There is no better way to give comfort to an enemy than to divide the people of a nation over the issue of foreign war.
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany.
It is not that I believe ideals are unimportant, even among the realities of war; but if a nation is to survive in a hostile world, its ideals must be backed by the hard logic of military practicability.
We must learn from the sermons of Christ, the wisdom of Laotzu, the teachings of Buddha.
Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.
If I must fight, I'll fight; but I prefer not to spit at my enemy beforehand.
More and more, as civilization develops, we find the primitive to be essential to us. We root into the primitive as a tree roots into the earth. If we cut off the roots, we lose the sap without which we can't progress or even survive. I don't believe our civilization can continue very long out of contact with the primitive.
We Americans are a primitive people... Americans seem to have little respect for the law or the rights of others.
Aviation constituted a new and possibly decisive element in preventing or fighting a war, and I was in a unique position to observe European aviation - especially in its military aspects.
We are in grave danger of losing forever not just millions of years of evolution on earth, but the eons of change that have produced man and his natural environment.
I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning.
I've had enough publicity for 15 lives.
Flying a good airplane doesn't require near as much attention as a motor car.
You ask what my conclusions are, rereading my journals and looking back on World War II from the vantage point of quarter century in time? We won the war in a military sense; but in a broader sense, it seems to me we lost it, for our Western civilization is less respected and secure than it was before.
About forty miles away from Paris, I began to see the old trench flares they were sending up at Le Bourget. I knew then I had made it, and as I approached the field with all its lights, it was a simple matter to circle once and then pick a spot sufficiently far away from the crowd to land O.K.
After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and the sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.
I have seen the science I worshiped, and the aircraft I loved, destroying the civilization I expected them to serve.
To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission.
I hope my journals relating to World War II will help clarify issues of the past and thereby contribute to understanding the issues and conditions of the present and future.
Civilization must be based on life. We should never forget that human life was created in and for millions of centuries, was nourished by primitive wildness. We cannot separate ourselves from this ancestral background.
