W. Somerset Maugham Quotes
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
W. Somerset Maugham, 1874-1965, British Writer, The Circle
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
Taylor was the Chief Prosecutor of the Nazi War Criminals at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II. After the war, there were tens of thousands of Nazis that were guilty of War Crimes. As an expediency measure, the allies decided to not formally prosecute 100,000 of the lower ranking war criminals casing the British Prosecutor to resign in protest. However, most Americans had no idea that there were so many war criminals and that the decision had been made not tp prosecute them. There were a number of trials and convictions of the highest ranking Nazis, the highest profile Nazi war criminals were executed or given life sentences. However, a larger group of the 2nd tier of war criminals benefitted from the politics of the beginning of the Cold War. Some politicians in the United States thought these Nazi War Criminals might be useful to the West in the coming struggle with Russia. Politically, they did not have enough clout to free them, but they persuaded McCloy to commute their death sentences, so that they might be released a little later to work for us against the Russians. Also, they shortened the sentences of others. The result was that there were after a few years. number of mass murderers and slave labor exploiters who ended up in significant positions in the West German government, and some like Werner Von Braun were brought to the United States to strengthen our Rocket development and jet airplane design, the only two areas where the German's were ahead of us. Most Americans had no idea that murders and war criminals were in these positions until years later.
Responding to a question of how he, as a black man, could talk with the president of South Africa:
Without Dirksen’s support, LBJ could not have passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, ending legal segregation. However, the conservative wing of the Republican Party had strongly opposed the idea of the Federal Government using its power to control and regulate issues that involved local practice and custom and trampled on states’ rights. Dirksen, who personally was not a racist like many conservatives were at the time, faced the dilemma and came down on the side of ending legal discrimination even if it meant violating the principle of limited federal government. When asked about his seeming inconsistency (which was often), this was his brilliant response. Producing one of the best political quotations of all time.
William Somerset Maugham CH was an English playwright, novelist, and short-story writer. He was among the most popular writers of his era and reputedly the highest-paid author during the 1930s.
