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Henry A. Wallace, March 17, 1960
“The Chinese people are destine to take over the H-Bomb and their own economy. In addition, they will divide the world along color lines and Russia will be founded to ally herself with the West.”
“America’s supply of raw materials will being to run out, and imports will become larger and larger. Roads, hospitals, and the schools will e choked and overcrowded.”
“Cities will continue to expand at the expense of the countryside. Industrial and agricultural efficiency will continue to increase at a faster rate than the expansion of the population. ”
“Farms will become larger and will eventually come under the control of corporate executives residing in the cities. Farmers will simply be a part of a gigantic vertical integration scheme. The Chinese have the capacity to outbreed, out work, and outlast the weak, flabby, overfed peoples of the West.”
“We need general disarmament, a U.N. world police force, and a U.N. directed development fund, supported by all the ‘have’ nations, including Russia.”
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Norman Thomas vs. Dr. William McGovern, November 30, 1952
Thomas: “Truman and Acheson completely misread the interntions of Stalin, if they had had proper intelligence, and if they had interpreted available information correctly, they would have realized there is no possibility of world peace so long as the communist menace exist.”
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Arkady A. Sobolev, April 6, 1958
“We are confident in the final victory of the ideas of communism, but we have never imposed and we do not intend to impose the Socialist way of life, and you should not expect us to give up ours.”
Q: Have you and Comrade Kruschev abandoned your personal habits of liquidating millions of innocent people? Butcher!
A: The answer is very clear; neither Mr. Kruschey nor myself has a policy of exterminating people by the millions.
Q: Is the Soviet Union going to introduce into the United States the same kind of peaceful conexistence recently introduced in the Baltic states, East Germany, and most recently in Hungary, deporting thousands to Siberia?
A: I don’t know who this gentleman represents…
Q: I represent freedom!
A: As regards Estonia, Lativia, and Lithuania, they are members of the Soviet Union. They freely Chose their life.
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Dr. Linus Pauling, November 16, 1958
“We should create a World Peace Research Organization in the United Nations that would be like a great university. The research institute would have thousands of scientists, economists, geographers, specialists on international affairs, historians, and experts of all sorts working year after year on the problem of preserving peace in the world.
“My concern grows over the recklessness of the atomic bomb research. To order a test of a great nuclear bomb device is to sacrifice the lives of 15,000 unborn children. The estimate that I have made of the amount of this damage is of the order of 15,000 people now living who will probably die of leukemia, bone cancer, and other diseases as a result of radioactive materials liberated each year of testing nuclear weapons.”
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Margaret Mead, November 1. 1959
“A beatnik is a person who can’t tolerate the meaninglessness of the low level of goodness, and just because it is both low level and good casts his artistic rebellions in bizarre and often misunderstood forms.
“American society has sunk to a low-level goodness that forms a basis for juvenile delinquency, creates beat generation addiction, and stunts incentive among young people in business and professional pursuits.
“The ethic of low-level goodness only requires that everyone be as good as they are; so instead of reorganizing our cities, we scold a few parents or threaten to pass laws making parents, already completely robbed of any relationship to their children, responsible for the property their children destroy.
“Or, we even take out insurance policies against any damage our children may do – so everybody is protected from unpleasantness.”
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Averell Harriman, October 4, 1959
“The United States should adopt a new concept in dealing with Russia – stressing democracy against dictatorship rather than capitalism against communism, the dignity of the individual against the almighty state.
“Captialism in the minds of the peoples of Asia is almost synonymous with colonialism. It seems to me that we should not permit Mr. Kruschev or any other communist to write us down as the standard bearer of capitalism. Our economic system has little resemblance to the century-old Marxist concept of capitalism and we should abandon the word. We are a democracy against a dictatorship.”
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“Has U.S. Communism a Future?”
John Gates vs. Granville Hicks, November 24, 1957
Gates – YES: “The communist party has a future, because socialism is the future of the United States. We no longer insist, however, that we are God’s chosen people and that only we can lead America to socialism. The communist party of the United States is proud of its contributions but conscious of its mistakes. A big change has taken place. Today we do not endorse everything the Soviet Union does. But a struggle continues in the communist party of the United States between those who favor the new plan and those who favor the old.
Hicks – NO: “The answer is as clear as it can possibly be. The communist party has no future in the United States. And furthermore, it never did have. The old guard of the American communist party, which regards it as an extension and mouthpiece of the communist party in the Soviet Union, is gathering up its strength and preparing to drop the ax on Gates.”
Q: Where do you expect to get the people who will believe you and follow you in view of your 40 years of misleadership?
