William McKinley Quotes

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.

We cannot always do what is best, but we can do what is practical at the time.

The American flag has not been planted on foreign soil to acquire more territory but for humanity's sake.

The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation.

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.

The more profoundly we study this wonderful book [the Bible], and the more closely we observe its divine precept, the better citizens we will become and the higher will be our destiny as a nation.

In the time of darkest defeat, victory may be nearest.

Expositions are the timekeepers of progress.

When I next realized that the Philippines had dropped into our laps I confess I did not know what to do with them … And one night late it came to me this way…:

#That we could not give them back to Spain — that would be cowardly and dishonorable;

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.

Our differences are policies; our agreements, principles.

Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. [It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, "Buy where you can buy the cheapest".... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: "Buy where you can pay the easiest." And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.

#that we not leave them to themselves — they are unfit for self-government — and they would soon have anarchy and misrule over there worse than Spain's wars; and

We need Hawaii just as much and a good deal more than we did California. It is manifest destiny.