Quotes about alliance
page 2

Kevin Spacey photo
Guillaume Apollinaire photo

“From this new alliance – for until now costume and scenery on one hand, choreography on the other, have been linked only artificially – there has resulted in Parade a kind of sur-réalisme.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

De cette alliance nouvelle, car jusqu'ici les décors et les costumes, d'une part, la choréographie, d'autre part, n'avaient entre eux qu'un lien factice, il est résulté, dans Parade, une sorte de sur-réalisme.
Excelsior, May 11, 1917; translation from Michael Benedikt & George E. Wellwarth (eds.) Modern French Theatre (New York: Dutton, 1964) p. xvii.
The first usage of the word surrealism in any language.

Julia Ward Howe photo
Cornelia Parker photo

“I like to take man-made objects and push them to the point where they almost lose their reference, so that they become something else, take on other alliances.”

Cornelia Parker (1956) English artist

Quote in: Cornelia Parker - Quotes - The European Graduate School http://www.egs.edu/faculty/cornelia-parker/quotes/, at egs.edu, 2015.

Arthur James Balfour photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Taliesin photo
Fidel Castro photo

“The Alliance for Progress is an alliance between one millionaire and many beggars.”

Fidel Castro (1926–2016) former First Secretary of the Communist Party and President of Cuba

Interview with C. L. Sulzberger, The New York Times (November 7, 1964), p. 26.

Max Weber photo
Michael E. Porter photo

“Quasi-integration is to use debt or equity investments and other means to create alliances between vertically related firms without full ownership.”

Michael E. Porter (1947) American engineer and economist

Source: Competitive strategy, 1980, p. 301

Amir Taheri photo
M. Balamuralikrishna photo
Dick Cheney photo
Newton Lee photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo

“Tonight Vietnam must hold the center of our attention, but across the world problems and opportunities crowd in on the American Nation. I will discuss them fully in the months to come, and I will follow the five continuing lines of policy that America has followed under its last four Presidents. The first principle is strength. Tonight I can tell you that we are strong enough to keep all of our commitments. We will need expenditures of $58.3 billion for the next fiscal year to maintain this necessary defense might. While special Vietnam expenditures for the next fiscal year are estimated to increase by $5.8 billion, I can tell you that all the other expenditures put together in the entire federal budget will rise this coming year by only $0.6 billion. This is true because of the stringent cost-conscious economy program inaugurated in the Defense Department, and followed by the other departments of government. A second principle of policy is the effort to control, and to reduce, and to ultimately eliminate the modern engines of destruction. We will vigorously pursue existing proposals—and seek new ones—to control arms and to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. A third major principle of our foreign policy is to help build those associations of nations which reflect the opportunities and the necessities of the modern world. By strengthening the common defense, by stimulating world commerce, by meeting new hopes, these associations serve the cause of a flourishing world. We will take new steps this year to help strengthen the Alliance for Progress, the unity of Europe, the community of the Atlantic, the regional organizations of developing continents, and that supreme association—the United Nations. We will work to strengthen economic cooperation, to reduce barriers to trade, and to improve international finance.”

Lyndon B. Johnson (1908–1973) American politician, 36th president of the United States (in office from 1963 to 1969)

1960s, State of the Union Address (1966)

Josiah Gilbert Holland photo
Camille Paglia photo
Michael Savage photo
John Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton photo
Herbert Read photo
John A. Macdonald photo

“He hoped that Britain and Canada would have "a healthy and cordial alliance. Instead of looking upon us as a merely dependent colony, England will have in us a friendly nation, a subordinate but still a powerful people to stand by her in North America in peace or in war."”

