36 William McKinley Quotes

William McKinley quotes

1. The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.

2. Our earnest prayer is that God will graciously vouchsafe prosperity, happiness, and peace to all our neighbors, and like blessings to all the peoples and powers of earth.

3. Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.

4. When he received the cable from Admiral George Dewey reporting the capture of Manila, President William McKinley had to look up the location of the Philippines on a globe. 'I could not have told where those damned islands were within 2,000 miles,' he confessed later.

5. I am deeply affected by the news of the untimely death of President McKinley. I hasten to express the deepest and most heartfelt sympathy of the German people to the great American nation. Germany mourns with American for her noble son, who lost his life while he was fulfilling his duty to his country and people.

6. The ocean is not wide enough to hold all the sympathy that is streaming from the Old World to the New.

7. Mr. McKinley was one of the most popular figures in American history and one of the best representatives of American ideals. On account of the extraordinary purity of Mr. McKinley's character, the American people will find sympathy wherever civilized men dwell. Opinion in Europe regarding Pan-Americanism may possibly be divided, but it is comprehensible from the American point of view. Mr. McKinley died firmly believing that the work he had begun in domestic and foreign policy would find suitable instruments for its continuation.

8. I learn with deep pain that his Excellency Mr. McKinley has succumbed to the deplorable attempt on his life. I sympathize with you with all my heart in this calamity which thus strikes at your dearest affections and which bereaves the great American nation of a President so justly respected and loved.

9. I have been deeply shocked by this crime. President McKinley was not a ruler of exclusive or aristocratic tendencies. He was a good friend of the people, a genuine democrat in the best sense of the word. With regard to Mexico, President McKinley had ever evidenced such friendly sentiments that his death will be mourned in this country hardly less keenly than in the United States.

10. All our people loved their dead President. His kindly nature and lovable traits of character, and his amiable consideration for all about him will long live in the minds and hearts of his countrymen. He loved them in return with such patriotism and unselfishness that in this hour of their grief and humiliation he would say to them: 'It is God's will; I am content. If there is a lesson in my life of death, let it be taught to those who still live, and leave the destiny of their country in their keeping.' Let us, then, as our dead is buried out of our sight, seek for the lessons and the admonitions that may be suggested by the life and death which constitutes our theme.

11. When the history of his time is written he will stand forth as the great figure in the years which have been so crowded with events. He gained the entire confidence of the nation by his patriotism, wisdom and ability, just as he won its love by his kindness and goodness to all men.

12. I have never been in doubt since I was old enough to think intelligently that I would someday be made President.

13. Illiteracy must be banished from the land if we shall attain that high destiny as the foremost of the enlightened nations of the world which, under Providence, we ought to achieve.

14. Let us ever remember that our interest is in concord, not in conflict; and that our real eminence rests in the victories of peace, not those of war.

15. Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.

16. That's all a man can hope for during his lifetime - to set an example - and when he is dead, to be an inspiration for history.

17. Unlike any other nation, here the people rule, and their will is the supreme law.

18. War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.

19. We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.

20. Without competition we would be clinging to the clumsy antiquated processes of farming and manufacture and the methods of business of long ago, and the twentieth would be no further advanced than the eighteenth century.

1. Finally it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.

2. I do not prize the word cheap. It is not a word of inspiration. It is the badge of poverty, the signal of distress. Cheap merchandise means cheap men and cheap men mean a cheap country.

3. The people of this country want an industrial policy that is for America and Americans.

4. I went down on my knees and prayed to Almighty God for light and guidance and one night late it came to me this way. We could not leave (the Philippines) to themselves-they were unfit for self-government-and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's was. There was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them.

5. Half-heartedness never won a battle.

6. Our past has gone into history.

7. The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.

8. We cannot gamble with anything so sacred as money.

9. In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.

10. The more profoundly we study this wonderful Book, and the more closely we observe its divine precepts, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.

11. I am for America because America is for the common people.

12. Strong hearts and helpful hands are needed, and, fortunately, we have them in every part of our beloved country.

13. The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes-not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt-through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both.

14. We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.

15. The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.

16. The path of progress is seldom smooth. New things are often found hard to do. Our fathers found them so. We find them so. But are we not made better for the effort and scarifice?