So we started in to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. Up to now our calling card to Mexico or Central America had been a gunboat or a bunch of Violets shaped like Marines. We could never understand why Mexico wasent just crazy about us; for we always had their good-will, and Oil and coffee and minerals, at heart.
Will Rogers (1879-1935) American humorist
Essay (1928-05-12), “More Letters from a Self-Made Diplomat to His President,” Saturday Evening Post, Vol. 200, No. 46
(Source)
Excerpted in Donald Day (ed.), The Autobiography of Will Rogers, ch. 14 (1949), which indicates Rogers' trip to Mexico was in December 1927. The text there is the same except at the very beginning, where it reads "We've started in to pay ..."
Shortened variant:I see where we are starting to pay some attention to our neighbors to the south. We could never understand why Mexico wasn't just crazy about us, for we have always had their good will, and oil and minerals, at heart.
Quotations about:
international affairs
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Nations, like individuals, do not always see alike or think alike, and international cooperation and progress are not helped by any Nation assuming that it has a monopoly of wisdom or of virtue.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Message (1945-01-06) to Congress, Annual Message (State of the Union)
(Source)
In 1945, Roosevelt delivered the SOTU as a written message to Congress, not as a speech.
We will not be intimidated by the threats of dictators that they will regard as a breach of international law or as an act of war our aid to the democracies which dare to resist their aggression. Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it so to be.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882-1945) American lawyer, politician, statesman, US President (1933-1945)
Speech (1941-01-06) to Congress, Annual Message (State of the Union), “Four Freedoms,” Washington, D. C.
(Source)