A biography for Wendell Willkiehasn’t been written yet.
“But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour.”
“The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.”
“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.”
“History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.”
“But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.”
“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.”
“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.”
“The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.”
“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.”
“We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.”
“And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.”
“No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.”
“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.”
“Free men are the strongest men.”
“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.”
“We must honestly face our relationship with Great Britain.”
“Education is the mother of leadership.”
“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.”
“If the British Fleet were lost or captured, the Atlantic might be dominated by Germany, a power hostile to our way of life, controlling in that event most of the ships and shipbuilding facilities of Europe.”
“I would rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.”