John A. Macdonald (1815–1891) 1st Prime Minister of Canada

1865, quoted on page 394 of Canadian Constitutional Development: Shown by Selected Speeches and Dispatches, with Introductions and Explanatory Notes https://books.google.ca/books?id=LRukOUFKGnkC&pg=PA394 published 1907
Dated

John F. Kerry photo

“America must always be the world's paramount military power, but we can magnify our power through alliances.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

May 27, 2004 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/27/politics/campaign/27CND-KERR.html?ex=1089864000&en=d7e191761ad35943&ei=5070&hp

Ron Paul photo

“They use [the term Isolationist] all the time, and they do that to be very negative. There are a few people in the country who say, "Well, that's good. I sort of like that term." I don't particularly like the term because I do not think I am an isolationist at all. Because along with the advice of not getting involved in entangling alliances and into the internal affairs of other countries, the Founders said – and it's permissible under the Constitution – to be friends with people, trade with people, communicate with them, and get along with them – but stay out of the military alliances. The irony is they accuse us, who would like to be less interventionist and keep our troops at home, of being isolationist. Yet if you look at the results of the policy of the last six years, we find that we are more isolated than ever before. So I claim the policy of those who charge us with being isolationists is really diplomatic isolationism. They are not willing to talk to Syria. They are not willing to talk to Iran. They are not willing to trade with people that might have questionable people in charge. We have literally isolated ourselves. We have less friends and more enemies than ever before. So in a way, it's one of the unintended consequences of their charges. They are the true isolationists, I believe.”

Ron Paul (1935) American politician and physician

Interview by Scott Horton, April 4, 2007 http://www.antiwar.com/horton/?articleid=10798
2000s, 2006-2009

Edward Carpenter photo
Max Boot photo
Donald J. Trump photo

“We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones and unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

President Trump's inaugural address https://www.whitehouse.gov/inaugural-address (20 January 2017)
2010s, 2017, January

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe photo
Henry Adams photo
Frances Burney photo
Vladimir Putin photo

“Russia does not want confrontation of any kind. And we will not take part in any kind of "holy alliance."”

Vladimir Putin (1952) President of Russia, former Prime Minister

Kremlin RU http://web.archive.org/web/20061013001158/http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2006/06/27/2040_type82912type82913type82914_107818.shtml (27 June 2006)
2006- 2010

Marc Chagall photo
Shona Brown photo
Frank Bainimarama photo
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi photo
Götz Aly photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
William Pitt the Younger photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo

“All who are weary and heavy laden; all who suffer under injustice; all who suffer from the outrages of the existing bourgeois society; all who have in them the feeling of the worth of humanity, look to us, turn hopefully to us, as the only party that can bring rescue and deliverance. And if we, the opponents of this unjust world of violence, suddenly reach out the hand of brotherhood to it, conclude alliances with its representatives, invite our comrades to go hand in hand with the enemy whose misdeeds have driven the masses into our camp, what confusion must result in their minds! … It must be that for the hundreds and thousands, for the millions that have sought salvation under our banner, it was all a colossal mistake for them to come to us. If we are not different from the others, then we are not the right ones – the Savior is yet to come; and the Social Democracy was a false Messiah, no better than the other false ones! Just in this fact lies our strength, that we are not like the others, and that we are not only not like the others, and that we are not simply different from the others, but that we are their deadly enemy, who have sworn to storm and demolish the Bastile of Capitalism, whose defenders all those others are. Therefore we are only strong when we are alone. This is not to say that we are to individualise or to isolate ourselves. We have never lacked for company, and we never shall so long as the fight lasts. On the essentially true but literally false phrase about a “single reactionary mass,” the Social Democracy has never believed since it passed from the realm of theory to that of practice. We know that the individual members and divisions of the “single reactionary mass” are in conflict with each other, and we have always used these conflicts for our purposes. We have used opponents against opponents, but have never allowed them to use us.”

