“As to whether we shall have war with our late confederates, or whether all matters of differences between us shall be amicably settled, I can only say that the prospect for a peaceful adjustment is better, so far as I am informed, than it has been. The prospect of war is, at least, not so threatening as it has been. The idea of coercion, shadowed forth in President Lincoln’s inaugural, seems not to be followed up thus far so vigorously as was expected. Fort Sumter, it is believed, will soon be evacuated. What course will be pursued toward Fort Pickens, and the other forts on the gulf, is not so well understood. It is to be greatly desired that all of them should be surrendered. Our object is peace, not only with the North, but with the world. All matters relating to the public property, public liabilities of the Union when we were members of it, we are ready and willing to adjust and settle upon the principles of right, equity, and good faith. War can be of no more benefit to the North than to us. Whether the intention of evacuating Fort Sumter is to be received as an evidence of a desire for a peaceful solution of our difficulties with the United States, or the result of necessity, I will not undertake to say. I would feign hope the former. Rumors are afloat, however, that it is the result of necessity. All I can say to you, therefore, on that point is, keep your armor bright and your powder dry.”

In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)

Letter to Cobden (24 December 1853), quoted in G. M. Trevelyan, The Life of John Bright (London: Constable, 1913), pp. 229-230.
1850s

First Report, p. 34
U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945: Official Reports to the Secretary of the Navy (1946)

Address at Mechanics' Pavilion San Francisco May 13 1903 books.google.de http://books.google.de/books?id=zSJNPOphC_MC&pg=PA98
Quoted in The Audacity of Hope (2006) by Barack Obama, p. 282 as follows: The United States of America has not the option as to whether it will or it will not play a great part in the world … It must play a great part. All that it can decide is whether it will play that part well or badly.
1910s

"Non-Resistance and The Present War - A Reply to Mr. Russell," International Journal of Ethics (April 1915), vol. 25, no. 3, pp. 307-316

Western Daily Press, 30 March 1942.

A paraphrased variant of this seems to have arisen on the internet around 2007: It is ... a settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute. The United States, while they wish for war with no nation, will buy peace with none.
1810s
Source: Message delivered to Dey Omar Agha, by Isaac Chauncey and William Shaler , summarizing the Treaty with Algiers (1815) http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/bar1815t.asp, and U.S attitudes and actions in the Barbary Wars, in refusing to pay ransom or tribute to pirates of the Barbary States, as quoted in History and Present Condition of Tripoli: With Some Accounts of the Other Barbary States http://books.google.com/books?id=YMwRAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA46 (1835) by Robert Greenhow, p. 46

Source: The Sweet Far Thing

Teaching as a Subversive Activity (1969)
Context: Adminstrators are another curious consequence of a bureaucracy which has forgotten its reason for being. In schools, adminstrators commonly become myopic as a result of confronting all of the problems the "requirements" generate. Thus they cannot see (or hear) the constituents the system ostensibly exists to serve — the students. The idea that the school should consist of procedures specifically intended to help learners learn strikes many administrators as absurd — and "impractical." …Eichmann, after all, was "just an adminstrator." He was merely "enforcing requirements." The idea of "full time administrators" is palpably a bad one — especially in schools — and we say to hell with it. Most of the "administration" of the school should be a student responsibility. If schools functioned according to the democratic ideals they pay verbal allegience to, the students would long since have played a major role in developing policies and procedures guiding its operation. One of the insidious facts about totalitarianism is its seeming "efficiency." …Democracy — with all of its inefficiency — is still the best system we have so far for enhancing the prospects of our mutual survival. The schools should begin to act as if this were so.