A: (Gates) I know a lot of parties that have attracted quite a following in spite of misleadership! If we can convince you that we are sincere and deserving your support, we will get it; if we can’t, we won’t.
Q: (to Hicks) You say communism in the United States has no future. Has communism anywhere a future?
A: (Hicks) The Soviet Union, like it or not, will go on a long, long time.
Q: How do you explain the Soviet arms buildup?
A: (Hicks) Unlike here in the United States, nobody in a socialist land profits from war or war preparation and the Soviet Union is heavily armed because it has been twice attacked in modern history. Opinions on who was to blame should not keep sensible people from agreeing that war is unthinkable and that the bomb tests poisoning air must be stopped by mutual agreement.
(Gates) If we stop war, time will tell, the people will decide, who is right, whether capitalism or socialism is better. [loud applause]
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Paul Sample, Mitchell Siporin, and Bartless Hayes, Jr. April 14, 1957
“The need for understanding modern art is more serious than may commonly be supposed. There is the strong impression in Europe that American cultural prestige is seriously surt by our failure to adequately support and demonstrate experiments in the fine arts in a manner parallel to our approval of experiments in science.”
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Senator Henry M. Jackson, march 10, 1957
“Soviet Scientific and technological success contains the seeds of Soviet political failure, which is the ‘Soviet dilemma’! The Kremlin must grant some freedom in order to maintain technical growth, but allowing freedom undermines communist ideology and discipline.
“The Russian leaders are building up a class of thinking people who will not accept Soviet doctrine without questioning it. Their most important goal is to achieve industrial supremacy over the United States. The only way they can hope to do this is be educating people to run the industries, businesses, and laboratories. Thus they are building up a large class of thinking people – and certainly that effort is incompatible with the Soviet system. There is an irreconcilable conflict that they must face up to.”
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Dr. Martin Luther King, October 28, 1956
“Negroes everywhere should refuse in a nonviolent sense to cooperate with the evils of segregation. We refuse to pay a dime to be abused [referring to the boycott by his people of the Montgomery bus system] and walk instead of using public and segregated transportation.
“We prefer tired feet to tired souls. I and others with me will walk until the walls of segregation are broken down by the battering ram of justice.
“We have come a long, long way but we have a long, long way to go.”
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Roy Wilkins, march 25, 1956
“There is no dilemma that cannot be resolved by moves to obey the law. Legal action is the principal weapon where the states have chosen the extreme position of point-blank refusal to comply. In states where repeated attempts by Negro parents have failed to elicit a response from school authorities, legal actions are planned that will advance the situation to a point where a beginning toward compliance can be required by federal judges.
“Such a strategy is of the very essence of moderation. To do less would not be moderate; it would be abandoning the cause of desegregation ot those who have sworn that it shall never come to pass.”
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Robert Frost, December 4, 1955
“Some folks call me an individualist. I think they mean I’m a cranky Yankee!
“The say that every poem has its ulteriority, its hidden meaning. I know that. To me, a poem is like a pond. Every once in a while a fish will break the surface shows somewhere – in a line, a phrase, a single word even.
“Freedom happens to me in bondage. Before you have any ideas at all you have to give up some freedom. Someone has said that the true poet never writes. He is free of the bonds of language and is a poet just the same. But I write, I write with meter and rhyme, which proves, I suppose, that I’m old-fashioned. Those are the bonds I choose for my freedom.”
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Walter Reuther, February 22, 1953
“Freedom must be an aggressive movement in order to combat the totalitarian ideas being spread around the world.
“The Red Labor leader is nothing but a colonial agent for the Soviet Union. He has no interest in the welfare of American workers. He does not want to see democracy work in the field of labor relations.
“The Red leader, like the union racketeer, cannot get decent wages for his workers because he has been compromised before negotiations begin. There are unscrupulous employees who will deal with a communist or a racketeer because they think it’s cheaper to pay off the union leader than to pay their workers.
“There is no easy pill that will purge communists from an organization. It takes old-fashioned work. You have to outfight them, outvote them, get up early before they do, and stay up after they’ve gone. You’ve got to be more tireless than they are. And you’ve got to prove what they’re trying to prevent: that democracy works at all levels of human association.”
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Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt, march 28, 1954
“We have shown the free world that we can lead in military and economic matters, but the areas of spiritual and moral leadership we have found far more difficult to encompass.
“The Soviet Union does a better propaganda job throughout the world than we do. Their promises are made very alluring.
“In areas of the world where starvation has always been imminent and where the mass of people have suffered for the benefit of the privileged few, it is highly effective for the Soviet Union to say, “We believe all men are borthers” and “We will see to it that we share and share alike.”