Wilhelm Liebknecht (1826–1900) German socialist politician

No Compromise – No Political Trading (1899)

George Soros photo
Wilhelm Liebknecht photo
Harry Turtledove photo

“A fellow with a great voice shouted, "Hearken now to the words of the President of the Confederate States of America, the honorable Woodrow Wilson." The president turned this way and that, surveying the great swarm of people all around him in the moment of silence the volley had brought. Then, swinging back to face the statue of George Washington- and, incidentally, Reginald Bartlett- he said, "The father of our country warned us against entangling alliances, a warning that served us well when we were yoked to the North, before its arrogance created in our Confederacy what had never existed before- a national consciousness. That was our salvation and our birth as a free and independent country." Silence broke then, with a thunderous outpouring of applause. Wilson raised a bony right hand. Slowly, silence, of a semblance of it, returned. The president went on, "But our birth of national consciousness made the United States jealous, and they tried to beat us down. We found loyal friends in England and France. Can we now stand aside when the German tyrant threatens to grind them under his iron heel?" "No!" Bartlett shouted himself hoarse, along with thousands of his countrymen. Stunned, deafened, he had trouble hearing what Wilson said next: "Jealous still, the United States in their turn also developed a national consciousness, a dark and bitter one, as any so opposed to ours must be." He spoke not like a politician inflaming a crowd but like a professor setting out arguments- he had taken one path before choosing the other. "The German spirit of arrogance and militarism has taken hold in the United States; they see only the gun as the proper arbiter between nations, and their president takes Wilhelm as his model. He struts and swaggers and acts the fool in all regards."”

Now he sounded like a politician; he despised Theodore Roosevelt, and took pleasure in Roosevelt's dislike for him.
Source: The Great War: American Front (1998), p. 32

Jeremy Corbyn photo
Joseph Conrad photo

“Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism.”

Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) Polish-British writer

Letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review (August 1901), as quoted in Joseph Conrad: A Life (2007) by Zdzisław Najder, translated by Halina Najder, p. 315

Nico Perrone photo
Koenraad Elst photo
Raymond Poincaré photo
Richard Leakey photo

“The major sites, such as Altamira, are often surrounded by smaller sites within a 10-mile radius, as if they were centers of political or social alliance.”

Richard Leakey (1944) Kenyan paleoanthropologist, conservationist, and politician

The Origin of Humankind (1994)

Amir Taheri photo
Kent Hovind photo

“In Daniel 7, Daniel had a vision where “the four winds of the heavens strove upon the great sea. And four beasts came up from the sea, diverse one from another” (vv. 2-3). In the vision, Daniel saw a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear with three ribs in its mouth, a leopard with four wings, and a terrible beast with iron teeth and ten horns (v. 7). Bible scholars have speculated on the meaning of this passage for centuries. Some think the four beasts in this chapter represent a rehash of the first four empires from Babylon to the Roman Empire; while others think it is all yet in the future. I’m no scholar but here is my opinion: I (and many Bible scholars) think the four beasts are four world powers that will “strive” for world power (domination?) at the end of time before the one with ten horns finally becomes dominant. I think the four beasts are interpreted as follows: The lion sometimes standing like a man with eagle’s wings (v. 4) represents England (whose symbol as always been the lion) and America (whose symbol is the eagle) united, as one of four major end-time powers. The eagle’s wings “were plucked” and “it was lifted up from the earth, and made to stand upon the feet as a man, and a man’s heart was given to it” (v. 4). My best guess is that America will soon cease to be a world power (wings plucked) but there will still be enough of a godly influence that the English/American alliance will have some “heart” or compassion and maybe even be able to finally “take a stand” for God in the wicked world. I think the bear (v. 5) is Russia (whose symbol is the bear) and the three ribs in its mouth represent three countries it has dominated or “eaten,” such as Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, or perhaps Ukraine, Belarus, and Georgia. The leopard with four wings (v. 6) could be some sort of oriental alliance between China, Japan, Korea, and a Southeast Asia alliance (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, India, etc.). Verse 6 says, “dominion was given to it.” Many certainly feel that China is soon to be the major economic (and military) power in the world. If they could get a military or economic alliance with some of the other oriental nations mentioned, they would indeed be a force to be reckoned with! No animal is named for the fourth beast. It is only described as being dreadful, terrible, strong exceedingly, having great iron teeth, different from all other beasts and having ten horns. As I said earlier there are three options from what I can see for this beast. It is either (A) the European Common Market or a future similar alliance; or (B) 10 world regions and (C) some sort of alliance of Muslim nations around the Middle East or the world. I tend to go with option (C)”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 94-95

