Wendell Willkie Quotes

I hate imperialism. I detest colonialism. And I fear the consequences of their last bitter struggle for life. We are determined that our nation, and the world as a whole, shall not be the plaything of one small corner of the world.

Why is it that we three hundred and thirty millions of people have been ruled for the last one thousand years by any and every handful of foreigners who chose to walk over our prostrate bodies? Because they had faith in themselves and we had not.

So long as there is imperialism in the world, a permanent peace is impossible.

Imperialism is not the creation of any one or any one group of states.

Imperialism or globalization - I don't have to care what it's called to hate it.

[America] well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standards of freedom …. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would no longer be the ruler of her own spirit.

It doesn’t matter if we don’t consider ourselves an empire. Others see us as impinging on their lives, their way of life.

The fact that we are smaller and weaker does not mean that we have less sovereignty than you.

I didn’t fight the Belgians only to have my country colonized a second time.

Conquest or superiority among other powers is not or ought not ever to be the object of republican systems.

The great powers claim that whatever they possess is theirs by right, but whatever we, the smaller countries possess is negotiable.

No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation.

There is nothing perhaps more adverse to nature and reason than to hold in obedience remote countries and foreign nations, in opposition to their inclination and interest.

As long as imperialism exists it will, by definition, exert its domination over other countries. Today that domination is called neocolonialism.

So every day I'm mindful as I watch the Bush crowd extend their sway into policies of every imaginable variety, and over almost every square foot of earth, that the control of the American state is a matter of urgency.

It seems strange to the rest of the world, but we Americans can't seem to stop talking about how other countries should be democratic like we are.

The sublimated idealism of the Enlightenment, the spirit of the League of Nations and of the United Nations Charter have not proved strong enough to control the aggressive dynamism of nationalism.

If that for which the Spanish Empire has stood since the days of Charles V is right, then everything for which the United States stands and has always stood is wrong.

These wars appear also to have given its death blow to colonialism and to imperialism in its colonial form, under which weaker peoples were treated as possessions to be economically exploited. At least we hope that such colonialism is on the way out.

In spite of this fact, the Western powers have never given sufficient importance to the Muslim world. They have always been inclined to treat it as a big backward and lethargic child.

It can be rebuilt if other countries with selfish interests will not meddle, as has been done in the past.

We all know what is meant by the term 'international community,' don't we? It's the West, of course, nothing more, nothing less. Using the term 'international community' is a way of dignifying the West, of globalising it, of making it sound more respectable, more neutral and high-faluting.

As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world.

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.