Dick Gregory Quotes

With regards to American foreign policy all across the globe, it is important for us to be operating from positions of strength, and not to just concede that.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

It has been lately urged in a very respectable quarter that it is the mission of this country to spread civil and religious liberty all over the globe, and especially over this continent - even by force, if necessary. It is a sad delusion.

I have found that many other countries will buy off on anything American. As much as they hate us, they want to be us more than anything.

There's no way in the world that the United States does not want to spread democratic ideals, but the first thing we have to do is that which is the interest of our security.

Hollywood ... proved a more reliable, cost-effective means of securing world domination than any nuclear arsenal or diplomatic d’marche.

Those who say that America has to dominate the world, and that you either have to control everything or go home, don't understand the way power is projected.

America is different. It irks and domineers. But it does not conquer. It tries to call the shots and bend the rules, but it does not go to war for land and glory.

Culturally, America is the undisputed hegemonic power.

The United States is pursuing a series of goals (spreading democracy, asserting its hegemony, securing oil supplies) that are ultimately incompatible.

The issue of American world cultural dominance is moot. All the international debates on the issue seem to be held in English.

America has an interesting global role, don't we? It certainly seems to be changing. Our government right now has a softer hand than we've had in the past, but I still think that we're the global behemoth.

If you think that running your economy into the ground and having to send troops in in order to prop up your only ally is leadership, then we've got a different definition of leadership.

What I'm interested in is Britain projecting itself abroad, and through that its values and the things it holds dear. And I don't think you do that by refusing to talk to the world's second-largest economy [China]. In fact, that is positively counter-productive in my view.

American power should be used not just in the defense of American interests but for the promotion of American principles.

The US intervened in the Philippines to uplift and christianize the backward people, killing a couple of hundred thousand of them and destroying the place. The same thing happened in Haiti, the same thing happened with other countries.

It's very important to understand that World War II is at the base of this new policy. From the 1890s on, the U.S. was always imperialistic. We went after the Philippines, and we did the same in Cuba, in Hawaii. We controlled South America. Woodrow Wilson was not what he was supposed to be. He was very much a white man first. "The world must be made safe for democracy." It really accelerates after World War II.

There was a degree of interventionism in American foreign policy, the notion that we must be the superpower and we have to intervene everywhere, that I think makes no sense.

We haven't been leading anybody. We've been acquiescing to a bunch of linguini-spined leftists all over the world, at the United Nations, in NATO, wherever it is. The people who don't even pay for their own defense. The people that don't even believe in guns and bullets to protect yourself are the people we have been acquiescing to. And they think this is called leadership. Leadership is sponsoring America's decline. Leadership is administering America's decline. Leadership is admitting that America's superpower status was never deserved or warranted.

I just don't think we should go hellfire damnation around the globe freeing people, unless it is directly related to our own national security.

I think that the United States has always been most effective when it is leading both from power and principle.

[Sen. John] Kerry is also a man who opposes the death penalty, wants to restrict access to guns and voted against the resolution approving the start of ground operations against Saddam Hussein in 1991 - just what you would expect from Ted Kennedy's partner and Michael Dukakis's running mate.

I would say that I have been consistent in my broad view of how American power should be deployed, and the view that we underestimate our power when we restrict it to just our military power. We shortchange our influence and our ability to shape events when that's the only tool we think we have in the toolbox.

I think I know now why we are occupying Iraq. In case we have to sell America and move to a smaller country.