Quotes from Wendell Willkie

Freedom of the press is the staff of life, for any vital democracy.

For now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.

History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.

It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.

Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

It has been a long while since the United States had any imperialistic designs toward the outside world. But we have practised within our own boundaries something that amounts to race imperialism.

But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.

I would rather lose in a cause that I know some day will triumph than to triumph in a cause that I know some day will fail.

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.

In no direction that we turn do we find ease or comfort. If we are honest and if we have the will to win we find only danger, hard work and iron resolution.

A true world outlook is incompatible with a foreign imperialism, no matter how high-minded the governing country.

I believe in America because we have great dreams, and because we have the opportunity to make those dreams come true.

The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.

But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour.