Quotes
Tolerance is a virtue, to be sure, but the greatest crime of our age has been the toleration of wrong. In this there is no middle ground. The events that made possible the emergence of Hitler illustrate that people must follow some leader, no matter how base he is, no matter how clearly an opportunist he is.
J. EDGAR HOOVER
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On a submarine you either get it or you don’t. If you come back, you come back all in one piece.
LT. COMDR, PHILIP H. ROSS, U.S.N.
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How I’d like to talk with Rommel after the war is over.
GEN. SIR BERNARD L. MONTGOMERY
Below the Surface
American affairs are like an iceberg, in that only a fraction of them are visible, and that fraction is usually unsatisfactory. The things that go well are out of sight. But an estimate of the iceberg must be of the whole of it. Thus the American war effort, its planning and its performance, is a stupendous achievement. The army, navy, and air force have been created and shaped into might in incredibly short time, and with consummate ability. Production for the armed forces flows to them in phenomenal volume. The industrial apparatus of America has been transformed with miraculous speed, and is functioning in gigantic measure. Behind the armed forces, American opinion about the war is firm. The rankand-file American, the nation as a whole, understands the issues of the war, is ready to make any and every contribution necessary to win it, and ready, too, for America to bear its full share in the peace. That is the unseen part of the iceberg. No ally need feel fear about America. This country is not going to let itself down on the battle fronts, or in the post-war world, and let down its allies in the process.
RAYMOND GRAM SWING
The bat is a very old creature. He has this navigating business down fine. If you take two wheels revolving in opposite directions, and blindfold the bat, he will fly through the wheels without even hitting a spoke. He has been able to do that for centuries. Of course, he is a dumb animal. We don’t want to think that everything in this world has been created by us, and that we are the masters of nature.
CHARLES F. KETTERING
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I’m not a neurotic man. I never used the stuff in my life.
WITNESS in a New York divorce case
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How can you really know anything about food unless you cook?
ELIZABETH BIRD, Wine Steward of the Hotel Algonquin
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The decline in births in the last decade has been most marked in the Northeastern States with large urban populations. The major contributions to renewal of the population are coming from three regions — the Southeast, Southwest, and Northwest. It has been estimated that these three sections contribute more than half of the natural increase of the United States, although they contain only about one third of the total population.
NATIONAL RESOURCES PLANNING BOARD
Mr. Willkie
Ham Fish is against me, Gerald L. K. Smith is against me, and I understand Landon is against me. If this keeps up, I may be nominated in spite of myself.
WENDELL L. WILLKIE
Mr. Willkie coupled his own name with mine just to get his name in the newspapers.
COL. ROBERT R. MCCORMICK
It really scared some of the boys when they first saw the kind of country they’d been flying over for half a year in soup so thick they couldn’t see anything.
CAPT. JAMES P. SEGEL,flying in Burma
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When a nation fights three wars in half a century, and is unprepared to fight them and unable to make a workable peace after they are won, then it has no foreign policy.
To have a foreign policy is to know what is coming and to be prepared for it. You would not think a banker had much of a banking policy if every few years he had a run on the bank, and had to be saved from ruin by forcing his stockholders to put up new capital. You could forgive him the first time, you might be charitable the second time. But the third time you would have your doubts about whether he understood banking.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Bombing
I felt I was part of a “de-assembly plant” after what I saw our bombs doing down below.
STAFF SGT. J. S. RZENCA
We’ve been bombing Kiska for the past year, and the Japs still haven’t left.
BRIG. GEN. WILLIAM E. LYND
It is obvious that the bombings have certainly not increased the appetite of Germans for war.
WILLIAM L. SHIRER
The war is not to be won solely by the bombing of Germany’s industries and communications, but without such bombing it probably could not be won at all.
J. M. SPAIGHT,British aviation expert
As many airplanes roll out of the doors of our factories in 150 days as were manufactured between the time of the Wrights’ Kitty Hawk flights in 1903 to June, 1939.
GEN. HENRY H. ARNOLD
An old Virginia farmer used to tell me, “The tendency of everything is to be more so.”
CONGRESSMAN A. WILLIS ROBERTSON,Virginia
A. & P. Food Stores, the leading chain retail grocery of Montreal, advertised porterhouse, boneless sirloin, and boneless round, both steak and roast, at 35 cents a pound — and I have a photostatic copy of their advertisement — on the same day that the Office of Price Administration in Washington set the top price for porterhouse in Washington at the socalled roll-back price of 66 cents a pound, or 90 per cent above the Montreal price.
SENATOR SHIPSTEAD of Minnesota
Compared to an A-36 a Stuka sounds like an alley cat.
CAPT. ROGER L. MILLER
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Because the chinchilla is a vegetarian, the war doesn’t pose any food problems as it does with silver fox and mink farming. The day is soon coming when chinchilla furs will be within the economic reach of any woman of above average means.
DR. M. R. HOWARD, Denver fur farmer
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Something must be done to dispel the Hollywood idea of a maharajah. Look around at my fellow maharajahs. They’re all simple, hard-working fellows.
MAHARAJAH OF PATIALA
Feminism
The vice-presidency for a woman is a long way off. The chances are very slim indeed that there will be one in my lifetime.
CLARE BOOTHE LUCE
Although most people insist a woman will not make a competent umpire, we’re willing to test one out while under fire. That’s the only way to tell whether there’s a place for the fair sex behind the plate even during this period of manpower shortage.
RAY DUMONT, National Semipro Baseball Congress
War Reporting
We try to write these pamphlets in understatement, if anything. We merely set down the bald facts. That is to say, we don’t use a lot of adjectives in an attempt to heighten the impact of the account. To bring adjectives to these stories — well, would be a silly kind of gilding. So we always understate.
H. A. ST. GEORGE SAUNDERS
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We are not skilled as individuals. Our minds are dulled by the narrow troughs in which we live. We never thought we would have to imitate Tarzan of the Apes and turn into new beings for jungle fighting.
BRIG. GEN. CHARLES ORDE WINGATE
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There isn’t a nickel frank now to be found in all of Coney Island. The rule is 10¢(15¢ at Feltman’s), and a couple of years ago the Coney trade would have expected a hot-dog to come in a mink wrapper for that price.
JOE SCHOENFELD in Variety
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I spent my No. 17 ration coupon on a “sensible” pair of shoes, and I never had a pair of shoes that hurt me more.
CORNELIA OTIS SKINNER