Hermann Rauschning photo
Nathanael Greene photo
John Marshall photo
Jacques Ellul photo
Menachem Begin photo
Annette Lu photo

“Only the blue sky, green land alliance can make Taiwan better.”

Annette Lu (1944) Taiwanese politician

Annette Lu (2006) cited in " Politicians of all stripes honor Chiang Wei-shui http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/archives/2006/08/06/2003322033" on Taipei Times, 6 August 2006.

Toshio Shiratori photo
Carl Rowan photo
Denis Diderot photo
Russell Brand photo

“The social action approach, assumes there is a disadvantaged (often oppressed) segment of the population that needs to be organized, perhaps in alliance with others, in order to pressure the power structure for increased resources or for treatment more in accordance with democracy or social justice.”

Charles Zastrow (1942) American sociologist

Source: The practice of social work. (1995), p. 315; partly cited in: Lupe Alle-Corliss, ‎Randy Alle-Corliss (1999) Advanced practice in human service agencies. p. 233

Mao Zedong photo

“Ours is a people's democratic dictatorship, led by the working class and based on the worker-peasant alliance.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On the Correct Handling of Contradiction (1957)

Winston S. Churchill photo
Charles James Fox photo
Herman Kahn photo

“Equally important to not appearing "trigger-happy" is not to appear prone to either accidents or miscalculations. Who wants to live in the 1960's and 1970's in the same world with a hostile strategic force that might inadvertently start a war? Most people are not even willing to live with a friendly strategic force that may not be reliably controlled. The worst way for a country to start a war is to do it accidentally, without any preparations. That might initiate an all- out "slugging match" in which only the most alert portion of the forces gets off in the early phase. Both sides are thus likely to be clobbered," both because the initial blow was not large enough to be decisive and because the war plans are likely to be inappropriate. To repeat: On all these questions of accident, miscalculation, unauthorized behavior, trigger-happy postures, and excessive destructiveness, we must satisfy ourselves and our allies, the neutrals, and, strangely important, our potential enemies. Since it is almost inevitable that the future will see more discussion of these questions, i will be important for us not only to have made satisfactory preparations, but also to have prepared a satisfactory story. Unless every-body concerned, both laymen and experts, develops a satisfactory image of strategic forces as contributing more to security than insecurity it is most improbable that the required budgets, alliances, and intellectual efforts will have the necessary support. To the extent that people worry about our strategic forces as themselves exacerbating or creating security problems, or confuse symptoms with the disease, we may anticipate a growing rejection of military preparedness as an essential element in the solution to our security problem and a turning to other approaches not as a complement and supplement but as an alternative. In particular, we are likely to suffer from the same movement toward "responsible" budgets pacifism, and unilateral and universal disarmament that swept through England in the 1920's and 1930's. The effect then was that England prematurely disarmed herself to such an extent that she first almost lost her voice in world affairs, and later her independence in a war that was caused as much by English weakness as by anything else.”

Herman Kahn (1922–1983) American futurist

The Magnum Opus; On Thermonuclear War

Sam Houston photo
Richard K. Morgan photo
Maurice Glasman, Baron Glasman photo
Peter F. Drucker photo
Adolf Hitler photo

