · The Causes of War, 1973 · Primary source

“Failure cuts deepter memories than success.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“An innocent plowman is more worthy than a vicious prince.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Now when a country does not pay its debts you cannot take its word on anything.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“I have adhered to my rule of never criticizing any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“Intelligence, patriotism, Christianity, and a firm reliance on Him, who has never yet forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in the best way, all our present difficulty.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“History is moving pretty quickly these days, and the heroes and villains keep on changing parts.”

Ian Fleming · Casino Royale, 1953 · Primary source

“The fact that I am neither a Greek nor a Turk perhaps creates little presumption of my being fair-minded, for Western partisans of non-Western peoples are often more fanatical than their favourites.”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, 1922 · Primary source

“And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.”

John F. Kennedy · Civil Rights Address, 1963 · Primary source

“I hold, that in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the Union of these States is perpetual. Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.”

John F. Kennedy · Address During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 · Primary source

“For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed.”

John F. Kennedy · Inaugural Address of President John F. Kennedy, 1961 · Primary source

“Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Power, 1860 · Primary source

“For it matters not how small the beginning may seem to be: what is once well done is done for ever.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“Any man more right than his neighbors, constitutes a majority of one already.”

Henry David Thoreau · Resistance to Civil Government, 1849 · Primary source

“Clausewitz’s first principle was to have a secure base. From there one proceeds to freedom of action.”

Ian Fleming · Dr. No, 1958 · Primary source

“Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“Total war makes no sense in an age when great powers can maintain large and relatively invulnerable nuclear forces and refuse to surrender without resort to those forces. It makes no sense in an age when a single nuclear weapon contains almost ten times the explosive force delivered by all the allied air forces in the Second World War.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“A war postponed may be a war averted.”

Winston Churchill · The World Crisis, 1923-1931 · Primary source

“We stated before that men’s ideas change slowly and that a nation’s ideas change even more slowly. It takes shocks—hard shocks—to change a nation’s psychology.”

John F. Kennedy · Why England Slept, 1940 · Primary source

“We are both caught up in a vicious and dangerous cycle in which suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counterweapons.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“The only safe rule is found in the self-adjusting meter of demand and supply.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Wealth, 1860 · Primary source

“Laws too gentle are seldom obeyed; too severe, seldom executed.”

Benjamin Franklin · Poor Richard’s Almanack, 1732-1758 · Primary source

“Looking back at the worst times, it always seems that they were times in which there were people who believed with absolute faith and absolute dogmatism in something.”

Richard Feynman · The Meaning of It All, 1998 · Primary source

“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war. We do not want a war. We do not now expect a war. This generation of Americans has already had enough—more than enough—of war and hate and oppression. We shall be prepared if others wish it. We shall be alert to try to stop it. But we shall also do our part to build a world of peace where the weak are safe and the strong are just. We are not helpless before that task or hopeless of its success.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth—but neither will we shrink from that risk at any time it must be faced.”

John F. Kennedy · Address During The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 · Primary source

“Technology is, of course, only a long Greek name for a bag of tools; and we have to ask ourselves: What are the tools that count in this competition in the use of tools as means to power?”

Arnold J. Toynbee · The World and the West, 1953 · Primary source

“Inflation is not caused by the actions of private citizens, but by the government: by an artificial expansion of the money supply required to support deficit spending. No private embezzlers or bank robbers in history have ever plundered people’s savings on a scale comparable to the plunder perpetrated by the fiscal policies of statist governments.”

Ayn Rand · The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, 1986 · Primary source

“There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“If you put a chain around the neck of a slave, the other end fastens itself around your own.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“This is one country. It has become one country because all of us and all the people who came here had an equal chance to develop their talents.”

John F. Kennedy · Civil Rights Address, 1963 · Primary source

“If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Compensation, 1841 · Primary source

“I therefore consider that in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States.”

Abraham Lincoln · First Inaugural Address, 1861 · Primary source

“This Nation was founded by men of many nations and backgrounds. It was founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.”

John F. Kennedy · Civil Rights Address, 1963 · Primary source

“For of those to whom much is given, much is required.”

John F. Kennedy · The City Upon a Hill Speech, 1961 · Primary source

“Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson · Civilization, 1870 · Primary source

“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”

Ernest Hemingway · Notes on the Next War, 1935 · Primary source

“There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“I think the two things most opposed to good counsel are haste and passion; haste usually goes hand in hand with folly, passion with coarseness and narrowness of mind.”

Thucydides · History of the Peloponnesian War, 431 BC · Primary source

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.

William Blake · And did those feet in ancient time (Jerusalem), 1808 · Primary source

“This is a time for action—not for war, but for mobilization of every bit of peace machinery.”

Eleanor Roosevelt · My Day, 1935-1962 · Primary source

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“Confident and unafraid, we labor on—not toward a strategy of annihilation but toward a strategy of peace.”

John F. Kennedy · Commencement address at American University, 1963 · Primary source

“While the wall is the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the failures of the Communist system, for all the world to see, we take no satisfaction in it, for it is, as your Mayor has said, an offense not only against history but an offense against humanity, separating families, dividing husbands and wives and brothers and sisters, and dividing a people who wish to be joined together.”

John F. Kennedy · Ich bin ein Berliner speech, 1963 · Primary source

“The main military purpose and scheme of the Dictators is to produce quick results, to avoid a prolonged war. A prolonged war never suits dictators.”

Winston Churchill · The Second World War, 1948-1953 · Primary source

“No nation was ever ruined by trade.”

Benjamin Franklin · No reliable source

“How unreasonable people are! They never use the freedoms they have but demand those they do not have; they have freedom of thought—they demand freedom of speech.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Either/Or, 1843 · Primary source

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