Alan Huffman Quotes

Almost a century has passed since Japan first entered the world community by concluding a treaty of amity with the United States of America in 1854.

Americans are good with to-do lists; just tell us what to do, and we'll do it. Throughout our history, we have proven that. Colonize. Check. Win our independence. Check. Form a union. Check. Expand to the Pacific. Check. Settle the West. Check. Keep the Union together. Check. Industrialize. Check. Fight the Nazis. Check.

We've built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort.

American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.

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

The 1950s and 1960s had been a period of enormous growth, the highest in American history, maybe in economic history.

Most countries are static, and they need to do is keep having babies. But America's like this big old clanking smoking machine that just lumbers across the landscape scooping up and eating everything in sight.

American history is a loud, raucous, exquisite collection of noises.

America was not discovered. America was built.

The historical ambivalence of the United States toward global engagement is a thread that runs through American history.

Hong Kong never had prestige. It's gone from fishing village to where it is today.

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

We should have known better after the first war.

The development of science has produced an industrial revolution which has brought different peoples in such close contact with one another through colonization and commerce that no matter how some nations may still look down upon others, no country can harbor the illusion that its career is decided wholly within itself.

The Americans should stop insulting us, I'm not going to be an accomplice to the depopulation of the land. It's not up to the Americans to tell us how to organize our farm policy and the balance of our society. Their attitude is to treat the EC as if it had the plague and then encourage the rest of the world to join in.

It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.

History has put America in a position where its national security depends on its further moral growth.

In order to manage such affairs as war and peace, treaties, alliances, marriage, the means of increasing one’s territories, the loyalty of the people, parties and other business of the kingdom, it seems to me that there is no more useful knowledge than the study of history.

U. S. foreign policy in the 20th century was characterized by disastrous oscillations between over-commitment and isolation

Much of the history of the 21st century, for good or ill, will be written in Asia.

Americans’ manner of viewing foreign adversaries today is rooted in the history of their country’s past relations with the outside world. Their attitudes have been shaped especially by the most costly and all-consuming episodes in that history, in particular the wars—hot and cold—of the 20th century.

Managing diplomacy today is far more difficult than during the Cold War. Technology, jet travel, and a globalized economy make it possible for terrorists in a remote corner of Pakistan or Syria to plan a terrorist attack on Times Square.

[William Howard] Taft was the last serious anti-interventionist presidential candidate in U. S. history.

As long as Americans believe that their country has vital interests everywhere on earth, they will behave the same.

Perfectionism, no less than isolationism or imperialism or power politics, may obstruct the paths to international peace. Let us not forget that the retreat to isolationism a quarter of a century ago was started not by a direct attack against international cooperation but against the alleged imperfections of the peace.