“Our Italian ally has been a source of embarrassment to us everywhere. It was this alliance, for instance, which prevented us from pursuing a revolutionary policy in North Africa. In the nature of things, this territory was becoming an Italian preserve and it was as such that the Duce laid claim to it. Had we been on our own, we could have emancipated the Moslem countries dominated by France; and that would have had enormous repercussions in the Near East, dominated by Britain, and in Egypt. But with our fortunes linked to those of the Italians, the pursuit of such a policy was not possible. All Islam vibrated at the news of our victories. The Egyptians, the Irakis and the whole of the Near East were all ready to rise in revolt. Just think what we could have done to help them, even to incite them, as would have been both our duty and in our own interest! But the presence of the Italians at our side paralysed us; it created a feeling of malaise among our Islamic friends, who inevitably saw in us accomplices, willing or unwilling, of their oppressors. For the Italians in these parts of the world are more bitterly hated, of course, than either the British or the French. The memories of the barbarous, reprisals taken against the Senussi are still vivid. Then again the ridiculous pretensions of the Duce to be regarded as The Sword of Islam evokes the same sneering chuckle now as it did before the war. This title, which is fitting for Mahomed and a great conqueror like Omar, Mussolini caused to be conferred on himself by a few wretched brutes whom he had either bribed or terrorized into doing so. We had a great chance of pursuing a splendid policy with regard to Islam. But we missed the bus, as we missed it on several other occasions, thanks to our loyalty to the Italian alliance! In this theatre of operations, then, the Italians prevented us from playing our best card, the emancipation of the French subjects and the raising of the standard of revolt in the countries oppressed by the British. Such a policy would have aroused the enthusiasm of the whole of Islam. It is a characteristic of the Moslem world, from the shores of the Atlantic to those of the Pacific, that what affects one, for good or for evil, affects all.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

17 February 1945.
Disputed, The Testament of Adolf Hitler (1945)

James Connolly photo
Ayaan Hirsi Ali photo

“Today you have this horrible alliance between the far left and the Islamists and they’re using the modern media tool to shut people like me out by smearing us.”

Ayaan Hirsi Ali (1969) Dutch feminist, author

Quoted in “Ayaan Hirsi Ali slams protesters who prevented her visit to Australia,” Emily Ritchie, The Australian, (April 5, 2017) https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/nation/ayaan-hirsi-ali-hits-back-at-muslim-women-for-carrying-water-for-extremists/news-story/163a1a49c66d32a5501718d2984894ed

Angela Merkel photo
Huldrych Zwingli photo
Miguel Enríquez photo

“Alliances are always weaker in peacetime; alliances tend to become hard and fast and strong when things are going badly… but when things are going well, cooperation is hard to achieve.”

Oskar Morgenstern (1902–1977) austrian economist

Source: National Security: Political, Military, Economic Strategies Decade Ahead, (1963), p. 678.

B. W. Powe photo
John Adams photo
Louis Althusser photo
John F. Kennedy photo
Alexander Calder photo

“Wire, rods, sheet metal have strength, even in very attenuated forms, and respond quickly to whatever sort of work one may subject them to. Contrasts in mass or weight are feasible, too, according to the gauge, or to the kind of metal used, so that physical laws, as well as aesthetic concepts, can be held to. There is of course a close alliance between physics and aesthetics.”

Alexander Calder (1898–1976) American artist

Quote of Calder (1943) in his essay A Propos of Measuring a Mobile, Calder Foundation; as quoted in Calder and Mondrian: An Unlikely Kinship, senior-thesis by Eva Yonas http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.517.581&rep=rep1&type=pdf, Ohio State University August 2006, Department of Art History, p. 19
1930s - 1950s

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo

“Must stay there and also foment war and revolt against England. Doesn't he yet know of the intended alliance, under which he is to be Commander in Chief?!”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Marginal note in a telegram from Constantinople (29 July 1914) regarding the wish of the German military delegation to return, quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 121
1910s

James Otis Jr. photo
Fidel Castro photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Ah! how much a mother learns from her child! The constant protection of a helpless being forces us to so strict an alliance with virtue, that a woman never shows to full advantage except as a mother. Then alone can her character expand in the fulfillment of all life’s duties and the enjoyment of all its pleasures.”