“We must remember that the Soviet Union does not reveal its doings and that most Asiatics have no knowledge whatever of the physical and mental slavery created by Lenin and Stalin. To them communism is simply an economic theory of Marxism. And since their condition is often more than desperate, that is often a very attractive theory.
“In India in 1952 people were dying of hunger in great numbers. We voted to give them some of our surplus wheat but our congressmen argued for six months about who was to pay for the ships to take it there. The obvious question of the Indians was, ‘Didn’t your people know that we were dying? Didn’t they care enough to get the wheat to us when we needed it?”
“We have done about two-thirds of our job of leading the world. We still must prove to the people of the world that we have the vision, that we can do the work, and that we can learn from them as well as give to them, so that we can build an atmosphere in which every nation will be able to strive toward peace together.”
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Herbert Philbrick, April 6, 1952
“The controlling core of the communist parry in American is underground, composed of men and women who do not admit their affiliations and in control of front groups often composed of sincere, patriotic Americans.
“The Russian War Relief, the American Soviet Friendship Society, and the Spanish Refugee Appeal were supported by Americans about whose patriotism there was no question, yet where controlled by people I knew in the communist party, on direct orders from their superiors.”
Q: Do you believe loyalty oaths are effective?
A: No, one of the first things I was ordered to do was deny my membership in the communist party.
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Charles Phelps Taft, November 18, 1951
“America must sell to the world the realities inherent in its way of life that make that way of life possible. We are doubted by people in Europe and Asia who are neither wicked nor ignorant. It is time for us to stop telling them about our bazookas, atomic bombs, gadgets, automobiles, and TV sets and start exporting the ideas and attitudes which gave us our tremendous capacity for creative work.
“Disunity is the hope and aim of every Russian maneuver, and America needs to disseminate the truth to prevent that disunity from occurring.”
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Prof. Kirtley F. mather, February 19, 1950
“Some American scientists have taken an informal vow not to participate in any research having destruction as its basic purpose. But there is nothing ot be gained if American scientists suddenly decide they are master politicians while their Russian counterparts go busily about preparing to blow this country off the face of the earth.
“Certain scientists with grave reservations about the atomic bomb gave their services during World War II only because of the danger that Germany might get there first. They do not now feel themselves under any such compunction with respect to Soviet Russia.
“It is now proving extremely difficult for the Atomic Energy Commission to mobilize scientists needed for the H-Bomb. You will observe that quite a few men are not leaving their jobs to do this work and universities aren’t taking it on.”
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Rev. Michael j. Ahern, S.J., January 15, 1950
“To take any innocent person’s life, even to the shortening of that life by a fraction of a second, is against the moral law as had been held by the vast majority of mankind from the very beginning of the history of the human race and is also against the positive divine law as is summarized in the Ten Commandments.
“Suffering has a value for the life eternal and the patient bearing of suffering makes the sufferer like Christ. If we adopt the principle that destruction of the chronic sick and the unfit is the best solution of the social problem they occasion, then we are on the road to the dictatorship under the aegis of a so-called democracy.”
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Dr. Miriam Van Waters, April 10 , 1949
“Women prisioner are usually harder to reform permanently than men because of the different attitudes that society takes toward make and female offenders. The rules laid down for women in our society are much more stringent than for men.
“The man in Presion can be retrained to prepare for a good job when he is released and the chances in such cases are that he won’t go back to prision, but inductrial traning is no guarantee that a woman won’t return. Hardly 3% of the women sent to gail are there for stealing anything. They are there for illicit sex, neglect of children, drinking – and these are the things that bring her back.
“I hope that in the future society will provide institutional shelters, not as we know them today, for misfits, such as confirmed alcoholics and emotional midgets who cannot stand the competition of life.”
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Dr. Oscar W. Junek, December 7, 1947
“Women should be given a try at ruling the world for the next 1000 years. There would be fewer wars – if any – with women in control. Men have been running things rather badly for the past 10,000 years or so.
“The increased number of women in Congress is all to the good, and they should now become forceful in the Cabinet. Women are natural peacemakers. This is because they hold sacred three things; the family, the home, and peace. And they are conservative by nature.
“But a man is pugnacious. He want sto fight, I have that on good authority. Women are great social cleansers and are willing to march up on a city hall when civic conditions become currupt. While women rulers wouldn’t be ask likely to declare war, they could be tough customers in the defense of what they deemed right and just.”
Q: How can you defend your theory in view of the great number of divorces in the United States, where women have a great say in things? This proves that women fight too.
A: Not at all. It merely shows what happens to women’s disposition in the prosence of makes.
