Politics and Power

TRUE TERROR IS TO WAKE UP ONE MORNING AND DISCOVER THAT YOUR HIGH SCHOOL CLASS IS RUNNING THE COUNTRY.

Generals detest generals on their own side far more than they dislike the enemy.

Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trample on the rights of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.

He who exercises government by means of his virtue may be compared to the north polar star, which keeps its place and all the stars turn towards it.

The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened among all of the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit; not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by nonparticipation in what we believe is evil.

At first glance, his greatest contribution, the League of Nations, appears to have failed. Still, despite the fact that the League was crippled by his contemporaries and rejected by his own country, I have no doubt that Wilson’s work will one day emerge in more effective form.

Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him… He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career.

Outside Russia, Lenin and Engels are of course not valued as scientific thinkers and no one would be interested in refuting them as such. The same might also be the case in Russia, except there one doesn’t dare say so.

I respect Lenin as a man who gave all his energy, at a total sacrifice of his personal life, to dedicating himself to the realization of socialist justice. I don’t consider his methods appropriate. But one thing is certain: Men such as he are the guardians and renewers of mankind’s conscience.

When the Nazis came into power, Einstein I think was faced with a dilemma. Should he continue with his pacifism, or should he do what he could to resist the Nazis in their effort to get control of the whole world?

Anyone who advises Americans to keep secret information which they may have about spies and saboteurs is himself an enemy of America.

The proposed militarization of the nation not only immediately threatens us with war, it will also slowly but surely undermine the democratic spirit and the dignity of the individual in our land.

As long as nations demand unrestricted sovereignty we shall undoubtedly be faced with still bigger wars, fought with bigger and technologically more advanced weapons.

Creation of a United States of Europe is an economic and political necessity. Whether it would contribute to the stabilization of international peace is hardly predictable. I believe yes.

Hitler is living—or shall I say sitting—on the empty stomach of Germany. As soon as economic conditions improve, Hitler will sink into oblivion.

Japan is now like a great kettle without a safety valve. It does not have enough land to enable its population to exist and develop. The situation must somehow be remedied if we are to avoid a terrible conflict.

Striving for peace and preparing for war are incompatible with each other… Arms must be entrusted only to an international authority.

I am not saying the U.S. should not manufacture and stockpile the bomb, for I believe that it must do so; it must be able to deter another nation from making an atomic attack.

Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels.

America is incomparably less endangered by its own Communists than by the hysterical hunt for the few Communists that are here.

If I were to be president, sometimes I would have to say to the Israeli people things they would not like to hear.

The German calamity of years ago repeats itself: people acquiesce without resistance and align themselves with the forces of evil.

Any government is in itself an evil insofar as it carries within it the tendency to deteriorate into tyranny.