While the United States has often taken the wrong path, it has rarely failed to demonstrate - at least in the long run - the courage to reverse its steps.
Antony BlinkenRead
Every country has a founding mythology. For Americans, it starts with our first president's youthful encounter with a cherry tree and refusal to tell a lie. Mr. Trump would do well to find inspiration in that story, which goes to the heart of what makes America different - and our foreign policy effective - around the world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of honesty and integrity as foundational values in American identity and foreign policy.
Antony Blinken highlights the significance of honesty in America's founding mythology, referencing the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. This parable illustrates the virtues of truthfulness and integrity, suggesting that such values are essential for effective leadership and the positive perception of America on the global stage. Blinken implies that by embracing these ideals, leaders can strengthen the country's moral authority in foreign affairs.
Themes
HonestyIntegrityFounding MythologyLeadershipForeign Policy
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about American values, one might reference this quote to emphasize the importance of integrity in leadership.
More from Antony Blinken
All quotes →When it comes to climate change, I think that success at home is directly tied to our ability to lead effectively abroad.
Antony BlinkenRead
Some friends of Israel believe that the Palestinians will never, in their hearts, accept a Jewish state in Palestine. Yet Germans and French, Chinese and Japanese, Mexicans and Americans have overcome their once insurmountable differences. Palestinians and Jews also have much to gain from peaceful coexistence.
Antony BlinkenRead
By virtually every metric, the liberal international order has made the world healthier, wealthier, wiser, more secure and more tolerant than it has ever been.
Antony BlinkenRead
I don't think anyone in the 1990s, the late '90s, anticipated that the Putin they knew then would become the Putin we know now.
Antony BlinkenRead
My father's father fled a pogrom in Russia in the early 20th century and was welcomed to the United States. So was my stepmother, who escaped as a young girl from Communist Hungary in 1950.
Antony BlinkenRead
Similar quotes
Bad promises are better broken than kept.
Abraham LincolnRead
To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.
William NicholsonRead
If the universe is so bad...how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator?
C. S. LewisRead
Christianity, whatever else it is, is an explosion. Unless it is sensational there is simply no sense in it. Unless the Gospel sounds like a gun going off it has not been uttered at all.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
Surely a man needs a closed place wherein he may strike root and, like the seed, become. But also he needs the great Milky Way above him and the vast sea spaces, though neither stars nor ocean serve his daily needs.
Antoine De Saint-ExuperyRead
In a world of increasing inequality, the legitimacy of institutions that give precedence to the property rights of 'the Haves' over the human rights of 'the Have Nots' is inevitably called into serious question.
David KortenRead