What I seek is the highest possible batting average.

You'll have to learn that public life takes a lot of sweat; but it doesn't need to worry you. You won't always be right, but you mustn't suffer from being wrong. That's what kills people like us.

There is no group in America that can withstand the force of an aroused public opinion.

[D]rilling and arming, when carried on on a national scale, excite whole populations to frenzies which end in war.

There has been one persistent theme through all Axis propaganda. This theme has been that Americans are admittedly rich, that Americans have considerable industrial power - but that Americans are soft and decadent, that they cannot and will not unite and work and fight. ... Let them tell that to the Marines!

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

Slowly, and in spite of anything we Americans do or do not do, it looks a little as if you and some other good people are going to have to answer the old question of whether you want to keep your country unshackled by taking even more definite steps to do so