William McKinley Quotes
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The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.
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We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.
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Half-heartedness never won a battle.
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Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.
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The liberty to make our laws does not give us the freedom nor the license to break our laws!
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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.
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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.
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Cuba ought to be free and independent, and the government should be turned over to the Cuban people.
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War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.
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Our faith teaches that there is no safer reliance than upon the God of our fathers who has so singularly favored the American people in every national trial and who will not forsake us so long as we obey His commandments and walk humbly in His footsteps
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I am a tariff man, standing on a tariff platform.
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We cannot gamble with anything so sacred as money.
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The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.
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What in the world had Grover Cleveland done? Will you tell me? You give it up? I have been looking for six weeks for a Democrat who could tell me what Cleveland has done for the good of his country and for the benefit of the people, but I have not found him.... He says himself...that two-thirds of his time has been uselessly spent with Democrats who want office.... Now he has been so occupied in that way that he has not done anything else.
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By the blessings of heaven I mean to live and die, please God, in the faith of my mother.
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The free man cannot be long an ignorant man.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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The Working Man's Creed: "A short day is better than a short dollar"
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I have already transmitted to Congress the report of the naval court of inquiry on the destruction of the battleship Maine in the harbor of Havana during the night of the fifteenth of February. The destruction of that noble vessel has filled the national heart with inexpressible horror. Two hundred and fifty-eight brave sailors and marines and two officers of our Navy, reposing in the fancied security of a friendly harbor, have been hurled to death, grief and want brought to their homes and sorrow to the nation.
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The army of Grant and the army of Lee are together. They are one now in faith, in hope, in fraternity, in purpose, and in an invincible patriotism. And, therefore, the country is in no danger. In justice strong, in peace secure, and in devotion to the flag all one.
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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.
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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.