Wendell Willkie
Wendell Willkie
Wendell Lewis Willkiewas an American lawyer, corporate executive, and the 1940 Republican candidate for president. Willkie appealed to many convention delegates as the Republican field's only interventionist: although the U.S. remained neutral prior to Pearl Harbor, he favored greater U.S. involvement in World War II to support Britain and other Allies. His Democratic opponent, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, won the 1940 election with roughly 55% of the popular vote to Willkie's roughly 45% of the popular vote. Willkie lost...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth18 February 1892
CityElwood, IN
CountryUnited States of America
A true world outlook is incompatible with a foreign imperialism, no matter how high-minded the governing country.
What a man needs to get ahead is a powerful enemy.
And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.
Freedom of the press is the staff of life, for any vital democracy.
The modern airplane creates a new geographic dimension ... the world is small, the world is one.
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.
American liberty is a religion. It is a thing of the spirit.
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.
Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals.
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.
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.
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 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.