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) French writer

Ah! combien de choses un enfant apprend à sa mère. Il y a tant de promesses faites entre nous et la vertu dans cette protection incessante due à un être faible, que la femme n’est dans sa véritable sphère que quand elle est mère; elle déploie alors seulement ses forces, elle pratique les devoirs de sa vie, elle en a tous les bonheurs et tous les plaisirs.
Part I, ch. XXXI.
Letters of Two Brides (1841-1842)

Cordell Hull photo

“There will no longer be need for spheres of influence, for alliances, for balance of power, or any other of the separate alliances through which in the unhappy past the nations strove to safeguard their security or promote their interest.”

Cordell Hull (1871–1955) American politician, U.S. Secretary of State from 1933 to 1944

1945 Testimony before the U.S. Congress hearings on the United Nations Charter

Amir Taheri photo

“Those who urge an alliance with Assad cite the example of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet despot who became an ally of Western democracies against Nazi Germany. I never liked historical comparisons and like this one even less. To start with, the Western democracies did not choose Stalin as an ally; he was thrusted upon them by the turn of events. When the Second World War started Stalin was an ally of Hitler thanks to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The Soviet Union actively participated in the opening phase of the war by invading Poland from the east as the Germans came in from the West. Before that, Stalin had rendered Hitler a big service by eliminating thousands of Polish army officers in The Katyn massacre. Between September 1939 and June 1941, when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, Stalin was an objective ally of Hitler. Stalin switched sides when he had no choice if he wanted to save his skin. The situation in Syria today is different. There is no alliance of democracies which, thanks to Obama’s enigmatic behavior, lack any strategy in the Middle East. Unlike Stalin, Assad has not switched sides if only because there is no side to switch to. Assad regards ISIS as a tactical ally against other armed opposition groups. This is why Russia is now focusing its air strikes against non-ISIS armed groups opposed to Assad. More importantly, Assad has none of the things that Stalin had to offer the Allies. To start with Stalin could offer the vast expanse of territory controlled by the Soviet Union and capable of swallowing countless German divisions without belching. Field Marshal von Paulus’ one-million man invasion force was but a drop in the ocean of the Soviet landmass. In contrast, Assad has no territorial depth to offer. According to the Iranian General Hossein Hamadani, who was killed in Aleppo, Assad is in nominal control of around 20 percent of the country. Stalin also had an endless supply of cannon fodder, able to ship in millions from the depths of the Urals, Central Asia and Siberia. In contrast, Assad has publicly declared he is running out of soldiers, relying on Hezbollah cannon fodder sent to him by Tehran. If Assad has managed to hang on to part of Syria, it is partly because he has an air force while his opponents do not. But even that advantage has been subject to the law of diminishing returns. Four years of bombing defenseless villages and towns has not changed the balance of power in Assad’s favor. This may be why his Russian backers decided to come and do the bombing themselves. Before, the planes were Russian, the pilots Syrian. Now both planes and pilots are Russian, underlining Assad’s increasing irrelevance. Stalin’s other card, which Assad lacks, consisted of the USSR’s immense natural resources, especially the Azerbaijan oilfields which made sure the Soviet tanks could continue to roll without running out of petrol. Assad in contrast has lost control of Syria’s oilfields and is forced to buy supplies from ISIS or smugglers operating from Turkey. There are other differences between Stalin then and Assad now. Adulated as “the Father of the Nation” Stalin had the last word on all issues. Assad is not in that position. In fact, again according to the late Hamadani in his last interview published by Iranian media, what is left of the Syrian Ba’athist regime is run by a star chamber of shadowy characters who regard Assad as nothing but a figurehead.”

Amir Taheri (1942) Iranian journalist

Opinion: No, Bashar Al-Assad is no Joseph Stalin http://english.aawsat.com/2015/10/article55345413/opinion-no-bashar-al-assad-is-no-joseph-stalin, Ashraq Al-Awsat (16 Oct, 2015).