Walter H. Judd Quotes

The government should not present the anomaly which it now presents—a government the freest, perhaps the most democratic in the world with reference to local and domestic matters in which you rule yourselves as fully as any people in the world, while in your foreign affairs, your relations with other countries, whether peaceful or warlike, commercial, financial, or otherwise, you may have no more voice than the people of Japan.

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.

In international relations, in foreign policy, a great deal has to do with historical circumstances, a great deal has to do with the sense and perception of people.

To call the American role in the world imperial was, for many who did so, a way of asserting that the United States was misusing its power beyond its borders and, in so doing, subverting its founding political principles within them.

But, actually, it is only Americans who say that our freedoms and prosperity are the reason foreigners hate us. If you ask the foreigners, they make it clear that it's America's bullying foreign policy they detest.

Everybody pursues their national interests. The only one who gets blamed for it is the United States.

When in the course of European diplomacy it becomes necessary for one people to let another dissolve the political bands which have connected them with a third, and to assume among the powers of the earth the desperate and unequal station to which the will of an International Congress condemns them, a decent respect to the cannon of their protectors requires that they should say nothing about the causes which compel them to accept the situation.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

The diplomatic relations upon which our present system of international comity is based are being encountered by new forces and combinations which are fast rendering them impotent and antiquated

Every other agency involved in foreign affairs jealously guards its prerogatives whenever State makes the slightest movement to broaden its role.

You [America] may be larger, and we [Britain] may be older. You may be the stronger; sometime we may be the wiser.

No country can decide for another county.

Never for a moment, have the responsible and instructed statesmen in charge of the foreign affairs of the United States failed to consider themselves bound to insist upon this policy .... Almost every President and Secretary of State has re-stated the doctrine with vigor and emphasis in the discussion of the diplomatic affairs of his day.

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

We have become a great nation, forced by the fact of its greatness into relations with the other nations of the earth.

Any time someone says "that's it, I'm leaving" I ask them whether they'd prefer to live under US domestic policy, or US foreign policy. As bad as things get inside an empire, they're usually worse in the protectorates.

We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Historically, we were always complaining about others interfering in our domestic and national issues.

America has lost the moral high ground with the rest of the world, and we have fewer allies as a result. President Bush and his administration have undermined the war on terror by using tactics outlawed by international treaty and condemned by even our closest friends.

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.

Whoever wants peace among nations must seek to limit the state and its influence most strictly.

Well, I think the United States first of all has to recognize the world for what it is.

Our alliances should be understood as a means to expand our influence, not as a constraint on our power. The expansion of democracy and freedom in the world should be a shared interest and value with all nations.

The U.S. has intervened more often in more countries farther from its own shores than has any power in modern history.

I wish Obama would focus on governing the United States and would forget his country's imperialist pretensions.