Political Quotes

“Mr. President, on August 14, 1945, World War II came to an end. The official ceremony aboard the battleship USS Missouri 2 weeks later was brief, barely 18 minutes long. The low-key nature of the event stood in stark contrast to the unprecedented horror and violence of the preceding years, years in which the fate of civilization itself hung in the balance. I rise today to express our Nation's gratitude to all veterans of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Merchant Marine for their service and sacrifice seven decades ago. It is said that crisis builds character. For an entire generation of Americans, crisis did not build character; it revealed it. With the perfect hindsight history books provide, the Second World War can seem today to be a series of events that followed an inevitable course from Pearl Harbor to Normandy to Iwo Jima to the deck of the Battleship Missouri. Yet those who were there, those who made that history, know that the outcome was far from certain. All that stood between humanity and the abyss of tyranny was their courage, their faith, and their devotion to duty. As the war began, the United States was not a rich or powerful country. We had only the 17th largest army in the world. Our industries were still struggling to overcome a decade of economic depression. With two great oceans as a buffer, many Americans thought the answer to aggression was isolationism. Yet when the crisis came, Americans responded.…”