Wendell Berry on America

We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. … We have been wrong.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt1858–1919Kansas City Star (7 May 1918)

• Politics

Americans can always be counted on to do the right thing…after they have exhausted all other possibilities.

Winston Churchill1874–1965

No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.

H. L. Mencken1880–1956‘Notes On Journalism’ in the Chicago Tribune (19 September 1926)