Albert J. Beveridge Quotes

God has marked the American people as His chosen nation to finally lead in the regeneration of the world.

Young man, there is America -- which at this day serves for little more than to amuse you with stories of savage men, and uncouth manners; yet shall, before you taste of death, show itself equal to the whole of that commerce which now attracts the envy of the world.

The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally.

I repeat that superior races have a right [to establish colonies], because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize inferior races.

There is, of course, only one chosen nation. But Abraham Lincoln would call America 'an almost chosen nation' because he believed that America had a providential role to play in history, inspired by the example of God's ancient covenant people.

I think America is a new country. It is a young culture. The spirit of the opening of the West is still with the Americans. It's a very practical and individual-based kind of philosophy that had worked in America for a long time, had been very successful. And the spirit is very much there.

Had it not been for the Atlantic Ocean and the virgin wilderness, the United States would never have been the Land of Promise.

I perhaps ought to say that individually I never was much interested in the Texas question. I never could see much good to come of annexation, inasmuch as they were already a free republican people on our own model.

American imperialism is often traced to the takeover of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Hawaii in 1898.

I regarded and still regard the proposed annexation of Hawaii as not only opposed to our national policy but as a perversion of our national mission. The mission of our nation is to build up and make a great country out of what we have, instead of annexing islands

[America should be a] nation, coextensive with the North American continent, destined by God and nature to be the most populous and powerful people ever combined under one social compact.

We are destined to own and control the whole western continent from Baffin's bay to the Caribbean sea ... we need not be in a hurry. When the fruit is ripe, it will fall into our hands.

Whereas the British were generally quite open about the fact that they were running an empire, few Americans politicians today would use the “e” word as anything other than a term of abuse.

We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people—the Israel of our time—we bear the ark of liberties of the world.

The notion that America is a nation chosen by God, a New Israel destined for a providential mission of world redemption, has been a near constant of the national experience.

America is unique in the history of the world. During this last century, there was only one nation that laid down hundreds of thousands of lives of its own sons and daughters and asked for nothing for itself …. America is unique. You took no land from the Germans, no land from the Japanese. All you asked for was enough land to bury your dead.

Manifest Destiny on the hoof

It is, beyond question, the destiny of our race to spread themselves over the continent of North America, and this at no distant day.

The idea of the frontier is a stand-in for the idea of liberty.

That's exactly what made America so different, we don't have that colonial aspect of let's go conquer somebody else and make our nation bigger and that's because of the faith element.

The Philippines are ours forever. They are not capable of self-government. How could they be? They are not a self-governing race.

Manifest destiny was on the march, and it was unfortunate that Mexico stood in the path.

The transformation of part of the northern part of this continent into "America" inaugurated a nearly boundless epoch of opportunity and innovation, and thus deserves to be celebrated with great vim and gusto, with or without the participation of those who wish they had never been born.

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

We can't afford to stand pat while the world races by. The United States of America did not become the most prosperous nation on Earth by sheer luck or happenstance. We got here because each time a generation of Americans has faced a changing world, we have changed with it. We have not feared our future; we have shaped it.