Quotes from William McKinley

In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.

The American people, intrenched in freedom at home, take their love for it with them wherever they go.

The people of this country want an industrial policy that is for America and Americans.

I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made president.

Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.

We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.

Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.

I am a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform.

The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.

The more profoundly we study this wonderful Book, and the more closely we observe its divine precepts, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.

Illiteracy must be banished from the land if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world which, under Providence, we ought to achieve.

The path of progress is seldom smooth. New things are often found hard to do. Our fathers found them so. We find them so. But are we not made better for the effort and scarifice?

The liberty to make our laws does not give us the freedom nor the license to break our laws!