Quotes from Stanley Karnow

I first went there late one afternoon with the fabled Paris photographer Robert Doisneau, who thrived on collecting local color.

They skimped on clothing and entertainment, and, with rents tightly controlled, spent a major percentage of their income on food.

she had inherited a sprawling archipelago of disparate languages and cultures that owed its semblance of unity mainly to the legal definition of Filipino citizenship and an allegiance to the Catholic Church. Despite its modern trappings, it was still a feudal society dominated by an oligarchy of rich dynasties, which had evolved from one of the world's longest continuous spans of Western imperial rule.

Everybody who is anybody in the Philippines today, except for a few Spanish mestizos, has Chinese ancestors.

The United States continued to practice forms of economic and political imperialism in the years ahead, but territorial conquest began and ended in the Philippines.