Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the contradiction of opposing imperialism abroad while practicing it domestically.
Wendell Willkie highlights a significant moral and philosophical dilemma faced by Americans: the inability to combat imperialism overseas while simultaneously perpetuating it within their own borders. This reflection encourages a deep examination of national values and ethics, urging individuals to align their foreign policies with a commitment to justice and equality at home.
In practice
During a lecture on ethics in international relations, this quote could highlight the importance of consistency in moral values.
Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.
It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.
No man has a right in America to treat any other man "tolerantly" for tolerance is the assumption of superiority. Our liberties are equal rights of every citizen.
I believe the moral losses of expediency always far outweigh the temporary gains.
To suppress minority thinking and minority expression would tend to freeze society and prevent progress. 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.
The roles of art, morality, religion, political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment but because of the demands of the social environment.
At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.
The mysteries of faith are degraded if they are made into an object of affirmation and negation, when in reality they should be an object of contemplation.
You get a little picture that reflects the whole. You can get readers interested in the life of one guy, and he can reflect the whole life around him. And it's a better picture than the politicians give you.
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past. The future, instead of the ladder toward the goals of life, flattens out into a perpetual present.
Self abandoned, relaxed and effortless, I seemed to have laid me down in the dried-up bed of a great river; I heard a flood loosened in remote mountains, I felt the torrent come; to rise I had no will, to flee I had no strength.
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